Dealing with Spam on Your WordPress Site

When you create a blog, whether you use WordPress or any other blogging platform, you are going to have to deal with spam in your comments.  The more traffic you generate, the more spam will come your way.  This is inevitable; though, WordPress makes it fairly simple for users to decide how they want to handle spam comments.  Choose how you want spam dealt with.  If you want some help learning how to deal with spam on your WordPress site then look over the tips below.

What is Comment Spam? 

Comment spam is any comment that is left on your blog with the sole intention of providing a backlink back to a specific website.  These comments typically contain no helpful information and rarely make any reference to the article that they are supposedly commenting on.  When you first create your WordPress site, you may only get spam comments occasionally.  Over time, these comments could start appearing more frequently.  Not only is it a good idea to get rid of these comments, the links that you are providing could hurt your search engine rankings, if the website being linked to is affiliated with black hat SEO techniques.

Using Askimet and other WordPress Plugins

While there are several features included with WordPress that will help you deal with spam comments, there are also many plugins available that can eliminate the time needed to moderate spam comments.  Askimet, which is included by default with every installation of WordPress, is an anti-spam plugin that compares every incoming comment to a list of known spam.  If a spam comment is detected, it is placed in a new menu option under the Comments Panel that will hold all caught comment spam.  You can also mark comment spam that gets through Askimet as spam.  The comment is then sent to Askimet.  In addition to Askimet, there are other WordPress plugins that you may find helpful.  You can find plugins that will replace the default comment system with an alternative as well as other plugins that can detect spam comments.

Using Built-in WordPress Features

If you do not want to use any more resources by installing a new WordPress plugin then use the built-in WordPress features for moderating comments.  Spam comments are usually easily detected by the fact that multiple links are typically left inside the body of the comment.  By default, WordPress will send any comment with more than 2 links to moderation.  You can lower this to 1, if you feel that too much spam is getting through.  There is also a list of spam words that WordPress will check your comments against.  Words can be added to this list, as you see fit.  Comments that contain these words are also held for moderation and are not deleted.  That is where the Comment Blacklist is used.  Any words added to the Comment Blacklist will be checked against your comments.  Comments with any of these words are automatically deleted and not held for moderation first.  Use the Comment Blacklist sparingly and only when absolutely necessary.

Dealing with spam comments on your WordPress site does not need to be an arduous task.  Save yourself some time by using any of these methods to help you conquer spam on your WordPress site.