Why Post Useless Blog Comments

[waynekolenchuk]

I notice that I'm getting a lot of spammy blog comments on a personal interest site. Why would someone go to all that trouble to get a nofollow link that will most likely not be approved?

[donford]

Bots more then likely.

I noticed this on a personal Wordpress site I had were the only thing ever done to the site was post 1 joke. A couple months later I start receiving notifications of replies, all of which were spam.

Anybody in their right mind would have seen the site was horrible and vanilla, and avoided it, bots on the other hand don't care.

If it starts becoming annoying you can always add a recaptcha verification.

[Malarowski]

Yup it's spambots like xrumer or w/e there is. Blackhatters tend to blast out like 10k links at once of which most won't get approved. It's quite annoying. Every WP blog I started  so far was getting buried in these. Thank god for anti-spam widgets.

[USHoleInOne]

I have a few blogs and bots seem to be leaving most of my comments. Leaving some comments do offer some nice juicy links. I do like to read through the comments making sure my human friends are engaged with my site.

[smokin_ace]

I would recommend you to install captcha. Of course a lot of bots know can pass through it. But at least you will reduce the qty of spam links.

[waynekolenchuk]

I thought about it but can't do it since I hate captchas myself

[jeffreytrull1]

If it's a WP site, there are several plugins to deal with this. Akismet, which comes installed with WP, is one of them.

I also use WPSpamFree and spam comments never get past it.

I've also seen this where you have to check a box to say you are human (which bots can't do) - http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/growmap-anti-spambot-plugin/

[waynekolenchuk]

Using Akismet myself. I'm just reluctant to use make it so hard to participate that people won't bother, if you know what I mean.

[jeffreytrull1]

I may be wrong, but I think these plugins are designed to detect bots and that they only implement their security features if they do think it's a bot.

I post comment on blogs that use Akismet all the time and I'm never prompted to fill out a captcha or do anything more than check one box, so I wouldn't worry about scaring people away.

[waynekolenchuk]

Yes, you're right. I didn't mean Akismet specifically. I think my comment was more generally aimed at treading the line between wanting to encourage participation and making it so tough that people won't.

[JustDucky]

Wayne : I share your concern for allowing users to post comments without hastles and approve every comment.  There ought to be a widget that compares the commenter's IP Address and cross references it against a list of known Bots or spammers.   If you find something off-list, please PM me.

[jeffreytrull1]

I'm pretty sure Akismet does blacklist people based on IP. I've heard several people complain that they got accidentally blacklisted and couldn't comment on any Akismet blogs.

See here for a little info: http://www.growmap.com/akismet-test/