Askimet and Blog Comment Spam
Filed Under Blogging News
Blog spam is definitely a problem and I don’t want to pretend it isn’t, and anti-spam plugins like Askimet are great plugins.
But, if you are moderating comments on your blog, you need to make sure you are flagging true spam as spam with Askimet, and deleting questionable comments.
I have heard from some people that a comment of their’s was flagged as spam with Askimet because the owner didn’t approve of the content of the comment. If you don’t approve of a comment delete it, don’t flag it as spam especially with Askimet because if the comment is not true spam, you have just screwed someone.
In summary, Askimet is a WordPress plugin that is used by thousands of bloggers. Blog comments are sent to Askimet and Askimet uses it’s rules to determine if a comment is spam or not. Of course Askimet is not going to tell us how they determine spam, which is good since the spammers would find ways around the Askimet spam rules.
So, if you flag a comment as spam, it’s flagged by Askimet as spam. Once a comment is flagged as spam by you, Askimet will flag it as spam the next time that person comments on a blog post.
I have read that URLs are sometimes flagged as spam, some keywords are flagged as spam and I suspect IP addresses may also be flagged as spam. The next time the person you flagged as spam submits a comment on another blog, Askimet may identify it as spam, and the comment will never be approved – even though it could be a perfectly valid comment.
From what I have read, from people who have ended up being flagged as a spammer by Askimet, is that you won’t even realize you were flagged as a spammer until you somehow figure out your comments on blogs never show up. Some tested by commenting on their own blog to see their comment being flagged as spam.
To get of off the Askimet spam system, I’ve seen people suggest you comment on blogs of people you know, and ask them to mark your comments as not being spam if Askimet flags them as spam. This is called a False-Positive by Askimet. As blog owners approve the comments as not being spam, Askimet is supposed to learn. So if you continue to post comments that are not flagged as spam, you should come off the list.
The best way to stay out of the Askimet spam system is to provide good comments. But someone having a bad day could decide to flag you as spam for no good reason. You wouldn’t want someone doing that to you, so be careful when flagging comments as spam when they really aren’t.
If you have questionable comments on your blog, go ahead and delete them, just make sure you delete bad comments, and flag true spam as spam. I delete far more comments than I flag as spam. A blog comment has to clearly be spam before I will mark it as such, and Askimet catches most of those for me already.
I also encourage you to periodically look at comments Askimet flags as spam on your blog. If you find comments that are clearly not spam, remove the spam flag. You would appreciate if someone did that for you, so do the right thing for them.
Askimet is a great plugin for controlling comment spam on your blog, but be careful how you use it.
Disclaimer: I am not an expert on Askimet, but I did some research on it to better understand how it works. If you have more information on how Askimet works, I would appreciate your comments below.
Mike
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Thanks for the info on askimet. I hate blog spammers and these kind of softwares seem to be helping a lot. Thanks for the post!
i’ve been flagged a few times unfortunately.
thankfully akismet responds pretty quickly to pleas for help sent via their site’s contact form. 
also, they mention a wordpress blog which was set up precisely to check if akismet is flagging you, or if it’s something else intercepting your comments.
I was curious – if you are flagged in Akismet by an immature blogger, what ramifications does this have on other comments that you are submitting? Does it put all of them that you send into the spam box?
Ye this is a problem. There are a number of blogs that I comment on regularly. Sometimes when there is a post about a controversial subject no one can comment because if we use certain words the comment gets blocked.
Laugh when I tried to comment on this post I got:
Sorry, but your comment has been flagged by the spam filter running on this blog: this might be an error, in which case all apologies. Your comment will be presented to the blog admin who will be able to restore it immediately.
You may want to contact the blog admin via e-mail to notify him.
typical
Hey Joe,
That is strange that your first comment was flagged as spam. I don’t see anything that would cause it to be flagged.
That’s why we should monitor the comments that are flagged as spam and approve them when they are clearly not spam.
I use SpamKarma 2 instead of Askimet and 95% of the comments that are flagged as spam are clearly spam.
Mike
I’ve been using Askimet for a long time and its never gone wrong for me till now.
Great information… Spend good time to read your article.
Thanks Mike for explaining the way Askimet works. I never grappled with it so detailed. Having a spam-tool is certainly a great and neccessary thing, but Askimet-user should be informed about the way how it works from the right beginning. I suggest you provide your useful blogpost to the Askimet-guys in order they inform the webmasters how to handle responsibly with comments.
I’m too lazy to install that plug-in. Consequently, I periodically have to delete hundreds of spam comments, event ‘though comments are turned off on my blog.
That, plus the regular ‘WP security updates’ puts me off allowing commenting.
Thanks for the great post and information on Askimet. I’ve heard of it before but never bothered to put it onto my blog. However, recently I’ve been receiving alot of spam so it might be time for me to go get it.
It is a great tool if used properly. Spam is a problem for all bloggers and you have to keep it under control. However I do know quite a few people who have been marked as spam accidentally and go no longer contribute meaningful conversation to the site. In that case its a lose-lose situation for both parties.
Really the problem is that you contributing to the list of comments and for a reason we don’t know, askimet eats your comment, letting you we a feeling of worthyness for that action.
Let me say something about it. If I am a blog owner and am going to post a comment, I shall keep in mind that It can go in Akismet right after submission if I did some very loose comment. Problem is with hiring people. On many popular marketplaces I have seen people hiring cheap person and availing cheap service to extract link juice. I think problem starts from there. People who will be charing a low amount will provide very low quality comment so 60 percent chances are there that your site will be flagged as spam right after using that service. Another thing which I came to know, what happened if you will be posting on only “do follow” blogs in short span of time and in big quantity? Of course you will go in Akismet spam right away.
thank you… i just wish more people would do that. so many times people flag stuff as spam when its not.
I also hate blog spammers and these kind of softwares seem to be helping a lot.
Yeah.. Askimet is a nice plugin, I’ve been using it in my blog as well..
Very helpful information.
Askimet is protecting blog from spammer.
Thanks for the information
I’m a regular reader of your internet marketing blog. I even found albert through your post there. I didn’t realize that you’re the tech guy ‘mike’ there, too. I left a comment in your ‘Modifying Free WP Templates’ but it encountered an error. I don’t if it was a bug or something. Just wanna let you know.
Yes akismet is a good feature for WP, though, remember it is only a program, and programs aren’t as good as the human touch when it comes to detecting spam. Thank you for the awareness though.
Well, first you can start by doing some online research. You can check out some of the many sites on the internet that rank host sites for you. Just search “host site rankings” and you’ll come up with a list of many..
blogs with really great information.I hate blog spammers and these kind of softwares seem to be helping a lot. Thanks for the post!
I did not know anything about these plug ins. Thank you, I really like all the information you have provided us.
I agree that having a spam-tool is certainly a neccessary thing, but Askimet-user should be informed about how it works from right at the beginning.
Two years ago i didn’t activate Akismet plugin on my blogs and my blogs were not do follow either. Despite of that I had to spend plenty of time to check all comments. Then I changed no follow attribute on all my blogs and I was lost. I had to spend 4-5 hours a day only to check those spam comments. Akismet then helped me to handle all my blogs in a better way. No doubt it is the best spam blocking plugin.
Not sure is askimet is the image or the number one. I like the one with the numbers you add together it seems to work good and i never have problem seeing the numbers some image ones i can not figure out what it is.
Good insights. I have used Askimet for about a year and have only had a few false positives. You provide some good insights on how to use Askimet that I had not thought of. Thanks.
Hi,
I have a form in wordpress, When i submit the form i am getting a message like ‘Your submission is being flagged as spam! Sorry’, What it is and how to resolve this problem?
Thank you for making this point. If someone gets flagged for spam then that person is definately screwed.
Our site is done on WordPress, as our most of our clients’ sites, so Askimet helps, but inevitably spammy comments will make their way through.
I’m finding that people are getting more creative with their templated comments and it is making it harder to identify them. One of the more recent ones I received was:
“I am using the same template that you are using for your site, but mine loads so much slower than yours despite the fact that you have considerably more multimedia than mine”.
Seems like a valid comment, but the fact of the matter was that it was on a site I had just developed with only one “Hello World” article and absolutely no other content to speak of.
It would be nice to see some kind of comment network, like an integration of WordPress or Gravatar, that forces users to login in order to post a comment across the major blogging platforms (Blogger, WordPress, etc…). Commentors could be “graded” (like sellers on eBay). Commentors with X number of spammed comments would be banned, making a registered user ID useless after only a day or so of use.
It wouldn’t stop spam (I really don’t think anything will) but it would make spamming blogs hosted on/with major platforms a real pain in the butt.
Nice post. I think this is a good idea to delete that not to block them so that if commenter is not a spammer can comment on another post in a right way.
Very informative. I run a couple of blogs and most of the comments I seem to get are pure spam ><. Anchor text instead of name, 3+ links, the works. Perhaps with these plugins I can host real discussions again.
Very informative. I run a couple of blogs and most of the comments I seem to get are pure spam ><. Anchor text instead of name, 3+ links, the works. Perhaps with these plugins I can host real discussions again.
Akismet or Automattic Kismet is a spam filtering service. It attempts to filter link spam from blog comments and spam TrackBack pings.it is so powerful tool to avoid and protect spam in blog.
What i don’t like about akismet is that it tends to mark legit comments as spam too.
I have read many blogs which mentioned Akismet. But I like the way of your explaining. Akismet is helpful plugin for blogger to eliminate spam comment, but blogger have to be careful to use it to avoid confusion between no spam and spam comment. Anyway, thanks a lot for your post.
great tips here – SEO and comment luv is an education in itself, but once you have mastered it, it really can work to you advantage!
Thanks,
Laura
Good tips to help get back out of the Akismet spam black hole! Akismet can certainly be a bit aggresive when it comes to labelling spam – it’s a shame there’s no way of specifying how strict you want the filters to be.
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I’d like to know what plugin returns the “Hmm Seems a bit spammy…” message so I can avoid using it. I don’t think it is Askimet.
I got that warning on a few comments I made on other blogs – and I was using a new email address, the comments were legit and rather long winded, and on one as a test I did not even include a link to see if it did not like my site for some reason.
just as i said just now we had better not to anticipate someone else do something just follow the way we think and
Hi, your blog is very good thanks for sharing it. I’ve had a lot of problems with spam comments on a blog I have on GoDaddy’s WordPress hosting system, and I spend ridiculous amounts of time deleting spam every day to try to find legitimate comments.
This is very good post, imparting a great knowledge of blog posting
Blog spam is a big problem. There is some software out there, I agree, but nothing beats a manual inspection of messages IMO.
yes , it;s true, there are so many spam on internet!
Thank you, it’s been very interestingly.
it is making it harder to identify them. One of the more recent ones.I had to spend 4-5 hours a day only to check those spam comments.
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It’s nice that with keywordluv, we can help each other out, but also filter out spam that shouldn’t be there. The only annoying part is keeping up with the email notifications.. But I think I’ll live
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I’d really like to be very soon having the same problems you have with your blogs and sites guys, trying to control the big quantity of comments that come in. As soon as I had very much comments and posts I will install Askimet. I hope I will need it very soon.
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no wonder if they do it and flagged some comment as spam, because yes in order to be indexed in Google we sometime do some silly thing whila making comment such as put our keyword inside comment just for make Google realized it. this is really the impolite way i, just a thought.
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Now, it can be very annoying when comments seem thin or excessively complimentary while ignoring the content of the post, but I won’t “spam” people for it. The conditional nofollow plugin is nice, or better yet I’ll approve the comment minus the link!
A great tool for anti spamming. But being a paid tool I don’t prefer to use it.
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