Fight and Stop Comment Spam and Trackback Spam with Akismet
Comment, trackback and pingback are all unique features of a blog. However, trackback spam, pingback spam and especially comment spam are seriously threatening these features of the weblog with increasingly overwhelming amount of spam. However, stopping spam from appearing on your blog is easy with several plug-ins and tools such as Akismet.
What will happen if comments spam is left unchecked and undeleted? ProBlogger discussed about The Cost of Comment Spam which include any comment spam found on your blog might invite more spam, reputation of the blog with too much spam, dead links that may caused by spam as almost all comments and trackback spam will link back to their sites, and also the cost of spam that may affect search engine ranking and optimization.
Akismet can be used to help to stop comment spam, pingback spam and trackback spam from reaching your blog. When a new comment, trackback, or pingback is been posted to your blog, it is submitted to the Akismet web service which runs hundreds of tests on the comment to check if it’s a spam. If it is a spam, it will not be published, but will be saved in the database for 15 days for your verification or checking, just in case there is false positive (valid comment been labeled as spam). After 15 days, and spam will be automattically deleted by Akismet.
The best thing about Akismet is Akismet is the plugin of the type of forget after install. There is no maintenance, no upgrading, no hassle and without any blacklist or whitelist to maintain. You may only need to check if there is any false-positive by marking the valid comments as Not Spam, or false-negative by marking the spam as Spam in your blog. All these actions will help Akismet to fine tune and improve its spam catching and identification system in effectiveness.
There is more and more blog platforms and softwares that has implemented and adapted Akismet plug-in, including (of course) WordPress, Serendipity, Movable Type, PixelPost and with Akismet API to integrate to other softwares and scripts.
To use Akismet, you need a WordPress.com API Key. Akismet plugin for WordPress can be downloaded here, or check out Akismet blog for other implementation.
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You know it's a funny thing. Sometimes I can't tell the difference between all the spam my blog is getting and people who are leaving comments that just have a very lower functioning mental capacity. And it's true enough that there are some software programs out there to detect and fight these forms of spam. I just haven't found one that I like just yet, so temporarily I've disabled comments and trackbacks.
Akismet isn’t perfect, unfortunately. I should know. It even marks my comments as spam sometimes. There’s not really much you can do to Aksimet about this, but you should also be running Bad Behavior, to keep out the spammers before they even hit your site at all. (Which means there’s far less junk to view in the Akismet Spam page.)
Akismet nimmt gerne Kolleteralschäden in kauf. Es ist sehr einfach dort in die Blacklist zu kommen, auch wenn man kein Spamer ist. Ich finde das Akismet etwas verbesserungsfähig ist.
[...] If you’re using WordPress blog, you must be knowing that how serious the comments spam, trackbacks spam and pingbacks spam to your blog. The spam posting to your blog can take up a lot of system resources and precious storage space, beside annoying your website visitors. If you let comments spam or trackback spams getting out of control, it may affect your search engine ranking too, as most of your outgoing links point to spam or useless websites. Automattic Kismet is a plugin for WordPress blog that based on collaborative effort to filter out and prevent comment and trackback spam from successfully posted on your blog. Akismet WordPress Plugin has been upgraded to version 2.0. Akismet blog has details about the new features of Akismet 2.0: [...]