If you’ve been on the internet for any amount of time you’re probably familiar with “spam” in your email inbox. For the uninitiated, spam is an unsolicited commercial message, or something you didn’t ask for trying to sell you something.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So what does this have to do with blogs? Well just like you can get spam messages in your inbox, people will leave spam comments on your blog. However unlike email spam where the target is you, comment spam generally targets search engines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Why on earth would a spammer use your blog to target a search engine? Let’s start from the beginning. Several years ago, Google pioneered a search technique called PageRank<\/a>. Basically, in addition to looking at the content of the page being indexed, Google also takes into account who links to the page and what those links say. This technology meant Google was very good at returning relevant results, making it the most popular search engine today. Because their ranking system relies so heavily on PageRank, people sometimes game the system using a technique called “Google Bombing.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n A google bomb<\/a> is when a large number of different websites link to a page with the same link text to influence the ranking of that page for a search term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This brings us back to the spammers. A spammer might have a site that sells “mydrug” and wants to be at the top of search results for “mydrug” on Google. They leave comments on hundreds or thousands of weblogs linking to their site with the link text “mydrug.” They don’t really care if you see their google bomb text\u2014in fact they’d rather you didn’t in case you decide to delete it! They just want the search engine to see it when they index your page.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Comment Moderation<\/a>\u00a0is very effective in addressing unwanted comments. The best defense against comment spam is just watching your comments. Under\u00a0 Spammers find new and creative ways to be sneaky all the time. You may notice that posters leave comments on your site which look perfectly normal except for the commenter’s name or URL, which likely references a product or a site selling something.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It’s good practice to visit the URLs of people who leave comments on your blog to determine whether the poster is sincere or spammy. If you see one that looks suspicious, you can choose to delete the comment entirely or leave the comment and just delete the URL.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Another way of stealth is to use a div-tag around a bundle of hundreds of links. This becomes more and more common because many software displays directly the given HTML tags and not the HTML code. To avoid this the software must “strip-out”, other word: filter the HTML tags while inserting the comment into the database.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Apart from\u00a0because they can<\/em>, the need to raise page ranking in search engines gives rise to the need to create a lot of links to a web page so the search engine thinks that page is important.<\/p>\n<\/details>\n\n\n\n Plugins for handling comment spam<\/a>\u00a0can be found in the\u00a0Official WordPress Plugin Directory<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/details>\n\n\n\n This is not an easy answer. Spammers use different tactics, and each plugin will use different tactics in response. There is no plugin that will keep you spam-free forever. Comment spammers can download the plugins, see how they work, and figure out a way around them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Check plugin authors’ sites for updates. WordPress makes it easy to find updates via the\u00a0Plugins screen<\/a>\u00a0and the link to the plugin author’s website.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Comment spam technology is changing fast on both sides, so keep updated with the latest news on comment spam techniques and WordPress Plugin options.<\/p>\n<\/details>\n\n\n\n Visit the plugin author’s site to see if they have already offered a solution, and if they offer support directly. If not,\u00a0search the forums first<\/strong>\u00a0before posting as the answer may be there. If there is no answer, then post a support request on that plugin’s support forum.<\/p>\n<\/details>\n\n\n\n Comments that are marked as\u00a0[spam]\u00a0will be held in your database to educate “intelligent” anti-spam plugins, such as\u00a0Akismet<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/details>\n\n\n\n If you do not have comment spam plugins or the\u00a0latest version of WordPress<\/a>\u00a0installed, this may happen.\u00a0Upgrade<\/a>\u00a0or install one of the comment spam plugins and manually delete the comment spam from your\u00a0Manage\u00a0>\u00a0Comments<\/a>\u00a0panel.<\/p>\n<\/details>\n\n\n\n o to the\u00a0Options\u00a0>\u00a0Discussion<\/a>\u00a0panel and make sure that\u00a0An administrator must approve the comment (regardless of any matches below)<\/strong>\u00a0is unchecked. With that option selected, all comments are sent to the moderation queue to await approval. Make sure that\u00a0Hold a comment in the queue if it contains more than x links<\/strong>\u00a0is not blank and contains a number higher than zero. If this value is blank or zero, all comments containing links will be moderated. If the option mentioned above is unchecked, the link moderation value is higher than zero, and you still have this problem, your\u00a0Spam Words\u00a0list probably has blank lines, punctuation marks, or single letters between the information in the list. There should be spaces between the listed items or each item must be on its own line. If you have done this, then upgrade the comment spam plugins you have installed. If this continues to be a problem, deactivate the comment spam plugins one by one to determine the culprit and contact the plugin author for help.<\/p>\n<\/details>\n\n\n\n If you have unchecked\u00a0Allow people to post comments on the article<\/strong>\u00a0on the\u00a0Options\u00a0>\u00a0Discussion<\/a>\u00a0panel, then you have only disabled comments on\u00a0future posts<\/em>. To completely disable comments, you will have to edit each past post and uncheck\u00a0Allow Comments<\/strong>. Alternatively, you could delete the\u00a0wp-comments-post.php\u00a0file, or run this MySQL query, from the command line on a shell account, or using\u00a0phpMyAdmin<\/a>:\u00a0 If you have unchecked\u00a0Allow link notifications from other Weblogs (pingbacks and trackbacks.)<\/strong>\u00a0on the\u00a0Options\u00a0>\u00a0Discussion\u00a0panel, then you have only disabled trackbacks on\u00a0future posts<\/em>. To completely disable trackbacks, you will have to edit each past post and uncheck\u00a0Allow Pings<\/strong>\u00a0from the Write Post SubPanel. Alternatively, you could just simply delete the\u00a0wp-trackback.php\u00a0file, or run this MySQL query, from the command line on a shell account, or using PHPMyAdmin:\u00a0 If you’ve been on the internet for any amount of time you’re probably familiar with “spam” in your email inbox. For the uninitiated, spam is an unsolicited commercial message, or something you didn’t ask for trying to sell you something. So what does this have to do with blogs? Well just like you can get […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","category":[86,78],"class_list":["post-11263506","helphub_article","type-helphub_article","status-publish","hentry","category-publishing","category-support-guides"],"revision_note":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.org\/documentation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/articles\/11263506","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.org\/documentation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/articles"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.org\/documentation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/helphub_article"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.org\/documentation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11263506"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.org\/documentation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/articles\/11263506\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16358756,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.org\/documentation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/articles\/11263506\/revisions\/16358756"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.org\/documentation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11263506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.org\/documentation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/category?post=11263506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Fighting Comment Spam<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Manage \u2192<\/span> Comments<\/code>\u00a0it shows a listing of the latest comments on any post and you can quickly scan the comment activity on your site. The faster you respond to comment spam on your site, the less likely the spammers will return.<\/p>\n\n\n\nStealth Spam<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
FAQ<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Why are they spamming me?<\/summary>\n
Where can I find WordPress anti-spam plugins?<\/summary>\n
Which is the best plugin?<\/summary>\n
I have a problem with a plugin<\/summary>\n
What happens to comments that are marked as “Spam”?<\/summary>\n
I have spam appear as soon as I post!<\/summary>\n
Why is every comment going into the moderation queue?<\/summary>\n
I have disabled comments, but comments continue to be posted<\/summary>\n
UPDATE wp_posts SET comment_status=\"closed\";<\/code><\/p>\n<\/details>\n\n\n\nI have disabled trackbacks, but trackbacks continue to be posted<\/summary>\n
UPDATE wp_posts SET ping_status=\"closed\";<\/code><\/p>\n<\/details>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"