Comment Spam when looked from slightly different perspective can be an indicator of your blog popularity! So I guess we all should rejoice when our SPAM queue filled with dozens of comments from spam-bots. Luckily that is easily killed by simply taking advantage of the options provided by Akismet. But what do you do with Manually Submitted Comment Spam?

In this post I want to share strategy I use for last 2.5 month and found to be very effective - just see the decline of SPAM in the image below:

Akismet stats for comment spam

So how do I manage to cut in a half amount of SPAM that even gets into my queue? read on to learn!

I guess as perhaps the main point I need to make here is that I subscribe and follow idea of You Comment - I Follow! Meaning that I give commenters on my blog a full DoFollow link after 3 approved comments. And since my main blog rank PR5 with many internal pages having PR4 or PR3 I think it proves beneficial to everyone. Who doesn’t like incoming one way link from well ranked page?

But it also creates an issue where spammers come as well as regular people which is why the 3 approved comments rule for DoFollow. Here is another way to represent the Yummy pie by Akismet (yeah I love stats!):

Akismet stats for accuracy

Only 13.94% of the comments are actual Good Comments!

So how do you fight the battle where you are running uphill?

I use several techniques on my blog that combined produce the effect of reducing number of comments that ever gets to my queue in half.

Don’t be caught without it! It is the most supported plugin for the spam fighting and since it is created by Matt - it is guaranteed to be continue supported for all future versions of WordPress. Stability and Piece Of Mind!

And lets not forget all the pretty stats they give us!

This one is ever changing because as I see some persistent Spammers - they get added to the list. If I see someone being an idiot on my blog more then 3 times - his domain or IP gets promptly added to this list. It is added in Settings->Discussion into Comments Blacklist section. Here is what I currently have - be warned - its not short: