7 Ways to Prevent Spam Comments on Your Blog - Spam comments, as the name suggests, are irrelevant, inappropriate, or promotional messages posted on various online platforms, most commonly on blogs, forums, and social media. These comments are usually generated by automated bots or individuals with malicious intent, and they can pose significant challenges for website owners and users alike.
Purpose of Spam Comments
Spam comments serve various purposes, and understanding these motives is essential in combating this digital nuisance. Here are the primary purposes behind spam comments:
- Self-Promotion: Many spam comments aim to promote the spammers' own websites, products, or services. These comments often contain links to the spammer's site, enticing users to click and potentially generate traffic or sales.
- Link Building: In the world of search engine optimization (SEO), backlinks play a crucial role. Spam comments may include links to the spammer's website, intending to boost their site's search engine ranking by creating multiple links across the web.
- Spreading Malware: Some spam comments are more malicious in nature. They may contain hidden malware or links to malicious websites, attempting to infect the user's device or steal sensitive information.
- Keyword Stuffing: Spammers might flood comment sections with keywords related to their niche or industry. This practice aims to manipulate search engine algorithms and improve their site's visibility for specific keywords.
- Deceptive Marketing: Spam comments can deceive users by appearing as genuine comments or endorsements. They might provide fake reviews or recommendations for products or services, ultimately benefiting the spammer.
- Data Harvesting: In some cases, spammers collect email addresses or personal information from unsuspecting users who engage with their spammy comments. This information can be exploited for various purposes, including phishing attacks.
- Disruptive Behavior: Lastly, some spammers engage in spamming purely for disruptive purposes. They may post irrelevant or offensive content, seeking to annoy or distract users and website owners.
Understanding these diverse purposes behind spam comments is crucial for website owners and users to recognize and effectively combat this online menace. Implementing preventive measures and utilizing spam detection tools can help maintain the integrity of online platforms and protect users from spam-related threats.
Tips to Prevent Spam Comments on Your Blog
So, in this post, I want to provide tips for preventing spam comments left in blog comments, specifically on the Blogger platform. Here are several ways to prevent spam comments from coming to your blog:
1. Enable Blogger Comment Moderation
The first tip to prevent spam comments is to enable comment moderation. Comment moderation is a system for filtering every comment that comes up. This way, you can choose which comments are appropriate to publish and which comments are appropriate to delete. On the Blogger platform, the way to enable comment moderation for spam comments is as follows:
- Log in to your Blogger account
- Click the "Settings" menu
- Scroll down to the “Comments” option.
- Click "Comment moderation"
- Select "Always"
- Click "Save".
2. Enable Registered User ID
The second tip for preventing spam comments is to limit each commenter to only registered ID users who can comment. The registered user ID feature does not allow anonymous users to leave comments. If you allow anonymous users to comment, it will increase the chances of spam comments coming in.
On the Blogger platform, enabling registered user IDs means only allowing Google account users to post comments. These tips don't provide an absolute solution, but they can at least prevent spam comments.
- Log in to your Blogger account
- Click the "Settings" menu
- Scroll down to the “Comments” option.
- Click “Who can comment?”
- Select "Users with Google Accounts"
- Click "Save".
3. Enable Captcha in Blog Comments
To prevent spam comments from spammers, you can also activate the captcha feature. The Captcha feature will appear on every comment sent to the blog owner. The way to activate the captcha code on the Blogger platform can be seen as follows:
- Log in to your Blogger account
- Click the "Settings" menu
- Scroll down to the “Comments” option.
- Click “Comment location”
- Select "Full Page"
- Check “Reader comment captcha”.
4. Set a Warning Message on Every Blog Comment
The next tip to prevent spam comments is to set a warning message in each blog comment column. This warning message can be created by providing a consequence statement that any form of spam comments will be removed.
Warning messages are not guaranteed to stop spammers from leaving spam comments, but they can be one of the prevention tips. By giving a warning message, you have the right to delete the comment because it has become a consequence.
- Log in to your Blogger account
- Click the "Settings" menu
- Scroll down to the “Comments” option.
- Click "Comment form message"
- Write a warning message as needed in the column provided
- Click "Save".
5. Delete Every Spam Comment on the Blog
These five tips can be said to be tips for preventing as well as a solution to dealing with every incoming spam comment. You need to delete all comments that are indicated as spam and in your opinion are inappropriate for publication. Unfortunately, this method can be said to be quite inconvenient because it has to be done manually and periodically.
6. Disable Column Comments on the Blog
To prevent and overcome the appearance of spam comments, you can disable the comments column. Usually this method is used on many large websites, such as game sites, manga sites and anime sites, these sites are very popular with visitors.
The reason why the comments column was deliberately disabled was because there were so many comments coming in due to high traffic. With so many comments coming in, of course website or blog owners will find it difficult to reply to them. So, the right option is to disable the comments column.
On the Blogger platform, the way to disable and not display the blog comments column is as follows:
- Log in to your Blogger account
- Click the "Settings" menu
- Scroll down to the “Comments” option.
- Click "Comment location".
- Select "Hide".
- Click "Save".
However, if you want to maintain active communication with visitors, I think this is the wrong option to do. You can still display and allow visitors to leave comments.
7. Automatically Turn Off Active Links on Blog Comments
The first to fourth tips above are indeed quite instrumental in preventing incoming spam comments. However, even though the four tips have been carried out, the spammers' efforts did not stop there.
One of the common methods used to trick it is by embedding active links in comments. If you are not careful, you might think that comments like this are normal comments, even though there is an active link hidden in it.
An automatic way to deal with the problem of comments containing active links is to apply some script code to turn off active links. The code in question functions to turn off and replace text embedded with an active link.
Conclusion
Spam comments cannot be taken lightly because they can be quite a serious problem. The reason is, a blog with a nest of spam comments can reduce the blog's reputation and traffic. For this reason, blog owners need to take precautions to overcome them. The seven tips described above are steps to prevent spam comments from appearing on the blog. Preventing spam comments can keep a blog healthy and fresh from the efforts of spammers.