Comment Spam Detective Trick

Today’s “Quick Tip” should be pretty quick, but I think beneficial to many of you bloggers out there. I HATE Spammers and I am sure most of you out there do as well. One of our many goals is to try and keep spam out of our comments section of our blogs. To help with that goal… many (if not most) WordPress bloggers use a plugin called Akismet which is designed to filter out spam comments. For the most part it does an AMAZING job of catching a large percentage of the spam that comes through each day. But it is not 100% perfect, so you need to occasionally check  the spam folder and make sure no legitimate comments got put in there. I usually find at least a few comments every few days that mistakenly got pushed into the spam folder… so I just need to go in and approve the legitimate comments.

Not only does legitimate comments get wrongly put in the spam folder, but occasionally a few spam comments make it into the “Pending Approval” folder where you decide if you want to approve the comments or not.

So how do you tell if a comment is spam or if it is a legitimate comment? No one wants to lose a potential regular visitor to their blog and if someone writes a legitimate comment and you do not approve it… there is a good chance they may never come back.

Well there is no exact science to this, but some spam comments are much more obvious than others and they are usually very easy to spot. But what about the ones that aren’t so obvious?

Many times you will see comments like these:

“Great post. You really know what you are talking about!”

“Interesting concept. I have never thought about that before. Thanks for the great advice.”

“Hi, good post. I have been wondering about this issue, so thanks for writing. I’ll definitely be subscribing to your blog.”

Would you approve any of those comments above from someone who has never left a comment on your blog before? I definitely would not. I have one #1 RULE when it comes to approving someone to be able to comment on any of our blogs…

“I need to know that you read the post by something you say in your comments!”

Those 3 comments above are so generic that they could be used in almost any post on any subject, and you have no idea if they read the post at all.

Well I came up for the idea of this post tonight when I saw a Pending Comment in my WordPress admin. As soon as I read it, I knew it was SPAM, but it didn’t get filtered into my spam folder… and I wondered how many of you out there would approve the comment. I know there are some, as I will show you in a minute.

The image below is a copy of the comment that is in my Pending Approval folder. Here is what the comment says:

“Thanks! You made some good points there. I did a search on the topic and found most people will agree with your blog. It will greatly help me in my activities. Thanks though, I’m glad some people share good stuff like this! It will greatly help me in my activities this is one of the most extensive articles I’ve read on the subject of making money from blogging”

Let’s be honest… if we didn’t know any better, that actually sounds like a pretty good comment, wouldn’t you agree? I definitely think so. The one problem is… it is in direct violation of my #1 Rule, and I will not break that rule.

So just for fun, and to prove to YOU that it definitely was a SPAM comment I performed a simple test. I took the text from the comment below and highlighted it and copied it…

and then I pasted the text into Google’s search box and clicked the “Search” button. Below is an image of the results.

I found pages and pages of the exact same comments on dozens (if not hundreds) of blogs. That just shows you that not everyone knows what to look for when it comes to SPAM.

Hopefully this simple little test can help you too!

How to Get More Comments

Today’s weekly quick tip on Making Money Online Dot Com is not for everyone, but it could help you in the future. As you probably know I love comments and I also love to comment on other bogs. One thing I like to do to help build our online presence is to leave comments on the blogs of the people that comment on our site. I also like to visit the sites of the people who comment on their blogs as well and leave comments. The reason is simple… you already know these people leave comments on blogs, so there is a good chance if you leave a comment on their site, they might return the favor and comment on yours. Even though this is a “Great Tip”, this is not the tip of the week.

One thing I have noticed when following commentors (which is not a real word, but should be) to their sites is that some people use the URL to their main site versus their blog and wonder why they are not getting more comments. A good example of this was my buddy Brian Bell. He was leaving lots of great comments on our site and I wanted to return the favor, so when I would click on his URL… it would take me to his BlogEngage site, which at the time I had NO IDEA what it was, so I would usually just leave.

Then one day Brian left a comment on our site on the post “Hey Bloggers, Scratch Our Blog and We’ll Scratch Yours” saying that he should try that method, as he wasn’t getting any comments on his blog. So I suggested that he use his Blog URL in the comment box instead of BlogEngage… which he started doing and is still doing today.

After he made that SIMPLE change I personally started visiting and commenting on his site all the time. Not only because he was commenting on our site, but because SEOMkt.com is a GREAT BLOG and has lots of great information on getting more high quality traffic to your site. Also from reading his blog I actually learned what his BlogEngage site is actually about and I started submitting my blog posts regularly to it. I even added his BlogEngage Voting widget to our blog so readers can actually vote for our posts right on our site. It is an awesome tool and I suggest everyone gets it for their blog.

Okay… so we have learned that making that simple change (using his blog address versus using his main website address) that he has at least received a lot more comments from me personally. But did it make any difference to his overall commenting results? Well I decided to ask him 24 days later…

As you can see the answer is an overwhelming success! Now I am not saying everyone is going to experience these kinds of results, as everyone’s business models are set-up differently. I do think though… that there is a much better chance of getting more comments on your blog if you send people directly to your blog versus to another section of your site (or a completely other site like Brian was doing) and making the visitor have to search for your blog.

2 Simple Fixes that Could Increase Comments on Your Blog

Lately I have been doing lots of “Blog Surfing” to not only see what people are writing about, but also to comment on blogs to get our name (Making Money Online Dot Com) out there. Now I am definitely not one of those people that just say something like, “Great Post! Keep up the good work!” I like to read each post and if I have something I think I can contribute… I try and leave a useful comment. Sometimes they are quite lengthy and sometimes they could be fairly short, but I always try to add to the conversation.

While visiting all these blogs lately there are a couple of things that I have come across that has kept me from leaving comments on posts where I usually would. Here are the 2 things that keep me from sometimes leaving comments:

1) Comment boxes that don’t auto-fill. This one probably bugs me most of all. The first time you go to a blog and leave a comment you usually have to leave at least your name and email address. Most sites also let you add your web address and many nowadays let you add additional information like your Twitter ID and more. Most sites require that your first comment be manually approved by the blog owner before it appears to the public, which totally makes sense. Another thing that is common in most blogs is once you leave your first comment… your information is stored on that site so when you go to write another comment you don’t have to fill out your personal information again. There are some sites that I have found where each time you leave a post you have to fill in that information again.  I absolutely hate having to do that each time I comment on the same site and I am sure there are many others that feel the same way.  So if your site does not have that “Auto Fill” feature I think you should fix it!

2) Captcha in the comments section. This one really bugs as well. I understand that nobody wants to get a bunch of spam posts on their site (me especially), but that is what the plugin Akismet (which comes with every WP blog) is for… right? It catches almost all the spam comments we get on our sites. It’s true, we have to check the spam folder each week to make sure it didn’t grab some legitimate comments, but for the most part it works great. I hate it when I leave a comment on a blog and then I come across one of those Captcha codes that are really hard to read. Then I have to refresh it until I can read it clearly or it takes me several attempts until I type it in right. It makes me want to just leave the site and abandon my comment. Now I can definitely understand having Captcha on your contact form, as you really don’t expect too many contact emails each day. But having it in your blog comment section is really not needed in my opinion. Why even risk lose visitors to your site?

Of course these are just my personal feelings. Maybe I am the only person this bugs. All I know is having those 2 things on your site might be costing you some comments from me.

How you guys? What do you think about my opinions… do you agree? Please leave your comments below.