We've got 479 people subscribed to ROCKFUSE,
who know that we don't dissapoint our readers!
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
One of my friends was complaining the other day about how the spam comments are eating up her do-follow blog alive. She was manually moderating all the comments because of this issue, and she was getting frustrated more and more, day by day, as her spam blocker didn’t seem to adopt to the rapidly evolving spam comments.
Are you suffering from the same issue? They say the best way to get over mounting frustration is to develop some kind of appreciation for the cause of the frustration itself. So, I can try and make you develop some kind of appreciation towards spam.
I heard some celebrity(can’t remember who), sometime ago on MTV, saying that she’s not worried about paparazzi following her around and would be more worried if they didn’t follow her around. Why? According to her, paparazzi are the single most influential external aspect that could affect a celebrity’s star-power. And thinking about that rather controversial statement, I don’t think she got it wrong.
Let’s look at the facts. A paparazzi can put a celebrity in the headlines and make him/her the center of attention whenever he/she wants. May it be negative or positive, the celebrity is in the headlines. No paparazzi, not much headlines. Not much headlines mean declining popularity. More popularity, more paparazzi.
And this is probably the same relationship that spam and blogs share.
If your blog is popular, you get more spam comments. In other words, it means that, when you get more spam comments, that’s an indication that your blog is very popular. Although spam is a huge issue, it can be easily eradicated by the use of a spam blocker such as Akismet for WordPress or manually moderating all your comments., much like celebrities hiring security personnel to keep the annoying paparazzi away from them.
Once in a while, security will beat down an innocent fan or two mistakenly; much like your spam blocker catching non-spam comments mistakenly. So keeping your eyes peeled both ways would not hurt.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying spam is a good thing. It’s just a yardstick to measure your blog’s popularity. Blogs are not dependent on spam, although spam, to a certain extent is dependent on blogs. Much like celebrities and paparazzi, although celebrities are somewhat dependent on paparazzi, unlike blogs.
This is what I told my friend. And that’s what inspired me to do this post. I don’t suffer that much from spam comments; but I certainly do appreciate their paparazzi-like behavior:) They make me feel that they want a piece off my blog’s popularity. Is it the same with you?
I get spam comments and I always thought of it as a annoyance, Now I’ll take that as my blogs popular
Oh yeah.. I guess you should..
I quite agree with your point. While it is not good having spam, but then it is a pointer that there is something valuable in your blog that lazy people want to share from. Instead of feeling frustrated, one can even occassionally study the recurring one and learn one or two lesson from which post is attracting them and why! Since most of the spams are generated by bots, it is probable that the post contain some keywords they are in love with. Thanks for sharing.
That’s exactly how I felt when I started getting spam comments. “Oh wow. Someone thinks my blog is important enough to spend some time spamming it.”
After the first couple hundred or so, that feeling wears off. I had to turn of comments off on one post because it was a spam magnet. I guess it ranked high for some popular spam topics.
Keeping updating to the latest version of askismet has helped. Now only a few get through even to the moderation phase.
Here’re a few things that worked really well for me and I have 6 blogs to go through everyday. SpamKarma which is a really good plugin for wordpress and that takes care about 85% of the spam comments. There’s also a good plugin at one of Shoemoney’s Blog he has a plugin that kills any comments from being posted if the post is older then 14 days which is where alot of the spammers are targeting. Hope this helps!
Thanks for agreeing with me. You’re absolutely right! If you mention ‘insurance’ in a post, then you’ll probably get a load of spam since that seems to be the most popular spam keyword.
lol.. Nice to finally see someone who actually thought like I do.. Thanks for sharing your experiences.
yeap. I’ve heard spam karma is a really good plugin. But I’m happy with my current plugin, Akismet. The only problem with Akismet is that it sometimes identifies some non-spam comments as spam. Id on’t know what triggered this, but your comment and Rachel’s comment were both in the spam folder
Off to see what shoe has. That definitely helped. Thanks a lot.
I too use WordPress and Akismet, and love how they work. I try to keep my spam folder empty so that I can more easily check for non spam comments that may be “misfiled”.
Precisely my strategy against spam too. Thanks for sharing.
Moderating your comments first is always a great way to get rid of spam. I find that using software and plug ins works great too. How do spam comments get to a bloganyway? Is there some kind of software that tracks down blogs and starts placing links? Does anyone know?
Liz, they are left by bots. Much like search engine bots, they go though blogs and submit comments with their links. You can find who spams you easily by checking a few links left in the comment.
Awww, I’m a little jelous of you getting spam now… ; )
Nope, I get very very few spam…
I have loads oif spam thankfully, and I have always been thankful of it because it meant I was getting through to the world, in whatever way.
Spam brought people too and I seemed to get more visitors to the same posts that got spammed. As you say, that was probably the keywords I had used for that post so we live and learn
I use a fantastic anti spammer called Peter’s Custom Anti-Spam.. That works great for me