Akismetting Spam Is Good SEO

By jeffcTechnology

Matt Mullenweg recently published a great little article over on the official Akismet blog where he shares three reasons why eliminating spam is good SEO for your site. There are three things you definitely don’t want to encounter when running a blog and that is:

  1. Undermineing Your Sites SEO
  2. Attracting More Spammers
  3. Damaging Your Reputation

I wanted to also bring to light a new technique that these comment spammers are using which I discovered through Growmap.com. Apparently, spammers are taking bits and pieces of already published comments and re purposing them into their own comment. This means their content is generally on topic and makes it harder to distinguish than a random, off the wall comment. According to Growmap, Akismet flagged a few of these comments for them so it’s good to see the spam catcher on the ball but I’m willing to bet a few novice bloggers will be publishing these as legit comments. How well has Akismet worked on your blog?

8 thoughts on “Akismetting Spam Is Good SEO”

  3. Hi Jeff,

    Fortunately for me I usually remember what I wrote and since I reply to so many comments they were copying my own words. That does make them easier to recognize.

    I agree with Mr. I that Akismet is not stopping all spam. The drug spammers have figured out how to get past math and end up in the Akismet spam folder but at least their comments are short and easy to delete.

    I have recently started deleting more short comments like the one above this that says “Thank you for the information” because they may annoy my readers. While all real commentators are welcome you have to find a balance that works for you.

    I see the spammers have been here too. I haven’t tried Mr. I’s Defensio + Raven’s Anti Spam plugin combo yet because I don’t have the time to test right now to make sure it doesn’t eliminate real commentators too.

  7. I saw the same post over at Growmap, and it makes a lot of sense. Spam irritates me to no end because the spammers out there make it harder to build legit traffic. Thanks for recommending a good way to fight it.

  8. I stopped using Akismet about a month ago and now, I use Defensio + Raven’s Anti Spam plugin combo. They do perfect job for me. Additionally, I mostly visit the websites of commentators and spammers can be easily caught(no good reader will link to v-i-a-g-r-a sale site!

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