Quick Ways To Identify Spam On Your Blog

I can’t believe it’s been more than 3 years since I wrote on the topic of how to identify spam. In that period of time a lot of things have stayed the same while there are some new players in the game that try to trick us all.

No Spam
Thomas Hawk via Compfight

This will probably be a short post from me, which is rare, but I’m hoping to make it easy for everyone instead of getting too deep into the issue. If there’s anything here you don’t understand, leave it in the comments and I’ll give it more time later. Here we go:

1. If a comment doesn’t use your name but calls you something, it’s probably spam. Admin, webmaster, buddy, etc.

2. One line comments are most probably spam unless you know the person.

3. If a comment looks familiar look through previous comments on that same post. Most of the time I recognize that someone has scraped a previous comment but not all the time, and I end up responding to both; ugh.

4. Totally off-topic or not on the topic at all.

5. The comment is way too long. I’ve known a few people who leave long comments but in general most really long comments are spammy sales messages or rants about something totally not based on what you’ve just written about.

6. Questions about your blog in general; not on topic, and please don’t even waste your time responding to this stuff.

7. Female picture with male name, male picture with female name… that should be pretty easy to spot.

8. The email address says “info” or “admin” in it. Not always spam but my policy is it all goes into the spam filter because, unless I know the person, it often means someone’s been paid to leave a lousy comment on your blog & they’re never coming back.

9. Keyword names or somewhat offensive names. I don’t allow either and will just delete the comments without reading them because most of the time they’re spam.

I’ll stop at 9 because that’s one of my favorite numbers and it’s the 9th month. Anyone have any other quick ways to identify spam?
 

35 thoughts on “Quick Ways To Identify Spam On Your Blog”

  1. I will use all these 9 tips you gave Mitch. Thanks for sharing this. This is very helpful since spams are all over the internet nowadays.
    I will also suggest these tips.
    “6. Questions about your blog in general; not on topic, and please don’t even waste your time responding to this stuff.”
    To build good rapport.

    “7. Female picture with male name, male picture with female name… that should be pretty easy to spot.”
    This one is pretty obvious. 😀

  2. Anything with the word sex would be another word spammers use trying to get into our blogs.I’ve done #3 as well Mitch but we get smarter as we go along, right? I’ve gotten a lot from auto type sites and insurance companies too.
    Amazing how they think we will approve their comments!

    1. Lisa, I think they just send thousands of these things out to see where they’ll stick. Lucky for me, I’ve set things up so most of the garbage does directly to the spam box. But some folks slip through here and there.

  3. Well, you seemed to have included everything 😉

    I don’t quite remember what I used to do for my first blog. I think I mainly relied on Akismet to take care of the spam (When I was with blogger, it was much easier. Not a lot of spammers were patient enough to go through the blogger commenting system :D).

    For my second blog, most of the comments I get used to be from people I knew (so not much spam problems there). I just do quick glance over the comment and decide whether it is spam or not (Granted, I have been confused a few times). A lot of new bloggers don’t actually know much about commenting, so what do we do? Approve it, or just ignore the comments (I usually think that we could teach them something through our reply and so, I approve those comments :D).

    Anyways, thanks for the share, Mitch 🙂

    1. Thanks Jeevan. We teach them; that’s why I wrote this post. And I just figured out why I have to keep pulling you out of the spam filter. It’s because you use 3 names and that will always throw you in there. At least I’m making sure I pull you out. lol

      1. Sorry about that, Mitch 🙂 Thanks! It’s the auto fill. Next time, I will remember to modify the name 😀 (Like I have for this comment).

  4. Hi Mitch

    I’ve started getting a few spam comments with just tonnes of keywords listed.

    I’ve seen these before on blogs that automatically approve comments but I haven’t had them on mine.

    Why on earth anyone would think I’m going to approve that I don’t know?

    1. Tim, it’s a numbers game, and of course there are newbies who don’t know and will think all of those comments are real. Well, maybe not all of them but some of them definitely.

  5. I comment often on blogs but I try to don’t spam them, I don’t use keywords and I always read the article first and I always comment ontopic! And if the webmaster alows me the backlink on my name I’m very grateful! I know whow hard is to fight with the spammers and the internet is full of them!
    Best Regards!
    Loer

  6. I agree, these all tips are true and useful for writing comments. But one thing i can say that sometimes you don’t have the words, you write single line comment, then why it is a spam.

    1. When people don’t know you because you’ve never participated on their blog before AND you don’t have an avatar, it smacks of being spam. Also, what could one possibly contribute with a one line comment without knowing the author?

  7. Hello Mitchell, basic but effective tips to mark spam comment, usually we found many single line comments with their website link such as “GOOD ARTICLE I LIKE IT“ “INFORMATIVE ARTICLE KEEP WRITING” “USEFUL ARTICLE THANKS FOR SHARING” I mark all these type comments as spam. Because I think this type of visitors drop comments only with a single aim BACK LINKS.

    1. That’s a good move Coleman because all those things are definitely spam. I’m pretty diligent in looking at the comments that pop up here because I want my blog to be clean of that trash. Not sure I’m perfect, but I’m pretty good.

  8. Hi Mitch,
    And the best part when comments contains link or more than one link.
    Spammers doesn’t care about the spam they are doing.
    Even they know, if they put their blog links in the comment then obviously the comment goes to spam part.

    1. Gauri, as I’ve said to someone else it’s all about numbers, and some folks don’t care enough about their blogs or have abandoned them so that many of these spam comments to take. I have no idea if it does them any good but they think those links work for them.

    1. Actually Phil, it usually is still spam its just a different type of spam. When you see what people are writing you know they are just being paid to leave messages, so that makes it spam just in a different way.

  9. Hi Mitch,

    Try Googling the text of the comment. You may find it on lots of other blogs. I’ve had a lot of generic spam and also some comments that do relate to the post in question, but when I Google them, they come up on a lot of other sites. Those go into the spam queue 🙂

    1. Hey Ben! I used to do that a long time ago but these days I just don’t have that kind of time because I’m on the road using a much slower internet connection. But I may go back to that one day.

  10. I find that most spam is filled with bad spelling and grammar, or is just a lot of nonsense. If I read an entire sentence and have no idea what the person is saying, I’m done.

    Here’s a question for you: Have you ever seen a spam comment on someone else’s blog, and the blogger has replied to it, believing it to be sincere feedback? If so, what do you do? (I guess this is similar to the question about what you’d do if you found out your friend’s spouse was cheating on them.)

    1. Charles, I see it often, and I almost always leave a comment telling the author that it’s spam. Then again I’m like that; just can’t let those nasty spammers take over like that. lol

  11. Spam comments have always been a big problem for me. I Use GASP and Akismet on all my blogs. It makes my work a bit easier. Akismet is great when it comes to detecting spam but yes I also get some manual spam which I delete if I didnt like it. Spamming is really a big concern nowadays.

    1. I’m lucky not to have a major problem with spam, probably because I take a lot of steps to find it & block it. Those are the best plugins to use without going to captcha or some goofy commenting system in my opinion.

  12. That’s right specially the 7th one. Its funny how people try to fool us. Love all these quick tips. Thank you 🙂 I will surely use all of them from now on.

      1. (I guess being a little older a pretty face doesn’t fool me so quickly anymore. Good luck with it all.)
        Excuse me? What do you mean by that?

      2. Number 7 talked about people using the faces of pretty girls to fool us. You said “That’s right specially the 7th one. Its funny how people try to fool us.” I said “I guess being a little older a pretty face doesn’t fool me so quickly anymore.” Truth be told, pretty young faces aren’t geared towards people like me, older, married and such. They’re geared towards younger males who might be fooled into thinking that a pretty young girl is interested in what they have to say. That’s just psychology; I’m too old for the psychology. Anyway, I was responding to what you originally said.

  13. Hey Mitch, this is really great article to fight against spam. I have also encountered numerous comments in my blog with same problem. I use akismet, but that not completely solves the problem. I have seen people publishing comments with keywords and nonsense comments. Thanks for these 9..!! Gud to know ur lucky number is 9, mine is 7.

    1. The spam comments are pretty sneaky Sam. Even on this post there’s been tons of spam comments that I’ve deleted, but at least I didn’t have to deal with the automated stuff. BTW, give the GASP Anti-spambot plugin a try; it’s pretty good.

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