How to Get More Comments, Less Spam

I’ve done a couple of things to my blog, mostly “behind the scenes,” that I want to share with you.

My friend James Brausch has recently closed his comments on his blog. The primary and most important reason is to deal with the plethora of comment spam.

If you wanted to comment on any one of James’ posts, you’d now have to do it on your own blog by posting an article and linking back to his. Since his blog supports it, your link will automatically create a trackback on his post, which will be listed in the comments area.

But the wonderful byproduct of this is that it increases backlinks (i.e., link popularity) to his blog.

Some people have said this to be dishonest, which befuddles me. I get over 10,000 spam comments a week on this blog — thank goodness for the Akismet plugin! — so I understand James’ reasoning, especially in light of the fact that he values his time deeply.

(Something I, and you too, need to do.)

However, I love the comments area. It helps me to gather feedback, oftentimes when I’m looking for answers, ideas or insights that are helpful. But I also did a bit of research and discovered that 94% of the spam occurs on my older posts.

That’s why I’ve decided to do something similar.

Comment Timeout is a plugin that does a variety of comment moderation tasks. For example, it automatically rejects posts with too many links or spam-like coding within them.

But the most important feature is the fact that it can automatically close your comments after a specified period of time.

(I’ve set mine to 120 days. Posts older than 120 days are automatically closed. But it will keep posts with recent comments open, namely posts with comments made within the last 60 days.)

If I wish to get feedback, I’ll simply post a new blog entry. Trackbacks and pingbacks are always on, and will be listed in the comments area. So if you wish to comment on an older post, simply post a new article on your blog and link back to it.

For those who don’t have a blog, I will invite readers to create a thread on my forum and link to it, instead. Either that or I might use some of the many poll or survey tools out there, such as Wufoo.com or dPolls.com.

But to encourage comments on current posts, and as a result of applying the plugin above, I’ve decided to activate another plugin.

With the WordPress default package, links within comments apply a “no-follow” attribution, which was initially meant to curb spam. (Many spammers have exploited this in the past, for the sole purpose of gaining linkback popularity and pagerank when search engines index blogs.)

As we now know, this is not true. At least, not any longer.

Spam is almost always automated (spammers use software that “blasts” blog comments all over the ‘Net). And they don’t care. If spammers can get blog viewers and authors to visit their sites, gaining extra backlinks is but a mere bonus for their despicable efforts.

The problem is, just like email anti-spam filtering can kill innocent bystanders (such as legitimate, double opt-in marketers), no-follow penalizes my blog’s commentators in the process.

After twisting my virtual arm for a while, Andy Beard who has been evangelizing the benefits of do-follow for some time has finally convinced me.

But rather than being forced to tweak the code, my friend Denis de Bernardy, author of the Semiologic Package of plugins, which I highly recommend, offers a Do Follow plugin that reverses the default no-follow attribution.

So now, when you comment, your link will get the benefit of the backlink.

About the Author

Michel Fortin is a direct response copywriter, author, speaker, consultant, and CEO of The Success Doctor, Inc. Visit his blog and signup free to get tested conversion strategies and response-boosting tips by email, along with blog updates, news, and more! Go now to http://www.michelfortin.com.

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About this post Posted by Michel Fortin on February 13th, 2007. Filed in Articles, News, Resources, Tips. Tagged as andy beard, blog, blogging, comment, james brausch, link, plugin, semiologic, spam, trackback, wordpress. Follow responses through the RSS feed. Leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

28 Replies to “How to Get More Comments, Less Spam”

Trackbacks/Pingbacks

From IMRecap.com - Are You Current? » Blog Archive » More Comments - Less Spam

[...] Check out the tips here: Less Spam [...]

Source Website | February 13th, 2007
From To Follow Or Not To Follow | Rent A Blogger

[...] February 14, 2007To Follow Or Not To Follow Michel Fortin recently reactivated the old argument on whether to have the “nofollow” tag on the comments, which is the default setting with Wordpress blogs. He has switched to “dofollow”, which will pass the Google PageRank to the commentor’s website. This plugin comes built in with the Semiologic blogging system. [...]

Source Website | February 14th, 2007
From Don’t blog angry | Morganletters

[...] Michel Fortin commented that he was “befuddled” by my first comment here. So I’ve enjoyed my half-second of notoriety in the blogosphere. [...]

Source Website | February 15th, 2007
From Boost Exposure With These Tips And Plugins » Copywriting Blog By Copywriter Michel Fortin

[...] the beauty — and my reasoning — for using this plugin in a previous post about dumping the default nofollow attribute. It’s partly for increasing crawlability, especially internally, and partly for rewarding [...]

Source Website | March 31st, 2007
From SEO easy » Comment Spam

[...] Brausch turned off comments a few months ago. Michel Fortin has started using a plugin called Comment Timeoutthat is supposed to block comment spam. He also [...]

Source Website | May 1st, 2007
From Blog Comments, Spammers, Backlinks and NoFollow

[...] suddenly I also remembered Michel Fortins’ post How to Get More Comments, Less Spam, where he talks about the Comment Timeout plugin and after reading the features I added that one [...]

Source Website | May 16th, 2007

Comments

From Nate

I love what you wrote. This helps me alot as I am trying to figure out the best way to establish my blog. I want it to be my main home page with links to other pages within the site. Does anyone have anything to say about this. Also, you can check out my blog and recent trip to the Philippines by going to http://www.natebunger.typepad.com
The women are incredible, see for yourself.

Author's Website | February 13th, 2007
From Sid

Michel,

This is an excellent article. I’ve been wondering how to do some of the things you mentioned here, especially protecting from spam AND using the do follow.

I’ve heard from an SEO expert friend that you still get a least one backlink from a post to a blog, even with the no follow. My understanding is that Google will follow the link used in your name if you specify a website. Of course you lose the benefit of using anchor text in the body of the message, but it’s still a link.

Thanks again. I’m going to copy your article and post it on my web site (a Joomla site). Unfortunately, Joomla doesn’t yet support trackback, but I’ll still link to this post.

Sid

Author's Website | February 13th, 2007
From Nathan Anderson

Indeed!

Michel my friend! How very kind of you to think of your commentors.

The “nofollow” attribute is really a crutch that no one should think is capable of stopping the comment spam. After all, there are THREE major search engines out there, and all of them pay attention to backlinks. Yahoo and MSN IGNORE the nofollow tag (at least they did the last time I ran a stats analysis on linking). So those links still count for ranking in Yahoo and MSN.

Trackbacks and do-follow are good for everyone. Just make sure to keep an eye on your comments… as linking out to bad stuff can be bad for your rankings.

See you soon my friend!

-Nathan Anderson

PS… think I’ll zap ya a link from my blog too…

Author's Website | February 13th, 2007
From Michel Fortin

Hey Nate! Good points. (How’s Trish and the baby? Sylvie says “Hi!”)

Author's Website | February 13th, 2007
From Mike Sigers

Thanks for leading the way. I’m going to follow your lead and I appreciate the advice.

Another reason we run “several” of our 20 blogs with Semiologic … per your recommendation, which was spot on .. as usual.

Author's Website | February 13th, 2007
From Andrew Cavanagh

I disable the comments on my blog.

I’ve noticed when you allow comments you get all kinds of entries from pure whackos.

I’ve even seen comments from some mad Aussie copywriter!

“a Do Follow plugin that reverses the default no-follow standard attribution.”

Yeh I was gonna say that!!

Kindest regards,
Andrew Cavanagh

Author's Website | February 13th, 2007
From Nathan Anderson

Trish is great. The baby is getting positively fluffy… she’s very round! I’ll pass on the “hey” to the wife. Tell Sylvie to keep disparando la luz fantástica!

Author's Website | February 14th, 2007
From Bill Hely

What’s wrong with a good old fashioned Captcha tied in with the submission?

Captchas work very well. Admittedly some are unfriendly and very poorly implemented, but there are a lot of good ones, including Flash types.

Author's Website | February 14th, 2007
From Andy Beard

There are various approaches. I know sites that retain nofollow for comments, but provide followable links for trackback.

The majority of the spam on my blog is actually trackback spam, but spam karma actually catches that very easily.

I think the only spam that does get through on my blog is manual spam that has picked up a specific keyword, but doesn’t refer to the content of the post. I just spanked one that picked up on “the l-w of Att——-” on one of my posts. I just “spanked” it.

Author's Website | February 14th, 2007
From Keith Deveau

Hi Michel,
Since I’ve set up my blog, I’ve always used Askimet and do follow. This does help with linking.

Author's Website | February 14th, 2007
From Jeff

Thanks Michel - I am also suffering a massive deluge of comment spam on my Wordpress blog, and like you it is coming mostly on posts beyond 120-days.

Anything that will give control back to “legitimate” comment posters is a huge plus in my books.

Jeff

Author's Website | February 14th, 2007
From Jeff

By the way Michel - knowing you are the utlimate tester, have you had the chance to test James’ Glyphius copywriting software - in terms of understanding real impact on conversion rates?

Thanx,

Jeff

Author's Website | February 14th, 2007
From Siriol Jameson

Hello Michel,

Thank you for explaining all this. It is a great help to those of us who are
new to blogging. I am amazed by the number of plugins out
there. Of course, I can not even imagine getting 10,000 spam comments.

Keep up the great work.

Kind regards,
Siriol Jameson

Author's Website | February 14th, 2007
From Michel Fortin

I just found this is my logs, that means someone was using it with my site. And I went to look at it, it’s pretty cool stuff. It’s for SEO tools and tracking:

http://www.linkvendor.com/

Author's Website | February 14th, 2007
From Dave Zan

I haven’t had any comment spam for almost a year ever since I used a captcha-type plugin. But it entails tweaking code, something some people don’t really relish doing if they’re not familiar with how it works.

Thanks for the plug on the comment timeout plugin. Sounds nifty, so I’ll give it a try.

Author's Website | February 14th, 2007
From Michel Fortin

Here’s an interesting article that just came out:

marketingpilgrim.com/2007/02/time-to-say-goodbye-to-the-nofo…

Author's Website | February 14th, 2007
From Tom Chandler

Lucid and clear explanation. Still, are you going to start accumulating spurious, meaningless comments from other blogs? You know, much like this one?

TC

Author's Website | February 15th, 2007
From Michel Fortin

Tom, if you consider *your* comments as spurious and meaningless, then I certainly want more of them.

Author's Website | February 15th, 2007
From Caleb

I have my comment settings to await my approval first,but 10,000 spam comments is a bit much!

I’d like to know how one builds up to the point of recieving so many comments–preferrably GENUINE comments?

Author's Website | February 16th, 2007
From Tom Chandler

Thanks for the nice words, Michel.

I just wonder if the high ranking blogs (such as this) won’t suffer an epidemic of one-word “exactly!” style answers from those seeking nothing more than the link love.

I guess we’ll see. In any case, disabled nofollow on my blog. The future awaits.

Author's Website | February 16th, 2007
From Michel Fortin

Well, there are plugins to prevent that. One of them checks referring IPs (since spammers who use single words or short sentences, like “nice site!” are software with no referring IP). And it does a few more things, too, like trackbacks, etc.

And there’s another plugin (can’t remember where or the name) that forces the post to be a minimum number of characters. So you can set a comment to be, oh, at least 50 characters, or it will give the user an error message and say “post more content!” Etc.

Hmmm, I’ll try to find it.

Author's Website | February 16th, 2007
From Tom Chandler

The “minimum character” plugin sounds interesting. Akismet and Bad Behavior do a pretty good job on the spam front, so that aspect of the “nofollow” discussion simply hasn’t been a concern.

Author's Website | February 16th, 2007

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The only rule? Respect. Comments that contain meaningless content, abusive language, or personal attacks will be promptly deleted. Bullies, spammers, and faultfinders need not reply. Think twice before you post.