What Is Your Definition Of Comment Spam?

Comment Spam - it is one of the worse things to ever be created. Most blogs experience some comment spam on at least a weekly basis. There are so many different forms it may take to bypass any filters you may have installed, it is hard to know which comments are spam and which are not. So, what does it look like?

When most of us think of spam we think of “free Viagra” e-mails. Comment spam is just like that, but it also takes on many other forms. It can be something as simple as a free Viagra ad, or it can be much more complex, like a user who is kind of giving their opinion on a post, but not really. I separate comment spam into three categories: “Obvious”, “Pitiful”, and “Cloaking.”

Obvious

Obvious spam is exactly what it sounds like - it is obvious. This is the category where “free viagra” and “free mineral water” spamvertisements (spam advertisements) get placed. Obvious spam is almost always posted by a robot. In the content they will generally post around 8 or so links to various websites in an attempt to suck page rank juice out of you. Luckily most search engines will not give them more page rank if your blogging platform automatically adds “rel=nofollow” to any links that are posted (and many do).

This type of spam can easily be defeated with simple filters.

Pitiful

Pitiful spam is usually done by robots, but many times it is done by good-ol’-fashioned humans. In this form of spam they may post something like “Great post, Thanks!” but the URL they enter as their web site may link to an inappropriate site. This form of spam is not nearly as effective as obvious spam, but it can still get them a few extra hits. The content of pitiful spam comments may also contain links to “free Viagra” and “free Prescriptions!”, just like obvious spam.

This form is usually picked up by filters, but occasionally one might make it through.

Cloaking

Last but not least is cloaking spam. This form is hard to spot, and most of the time it makes it through any spam filters you may have in place. Generally cloaking spam is posted by humans, so CAPTCHAs will not help.

In cloaking spam a person may post a regular comment like “Yeah, I used this on my site and it worked great, thanks man!”, but for their URL they may enter a link to an adult site, for instance. This is why it is important to have any comment posted on your site to be e-mailed to you (most blogging platforms have this feature), or put a “report comment” link near the comments. At the very least, you should make it easy to contact you, just in case someone is posting bad material. Generally if visitors (especially regular readers) see something like that pop up, they will tell you.

Some extra notes

It isn’t uncommon for spam to make its way onto your blog even if you have extra security measures in place, spam filters are not flawless.

Also, most blogging platforms use the default way of submitting comment data by using the “Post” method. Spam robots generally ignore any forms you have in place and they submit data to your blog using Post. Some newer platforms, however, make use of AJAX in a smart way. Since many of these auto-posting bots have Javascript disabled, they cannot run the required AJAX code that submits your form data to your server. Plus AJAX adds a nice finishing touch to any blog.

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