When People Try Their Best To Spam Bloggers

Unscrupulous people have been leaving me spam on a daily basis (Thankfully, Akismet has prevented 99.45% of the spam from making its way in my blog’s commenting section).

Spammers have been annoying bloggers since the inception of blogging and judging by the behaviour of spammers, they will keep spamming bloggers once blogs are in existence.

However, it would be nice if spammers chose to bypass my blog.

Why Do People Try To Spam Bloggers?

A spammer’s main intention is to leave links in their comments, that when clicked on, will lead you or your readers to their website.

They are using the commenting section of our blogs as an inexpensive form of advertising.

Sorry, no one is allowed to use my commenting section to promote their products!

Google Hates Spam

If Google were to encounter spam in your blog’s commenting section while its bots were crawling your blog, you will be penalized (The punishment that you would undergo would take the form of ranking your blog low on Google’s Search Engine Results Pages).

Therefore, if spam were to bypass Akismet and appear in your comments section, you should click on the Spam option; it would remove the unwanted spam and send it to the spam section; thus letting Akismet know that it is a spam comment.

Even though you do not publish content on your blog daily, it would be in your best interest to make sure that spam does not infiltrate your blog’s commenting section (That, my friend, can be done on a regular basis).

One Of The Best Ways Of Protecting Your Blog From Spam Is To Manually Approve Your Comments

Yes, it is true that manually approving your comments is one of the best methods of keeping your blog free of spam.

One should always remember that Akismet is not 100% foolproof; the occasional spam comment will bypass Akismet’s well-trained algorithm.

Any blogger who is serious about preventing spam from making its way into their comments section should read, WordPress Comment Moderation: A Beginner’s Guide.

One Very Effective Way Of Preventing Spam From Making Its Way On Your Blog Is To Disable Comments

The truth is that there is no way on God’s green Earth that spam can make its way to your blog if you have disabled comments.

Personally, I think that disabling comments is way too extreme.

Why?

Because I love interacting with my fellow bloggers via the comments section of my blog.

In my case, I have set comments to be automatically approved (That method has the potential to let bad actors do unwanted things in my blog’s commenting section).

I often keep my fingers crossed with the hopes of commenters being on their best behaviour and Akismet trapping any spam that spammers may want to send my way.

Some Bloggers Wrote About The Types Of Spam That They Received

Despite spam being highly annoying, some bloggers will take the humorous approach — one that jokes about the types of spam that they receive; which ranges from:

• Viagra
• Oils
• Supplements
• Spiritual protection

The type of spam is usually based on whatever product that the spammers are trying to promote (And, some bloggers use those things as ideas for their humorous blog posts).

The Bottom Line

Spam is no joke (And, that is why WordPress utilizes anti-spam plugins like Akismet).

As a responsible blogger, the onus is on you to protect your blog and the visitors of your blog from spam comments.

In regards to combating spam, you have the additional options of manually approving comments or disabling comments.

And never forget that Google hates spam (If Google discovers spam on your blog, your blog’s ranking will drop).

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