Spam can be a big problem for new blogs. The last thing you want on your page is a bunch of spammy looking comments, links to places that sell fake Oakleys, or advice on enhancing your "performance" in the bed room. These types of comments hurt your credibility, and can even hinder your position in search engine rankings.

Here's a quick guide to identifying spam.



I'll grab a few comments from my spam queue for examples. Here are some real easy-to-identify spam comments:

Submitted on 2012/07/11 at 1:11 am
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Submitted on 2012/07/10 at 6:19 pm
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Submitted on 2012/07/10 at 5:10 am
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These are all very obvious spammers. Any one can pick these up with relative ease. The trouble lies within...



Again, some samples:

Submitted on 2012/07/10 at 7:40 am
I ran into this page by accident, amazingly, this is the amazing internet site

Submitted on 2012/07/08 at 1:58 pm
Great – I should definitely pronounce, impressed with your site. I had no trouble navigating through all the tabs and related information ended up being truly simple to do to access. I recently found what I hoped for before you know it at all. Reasonably unusual. Is likely to appreciate it for those who add forums or anything, website theme . a tones way for your customer to communicate. Excellent task.

Submitted on 2012/07/08 at 12:36 pm
Does your blog have a contact page? I’m having problems locating it but, I’d like to shoot you an e-mail. I’ve got some recommendations for your blog you might be interested in hearing. Either way, great website and I look forward to seeing it develop over time.

Submitted on 2012/07/07 at 8:17 pm
Wow, marvelous weblog layout! How long have you been running a blog for? you made running a blog glance easy. The overall look of your web site is fantastic, as smartly as the content!

At first glance, a lot of these comments look legitimate. However, they're all robotic spammers trying to gain traffic for the spam URLs they include with their comments.

All of the comments were left on articles I've written, but they all ignore the content of the article and comment on either the format of my site, "missing" pages, or ask completely irrelevant questions. If someone leaves you a comment that has nothing to do with the content of the article you've written, delete it immediately. If someone has a valid concern or a personal question, they'll email you and not leave a comment on a random article.



1. Comments left on privacy policy, terms of service, or contact pages are almost always spam. There is no reason any one should ever comment on one of these pages. Turn comments off here and save yourself the trouble.

2. Comments that say your blog doesn't open in a specific browser or on a mobile device are always spam. Delete them.

3. Comments on your layout, the theme you've chosen, or ones that ask how long you've been running a website are flattering, but they're spam. Delete them.

4. ALWAYS CHECK THE NAME AND THE URL. This is the most important thing to look for. Keep an eye out from a comment that only uses obvious keywords as a name. The same goes for the URL. If it looks likes a spammy URL that includes drug names, anything about loans, ends in .ru, or just looks fishy, delete the comment.

5. Install Akismet. It will automatically search through your comments for spam and mark them as such. Let it do all of the hard moderation work for you. Best of all, it's free.

Keep your sites clean!