5 ways to identify blog spam (as a business owner)

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Adys Lynn Dill

We recently had a client interact with us about the comments on their blog. They mentioned that the comments wereabout the website and how it was showing up on Yahoo News, and my immediate question was “Is it spam?”. Thewebsite owner said it did not look like spam, and I went to check it out.

After logging into the site, I noticed immediately that it WAS spam, and it was blatantly obvious. But the more I thoughtabout it, the more I realized that spammers are good. I mean, they are REALLY good. So how would an averagebusiness owner know if a comment was spam or not? Well, they wouldn’t is most likely the common answer. In thispost we will outline some simple tips to help you as a business owner identify spam.

Some Basic Concepts of Spam

First off, most spam comes from automated systems. While those systems can and often are rather intelligent, theyare still machines, and they still post like machines. As a webmaster, I have my eyes on over 40 blogs, and I see theexact same comments appear on multiple blogs- and they all have one thing in common. That is the fact that theyhave nothing to do with the blog or the blog topic. Any REAL comment is going to be from a reader after they readyour post- it is not going to be about your SEO, web traffic, Obama, or the weather in Germany. If you look at acomment and it is about ANYTHING not related to your blog, it is spam.

The second easy identifying concept is that true blog posts come from people- Peter, John, or Mary. They do notcome from crazy names, sentences, or websites. See, people post comments as spam for one reason- to get links totheir website or product or to sell something. If the comment has a link to another site and it is not a normal blog orwebsite, it is probably spam.

Identifier 1: Comment is about SEO, Traffic, Social Media, or Rank

People LOVE to spam this stuff- I see it all the time. Normal or real users might post about it, but they will normally doso in a way that it is still relevant to your blog. For a user to jump in and tell you that you could be getting an extra 300visits per day if you visit a website- well, that is spam.

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Identifier 2: The User Name is a Product OR Service

Normal bloggers and commenters have names, and they are not “Louis Vuitton handbags” or “top web analytics”. Nowbloggers will often choose handles or nicknames, so you will have to use your best judgment- but normally a productname will be spam.

Identifier 3: Email Address of User is Spammy

Normal people have normal emails addresses, such as , gmail.com, yaloo.com, etc. An email withstrange characters in it or pure gibberish, then it is probably spam- such as

Identifier 4: The Comment Contains “Spam” words

There are certain words you do not want on your website. They are Viagra, Casino, Slots, Sex, Valtrex, or any othermedication. If you see any of these words, they are huge red flags.

Identifier 5: The System Tells You Its Spam

WordPress and most CMS platforms automatically categorize comments as spam or not spam. They normally do apretty good job- if the system is telling you its spam… well it is most likely spam.


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How to Stop It

Good news is that there are tons of ways to stop comment spam. Some of the more aggressive ways are to turn offcomments, or only allow comments for registered and logged in users. A better and also easy way is to use a spamplugin. One of the major ones for WordPress is Akismet. To sign up for a personal account is free, and after you signup for an account you get an API key. Enter that key into the plugin on your site, and Akismet will begin to protect yourblog from spam.

Here is a quick guide on using Akismet:

Install the plugin in your WordPress admin under Plugins. Activate the plugin, and then click Activate your AkismetAccount up top.

Next, click Get Api Key.

Follow the prompts on and create and verify your account. Then will present you withan SPI key. Copy it and head back to your blog, where you can enter the API key into the plugin interface.


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And here comes the trick. On the next screen, select “Silently discard the worst and most pervasive spam so I neversee it.” This might be too aggressive for a web admin, but for an average user this is just fine.

This will successfully reduce and hide spam from your view, and wading through all of the spam comments theaverage blog gets will become much easier. Happy Blogging Indeed!


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SEO Consultant at is a mother of one and really enjoys spending time with her family. Besides taking

care of her family, she spends her time doing graphic design as a part of the family business. The DillDesign is a web design company in Virginia. Lynn also participates heavily with Virginia SEO, and ishead of social media marketing, and a key member of the content generation team. Lynn enjoys social media somuch that she is on it more than a normal person should be some days.

Latest posts by Adys Lynn Dill ( )

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5 ways to identify blog spam (as a business owner)

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