How to identify spam comments?
We launched a new website for a personal trainer a couple of months prior. She is inspirational and great to educate her clientele about nutrition, exercises, and sharing recipes. After a couple of blog posts were published she wanted to see if she could communicate with the readers via comments. I could truly understand that she wanted to have some feedback from the community and help others in case they have questions.
I normally don’t allow comments on blogs, because 95% is spam and it just takes too much time to manage.
But I wanted to prove my point so we let readers leave comments for 2 months.
Over 2 month period, 45 comments were left. It would be a success if these were genuine and real.
But none of them was.
Very disappointing, right?
What is spam comments and how to identify them
But why people leave spam comments
The whole reason why spammers leave spam comments on blogs is to link back to their own websites, so they can rank higher in the search results and get more traffic. Basically, people that are shamelessly and shadily promoting their websites.
Which one is real and which one is spam?
With our society being as reliant on technology as it is, encountering spam comments is increasingly inevitable. And if your website gains traction and becomes popular, the chances of receiving spam comments increases, too. But the good news is that you can avoid any spam interference in your business by learning:
- Different types of WordPress comments
- Why spam comments are bad
- How to identify spam comments
- How to reduce the number of spam comments you receive
Let’s break these down to give you a better idea of how to avoid scams, limit spam comments and messages, and why these things are important.
Comments vs. Pings on WordPress
If you use WordPress to run your business’s website or blog, you’ll want to know the difference between these two important communication types. Pings are further broken down into pinbacks and trackbacks. The primary difference between the two is that pingbacks are automatic and trackbacks are manual.
Pingbacks are the automatically generated comments that appear when other bloggers link to one of your posts, or you link from one of your posts to another on your website. Trackbacks are generated by the blogger as a way to let you know that they linked to your content. These two types of pings are easy to identify and separate from comments because they contain the following:
- The title of the post that was linked to
- The link to that post
- An excerpt from the blog post that the ping came from
Alternatively, a comment will contain:
- The name of the person who wrote it
- Their email address
- A website URL if they enter one
- Their IP address
- Their comment
Why Spam Comments are Bad
Because spam comments are annoying and often time-consuming to go through and remove, many people end up just leaving them up. This can be dangerous. Spending a little bit of time monitoring spam comments can help save you a lot of trouble later. For one thing, Google might notice if your website starts racking up bad links and spam comments.
Google is concerned with the safety and security of the websites it hosts. If you let your website fill up with bad links and overflow with bot and spam comments, this essentially tells Google and your customers or readers that you’re just not that concerned with the quality of content on your website. While you weren’t the one to post them, a lack of moderation can come across as lazy or indifferent.
Think of it this way: you’re interested in purchasing a home, and today you’re visiting two identical homes that offer the same things. They’re the same size, the same number of rooms and bathrooms, same setup, same price, and they’re right next to each other, so the location is the same, too. But when you pull up, one lawn is scattered with overturned garbage cans, and trash is spilling out across the grass.
The current owners didn’t make the mess, so they decided to leave it there. When you turn and see that the other home’s lawn is pristine, that’s likely to be the one you’ll choose. First impressions are important. A website riddled with spam (virtual trash, for the sake of this example) can affect the level of trust you receive from your customers or readers and the authority you have in your market.
How to Identify them
Generally, anything in the online world that looks suspicious is something that you should approach cautiously. Here are a few foolproof ways to identify spam comments:
- The author’s name looks fake
- The email address doesn’t look legitimate (usually because it’s a random collection of letters and numbers)
- The URL is suspicious
- Their comments are generic, apply to any post or topic, or they’re unrelated to your business
Fake Names
If a comment meets any of these three criteria, it’s probably spam. Now, it can be difficult to tell if a person’s name looks real or fake because some are just more common than others. What you’re really looking for with the author’s name is the use of keywords instead of a real name like John or Kate. Using keywords like “personal training tips” as a name instead of a real name is a sure sign of a spam comment.
Suspicious emails
Suspicious email addresses are one of the most common indicators of spam messages. For example, if you receive an email with a subject line that tells you that your Apple account has been locked, but the email address is seemingly strange or contains random characters like this: [email protected], this is clearly not from a trustworthy source. You should also make sure that the email address aligns with the name that they used. If the name is Mary, but the email address says Nancy, that’s a red flag. If it’s close and you’re unsure, you can always use this website to confirm if an email really exists or not.
Strange website URLs
Another indicator is dodgy website URLs. Does their website look real, active, and interactive? Or does it contain strange links, zero comments, and seemingly random topics that don’t align with their comment or email address? If their website reads like clickbait, it probably is. If it looks like a spam shopping site, it’s mostly blank, or it’s otherwise suspicious, it’s questionable, and it’s acceptable to mark it as spam and move on. When in doubt, don’t respond to comments, give out personal information, open any attachments, or click on any links until you have comfortably confirmed their authenticity.
And it’s also important not to automatically click on every URL you’re sent to confirm if it’s a legitimate website. This can infect your computer with malware and lead to various other problems. The better way to investigate URLs is to install the WordPress filter, Askimet. Some versions come with it built-in already. Askimet allows you to hover over a URL and see a preview of the website. This way, you don’t always have to click on it to confirm its validity.
Generic comments
Spam comments are generally automatic ones made by bots. For this reason, it’s nearly impossible for them to be specific. Generic comments like “great read! Wow, thanks!” are usually spam. Comments that are relevant to the topic that you posted on, reference a specific piece of the article, or quote something from the article are more likely to be real and trustworthy. You’ll also want to look out for comments riddled with grammatical errors, improper use of language, and misspellings of common words. These are other signs that your generic comment is a spam comment.
How to Reduce Spam Comments
Reducing the number of spam comments that you receive comes down to two things: trusting your instincts and installing anti-spam plugins. I can help you with both of these tasks. Askimet and other anti-spam plugins do a great job filtering spam messages out as they come in. But that doesn’t mean that some won’t get through the filter on occasion. Even after we install the filters, you’ll still want to monitor the site (or allow me to do so for you with my quality step-by-step support for your website) and stay on top of it. Schedule a free 20-minute phone call so we can go over your options for creating your website or making your existing website better.
