Are you kidding me Lye? People are looking for various ways to increase blog traffic and yet you want less traffic for your blog. I am not kidding my friend, i love to see a huge numbers of visitors in my blog but what i want is targeted traffic. People who like to learn about blogging related tips and not people who visited Findmyblogway spamming the blog and look for links.
Few days ago, John Mak published a guest post over here regarding why blog commenting is a powerful way to drive traffic. Who doesn’t like to see more traffic and comments in their blog? I don’t think there is anyone who will raise their hands for objection. That’s the reason why spammers love to use comment to get a backlink.
I have been deleted a lot of comments recently. I read a post mentioning spam comments are a form of flattery. It means your blog is worth spamming for links. It certainly doesn’t look good to me. I have to spend a huge amount of time deleting some comments that slip to the post.
Two Security Measures For Spam Comments
I have two plugins that help me to block all spam comments. First is the default Askimet which i think is very effective. The other one is the Growmap Anti Spambot Plugin aka G.A.S.P. I tend to see G.A.S.P as the first line of defence as you need to check the box to tell you are real human. This plugin is useful to block all automated commenting software. It should be the case as you need to physically check the box.
Sadly if your first defence is breached, it means you are dealing with human spammers. That come to the second line of defence which is the Askimet. I would say 80-90% of the spam comments will be block by Askimet but still there are a few who is able to slip to the post and lies there for my readers to see. Whenever i see them, i would not hesitate to delete them. They seems totally legal to some but it added no value to the post. Some examples are:
I purposely remove the Commentluv links as no way i am going to promote their site. The most common one i receive is this:
"Thanks for sharing this article. This is very helpful to me. I am going
to share this with all my friends"
Well, thanks but no thanks. This type of comment can be very general and i can see this can be use in any blogging niches. Three short sentences and you can leave it in all the blogs you have read. I am stricter nowadays. This type of comments will never see the light in my blog tunnel. I don’t want to waste my time entertaining or replying to these comment.
Less Traffic Can Be Better
The reason why i prefer less traffic now is because i want targeted traffic. I am no longer obsessed with numbers. If there is only 200 visitors visiting my blog every month. So be it. I will be very happy if they leave a comment behind, joining in the conversation and engage with me. They are my most valuable visitors and asset. You need to know once you start appreciating, you will be appreciated somehow.
If this post can reduce some human spammers, i am more than willing to let them know. Please try your luck somewhere else. I don’t mind having one less visitor in this site.
Love to hear your comments on this.
Do you receive a lot of human spam comments?
How do you deal with them? Leave them alone or write them a post just like me.
Please Help to Share This Post
I appreciate your kindness if you can share this post making use of the share buttons on top, below or at the side. Alternatively, any retweeting or stumble of the post is helpful to my blog growth. Thank you very much for doing so. I look forward to see you soon.
Cheers.
If you like this article, you may also like:
I hate akismet myself, it blocks as many legitimate comments as bad ones. for while it was blocking my comments on my own blog!
Now Gasp is all I use, and it works really well. I only get an occasional,l live spammer, and those are easy to delete.
Really, this kind of post won’t do anything for you I’m affraid, they won’t listen to you. they will keep spamming because some stupid Guru told them it was a good way to get backlinks, and as long as people allow unmoderated comments they still get some links from doing it and so they keep on going. (all commentors on my blog have to be approved with at least 5 comments before they go unmoderated on my blogs, and even after that I still watch them…)
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Twitter: Findmyblogway
Hi James,
Regarding Askimet blocking legitimate comments, it doesn’t happen to me often. It works pretty well for me and block a lot of spam comments, i will be keep it for sometime.
Probably this post doesn’t help but i like to put my stand here. Their comments will be deleted even it it escape to the post.
Thanks for the comments.
Lye
Twitter: Couponseasy
It’s always better to get less visitors but they’re interested and targeted visitors. Now we can see spam all around the internet you can’t deny it but you can use some measures to reduce it, like spam detection plug-ins.
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Hi Riya,
That’s the reason why i rather have a few visitors who really appreciate what i have done rather than hundreds who passed by without seriously taking a look.
Thanks for dropping by and appreciate your comments.
Lye
Hi Lye, I was having that issue so i decided to install the Disqus plugin, have u tried that? Seems to work fine for me and i dont get any of the spam i was getting before.
U definitively got me with that title
Cheers!
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Twitter: Findmyblogway
Hi Dennis,
Have not try Discus and won’t be installing as i think the default comment system works just fine for me.
Thanks for the information.
Lye
What the point of having a large traffic that is full of spam? They make you double your work since you have to delete those spammers again and again just to make your blog clean of it.I personally agree with you, about having a targeted topic. At least with these you can really have real person who leaves relevant comments and appreciate what your opinion with genuinely. As for anti spam I think it will only lessen the spamming visitor to your blog. I personally used GASP and it really doing great for me.
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Hi Tod,
James(from 1st comment) has pointed it out. We can’t get rid of them. Even if G.A.S.P is installed, they can slip through because we are dealing with humans. As long as they come, i will delete. It took few minutes. No problem for me.
Thanks for sharing your views.
Lye
Twitter: stevescott1
Lye,
Unfortunately spammers are going to going to be there forever. People create better ways of filtering spam and then these guys figure out better ways around it.
Such is life, I guess.
Askimet/GASP should work pretty good as a double whammy. I find askimat itself works fairly well alone…but you have to check the spam folder becuase some good people get sent to spam.
I actually have a trick for that. Just look through spam folder for avatars. Most “real” people have avatars and most spammers do not.
At least it makes a laborious process quicker.
I would be glad for less traffic if it was just the spammer going away!
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Thanks for the advise Steve, your actually right that spammers don’t usually have avatars, but still it will take you sometime to filter it manually. And I also find akismet is not that much reliable, since it does block valuable comments and could loss you a potential targeted reader. So what i basically do to get valuable traffic to my site, I try to build relationships with fellow bloggers, earn their trust and in contribution wE exchange links. I know that’s old school but in the long run both of you bloggers will be rewarded fairly.
COMMENTS are one of critical foundation of a website, and it can’t be taken for granted.
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Hi Steve,
Great to see you here mate. They will always come out something better. Guess we will never win their patience to spam.
Ironically some without avatars are people with a nice blog. I am very surprised why didn’t they get a avatar. It’s so easy to create one.
Thanks for dropping by and the comments Steve. Appreciate your support.
Lye
No blogger on this earth can tolerate spam. Ignore Akismet and go for GASP, it prevents spam comments to a large extent.
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Hi Naser,
I won’t be giving up Akismet. I noticed a lot of human spam comments slipping through. If there isn’t Akismet, it will be publish to the post.
Thanks for the comments.
Lye
The amount of comment spam that I receive on my blogs is ridiculous. It’s enough that I’ve contemplated disabling comments altogether. While it’s annoying, I think that ultimately it’s part of the work that goes into blogging and we just need to deal with it as best as we can.
Twitter: Findmyblogway
Hi Nick,
It’s worth it to disable comments because of spam as it deprives you a way of interaction. I don’t know how ridiculous your comment amount is, you need to judge on the pros and cons.
Thanks for sharing your situation.
Lye
Most likely we will see more spam before we see less. Good thing there are some anti-spam plugins out there, or we would all overwhelmed. I get a decent amount that almost seems to be country specific. Some of them have gravatars, and some do not. A lot of it they happen to enter for instance a u.s. or u.k. based website, but the originating ip says they are from a very distant country. So sometimes I have to think about many of the comments. I guess it also depends on whether the actual comment is a one liner or not. It is so annoying and can be time-consuming too.
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Hi Ray,
I also noticed that too. The comluv link they included is not exactly their site. So most likely they are employed to throw links all over the place in the blogosphere.
Thanks for visiting and commenting.
Lye
You know, Lye, the new premium version of CommentLuv will have GASP built into it. It’s already running on my site; come check it out.
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Hi Ana,
I have taken note on that. I understand it’s still in beta stage right? I will have a look on the premium plugin when it comes out.
Thanks for the suggestion and information. Much appreciated.
Lye
My blog also have some human spammers. I know that they’re paid to do it. I use akismet and conditional captcha to block spammers. And the biggest part is always read the comment first before i approve it.
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Hi Andy,
Exactly, we need to be the last line of defence. Any comment which we think is spam, we should delete it.
Thanks for the comments.
Lye
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Nice post,
I am totally agreed with your thoughts you have nice way to stop spammers. Beside that every blogger wants to see huge numbers of traffic on his blog post so i think he/he should have rights to accept the nice comments.
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Hi Sam,
G.A.S.P and Askimet do the job pretty well still there are human spammers who are employed to create backlinks.
I rather have real and genuine readers who appreciate what i have done.
Thanks for taking your time to comment.
Lye
Depending on where that traffic comes from, it can actually be targeted traffic. Actually, targeted traffic is natural traffic, everything else is forced. I can understand wanting to filter the weeds, but you should first think how you got in this situation in the first place, and fix it so it doesn’t happen again.
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I faced a lot of problems with spammers. Many genuine comments got lost in the middle of many random automatic comments. I finally had to remove the “Website” field. It has reduced traffic by a small margin. I can live with that
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I personally agree with you, about having a targeted topic. At least with these you can really have real person who leaves relevant comments and appreciate what your opinion with genuinely. As for anti spam I think it will only lessen the spamming visitor to your blog. Thank you.
Twitter: Findmyblogway
Hi Steven,
Spammers will always be there. I just want to get the message across.
Thanks for the comments.
Lye
Now I know what you wished to have lesser traffic than any other blogs. It’s absolutely hard to deal with spam comments but luckily for us to that there are useful plugins which we can actually used to prevent spam comments.
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I agree that less targeted traffic is better than a lot of UN-targeted traffic. It is always nice to read a post and understand it before making any comment because this ensures that you make genuine comments that contribute to the topic.
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And I also find akismet is not that much reliable, since it does block valuable comments and could loss you a potential targeted reader. I personally used GASP and it really doing great for me.
I agree that less targeted traffic is better than a lot of UN-targeted traffic. Ironically some without avatars are people with a nice blog. I understand it’s still in beta stage right? I personally agree with you, about having a targeted topic.