All of us love to see good comments on the articles we write and post on
our blogs or website, in fact we welcome even the disapproving ones,
however, going through a hundred thousand comments, eagerly looking for a
relevant one and finding nothing but the gems like “tired of too few
visitors, we can help you bring new targeted visitors" (yes, I can see
what you are capable of) or "I am bamboozled by your knowledge please
write more on this topic" (yes, I spend my time writing more detailed
articles on this topic while you can’t take out some time and give a
more relevant comment) or maybe "this post helped me in my college
assignment ... " (If your college hasn’t even taught you the basics of
communication then please quit, already).
Most of these comments are one-fit-all types, or plain stupid, that if published, will do more harm to your blog tips than good. Just going through this spam-fest to make sure no genuine comment gets crushed by these is a pain.
Why Do They Even Exist?
Well, you can blame both, Google's popularity and its algorithm for that; because website owners value higher rankings at Google and Google value back links from other websites. And even though it has been proven that links from blog comments carry very little value, still they’re free and offers a link (even if it is a nofollow), hence it is often misused, rather abused. Most of these comments are automated, or at times a desperate attempt by some Non-English speaker, trying to earn back links for their clients.
How do you know it’s Spam?
Spam speaks for itself; most bloggers can read the first 3 - 4 words and tell they’ve got a spam comment on hand. You should not discard al comments having a link as spam, because even genuine commentators will give out their links, so treating all comments with ‘anchor text’ in the name and URL in the website field as ‘spam’ is not fair (some commentators might be commenting solely to put their link on the page, still irrelevancy is what differentiates a genuine comment from spam).
How to deal with it:
There are a number of ways to deal with content spam (remember that disallowing comments is not an option because it spoils the very purpose of blogging).
Akismet:
If you are using WordPress, then Akismet would definitely help sort out all useless comments. It protects the site from being clogged with spam. The option is mostly available as a default security feature in Wordpress. You just have to keep it updated. Regardless of whether you are using a blogging platform or a website, there are a number of good anti-spam programs/plugins available out there that you can easily use within the site. These programs are designed to identify spam and thus making it impossible for spammers to harm your site.
Facebook Comment Box Plugin:
Facebook Comment Box Plugin is good for many reasons, apart from the publicity (because every time someone comments without un-checking the sharing box, that comment will make its way to their friend’s feed with your Blog link), but Facebook Comment Plugin can also help the bloggers in dealing with the comment spam (especially those inflammatory comments).
Facebook Plugin requires the commentators to log in to their Facebook profiles before commenting, so they don’t get a back-link with comment, still they get a link to their profile, the absence of back-links will turn off the spammers and still the link to Facebook profile will keep the genuine commentators interested (because they are still getting the recognition). And because people have to share their real identity, they will stay away from trolling and starting flame wars (true that they can make a dummy profile for that, but still not many will go through the trouble of double checking the login before making such comments).
Disallowing any kind of back-link:
That’s a little desperate measure, and I am listing it just for the sake of sharing another viable method, though I wouldn’t recommend, mainly because it will put off some good commentators as well as the spammers.
Why Do They Even Exist?
Well, you can blame both, Google's popularity and its algorithm for that; because website owners value higher rankings at Google and Google value back links from other websites. And even though it has been proven that links from blog comments carry very little value, still they’re free and offers a link (even if it is a nofollow), hence it is often misused, rather abused. Most of these comments are automated, or at times a desperate attempt by some Non-English speaker, trying to earn back links for their clients.
How do you know it’s Spam?
Spam speaks for itself; most bloggers can read the first 3 - 4 words and tell they’ve got a spam comment on hand. You should not discard al comments having a link as spam, because even genuine commentators will give out their links, so treating all comments with ‘anchor text’ in the name and URL in the website field as ‘spam’ is not fair (some commentators might be commenting solely to put their link on the page, still irrelevancy is what differentiates a genuine comment from spam).
How to deal with it:
There are a number of ways to deal with content spam (remember that disallowing comments is not an option because it spoils the very purpose of blogging).
Akismet:
If you are using WordPress, then Akismet would definitely help sort out all useless comments. It protects the site from being clogged with spam. The option is mostly available as a default security feature in Wordpress. You just have to keep it updated. Regardless of whether you are using a blogging platform or a website, there are a number of good anti-spam programs/plugins available out there that you can easily use within the site. These programs are designed to identify spam and thus making it impossible for spammers to harm your site.
Facebook Comment Box Plugin:
Facebook Comment Box Plugin is good for many reasons, apart from the publicity (because every time someone comments without un-checking the sharing box, that comment will make its way to their friend’s feed with your Blog link), but Facebook Comment Plugin can also help the bloggers in dealing with the comment spam (especially those inflammatory comments).
Facebook Plugin requires the commentators to log in to their Facebook profiles before commenting, so they don’t get a back-link with comment, still they get a link to their profile, the absence of back-links will turn off the spammers and still the link to Facebook profile will keep the genuine commentators interested (because they are still getting the recognition). And because people have to share their real identity, they will stay away from trolling and starting flame wars (true that they can make a dummy profile for that, but still not many will go through the trouble of double checking the login before making such comments).
Disallowing any kind of back-link:
That’s a little desperate measure, and I am listing it just for the sake of sharing another viable method, though I wouldn’t recommend, mainly because it will put off some good commentators as well as the spammers.
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