Comment spam in WordPress is a headache and a waste of time .
At SidelinePlay, I get over 300 comments a day, 90% of which are spam.
Recently, I took this matter personally and decided to remove these spam messages before they actually appear in my comment moderation queue.
This post is the result of my own painful struggle with WordPress comment spam.
Comment spam is a harsh reality, and every fledgling, enthusiastic, and unprepared blogger will be shocked by the amount of comment spam they receive.
WordPress can help, but you need to be prepared that more than 99% of the comments you receive will be spam .
If you don’t address this issue, spam can completely take over your website database and cause you to be permanently banned from search engine indexes.
The first thing on your to-do list should be to get your webmaster (backend) ready to help you deal with such a large volume of nonsense. This is where WordPress bloggers come in handy.
Despite the sheer volume of spam, there are quite a few powerful solutions, either free or for very little money, that can help block and/or manage the influx of spam on your website.
But first, let’s take a look at the WordPress settings that will help you control spam comments to a great extent.
How to Stop WordPress Comment Spam: WordPress Discussion Settings
WordPress gives you full control over comment moderation.
The spam filters will kick in later, but first, it’s your job to make sure no comments are posted without review .
Comments on blogs have many values, such as:
- Increase the value of the article: Good reviews will add more points and improve the overall value of the blog article.
- Trust Factor: If your blog posts receive a lot of genuine and meaningful comments, this helps improve the trust factor of your blog.
- Search Engine Rankings : I have done tests in the past where I deleted all comments on old posts and it significantly reduced the ranking of the posts. Meaningful comments increase keyword density and diversity, which helps improve your blog’s rankings.
Likewise, if you don’t moderate your blog comments and spam comments are appearing on your blog, your rankings are likely to drop and your blog may be affected by a Google Penguin penalty.
Even if you have made the mistake of approving spam comments in the past, you should edit old posts and remove all such comments from your blog. This also includes comments that do not add any value to your post, such as "nice post" "good post".
- Please read: How bloggers should manage blog comments
We will first look at the WordPress discussion settings that you should configure for your WordPress blog to prevent WordPress comment spam and improve WordPress’ default comment settings.
To start using it, log in to your WordPress dashboard and click Settings > Discussion and configure it as described below.
Please read the details so you understand what you are doing:
1. Default article settings:
This is the first section of the WordPress Discussion Settings, and here you should uncheck the second option, which is “ Allow link notifications (pingbacks and trackbacks) from other blogs ”. Since I don’t think trackbacks and pingbacks are very useful for adding value, I left this option unchecked. If you have accidentally approved a trackback in the past, you can read this guide to remove all previously approved trackbacks .
2. Other comment settings:
This is another simple setting that you can simply copy as shown below. If you run a membership site or a site that only wants registered users to comment on your blog, you should check the second option “Users must be registered and logged in to comment.”
3. Before the comments appear:
This is the most important setting to ensure that no comments are posted without moderation.
This is to ensure that you have full control over comments on your blog and only manually approved comments are published . I have the WordPress app for iOS on my iPhone, which is very helpful for me to continue moderating comments when I am away from my laptop.
If you are one of those bloggers who likes to moderate comments instantly, I recommend you to install the WordPress App (available for iOS and Android) on your smartphone and moderate comments on the go.
4. Comment Moderation and Blacklisting:
This section is very useful to resolve spam comments on your WordPress blog. So far, from all the above settings, we have set that unmoderated comments should not be published.
If you have selected the option that comments will be automatically approved if the commenter has previously approved the comment, you can further run spam checks via the Comment Moderation and Blacklist settings.
With the comment moderation settings, you can put a comment on hold if it contains more than "X" hyperlinks. Where X can be any number. In my case, I set X to 1.
Likewise, you can also keep comments based on word matching. I don't explicitly use this feature because it would cause many genuine comments to fall into spam or moderation queues.
You can find the updated WordPress comment blacklist list here .
With the above settings, you will be able to fully control WordPress comment moderation. This will not necessarily prevent spam from appearing on your blog, as we need to use an anti-spam WordPress plugin to check all comments in the moderation queue for spam.
6 Best WordPress Comment Anti-Spam Plugins
1. Akismet
**Availability: **WordPress Plugin Directory and Akismet
Akismet comes free with every WordPress installation and is a must-have plugin because it is completely WordPress. It is the best of all the anti-spam plugins available for WordPress.
Akismet is developed by Automattic and is very powerful.
The enterprise-level spam prevention (and management) features are excellent, and some of them include self-learning spam detection algorithms (which take note of your "comments marked as spam" and use them for future automatic spam marking).
The plugin also allows you to place comments on the Akismet server (these comments are checked for spam using the algorithm mentioned above). Comments that pass the check are published on the frontend of your site, while the rest are marked as spam and eventually deleted.
All comments (spam or genuine) are saved in a log that you can view at any time.
Akismet checks up to 50,000 spam messages per month and is only suitable for non-profits and personal blogs. Commercial sites can get an API key with a $5 per month subscription - a reasonable cost and definitely worth it.
2. Anti-spam Bee
**Availability: **WordPress Plugin Directory
With over a million active installs and counting, Antispam Bee also comes with a glowing recommendation from WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg himself, so you can be sure you’re in the right place.
This plugin is free and very smart. It handles IP blacklisting (comment blocking), trackback verification, database optimization (a feature many people get by downloading a separate plugin like WP Sweep), and more.
It displays detailed monthly statistics and spam activity in your admin dashboard, and lets you choose certain metrics to “create” your own spam detection algorithm based on your knowledge of your user base.
It’s a smart little beast, I tell you. It’s also completely free of any annoying ads and complies with data privacy standards (Europe), which is another icing on the cake for this amazing product.
3. CleanTalk
**Availability: **WordPress Plugin Directory
This is one of the best premium online (cloud-based) anti-spam WordPress plugins.
CleanTalk prevents comment spam, sign-up/registration form spam , and trackback spam, and uses smart algorithms to detect spam in “real” comments uploaded to the Clean Talk cloud.
A cool feature of Cleantalk is that you can check existing spam comments in WordPress.
This is useful if you haven't moderated comments in a while and need to remove spam comments from your moderation queue.
You also get detailed statistics and comment logs, as well as automatic moderation (spam detection) activity and history.
The first 5 days of service are free, after which you can continue to use and expand the service for only $8 per domain per year.
4. WordPress Zero Spam
**Availability: **WordPress Plugin Directory
This is one of the simplest spam prevention plugins.
WordPress Zero Spam works by blocking users who don't have JavaScript enabled on their browsers from leaving comments. It works in conjunction with client-side and server-side JS validation to prevent most bots from spamming your comment section.
It’s free and has excellent compatibility with almost all major (trustworthy) WordPress plugins (except Jetpack) and various contact form plugins. Keep in mind that while it works great against bots, it’s largely ineffective against humans.
5. Stop Spammers Spam Prevention
**Availability: **WordPress Plugin Directory
This is a versatile multi-tasking plugin that can lighten your load when dealing with spam comments.
Block SpammersSpam Protection blocks **comment spam, registration form spam, trackbacks and contact form spam with a powerful and comprehensive set of algorithms. The plugin can block IPs from more than 100 countries. It also **sends spammers (human and otherwise) a warning (request denied) page followed immediately by a CAPTCHA: a second layer of protection against spam bots.
6. WP Armour – Honeypot Antispam
This is one of the simplest WordPress comment spam prevention plugins. WP Armour uses honeypot anti-spam technology to prevent spam in various areas, not just limited to the WP comment form. With this plugin, you can prevent spam in the following areas:
- For WP Comments
- For WP Registration
- For BBPress Forum
- For Contact Form 7
- For Ninja Forms
- For Gravity Forms
- For WPForms
- For powerful forms
- For Caldera tables
- For toolset forms
The best thing about the WP Armour plugin is that it is a plug-and-play plugin. You just install it and it starts working right away. The free plugin is good enough for part-time users, but for those who are serious about hunting down spam and need the data, you can upgrade to any lifetime license of this plugin.
in conclusion
Here are 6 plugins that can protect your WordPress site from spam and prevent it from accumulating on your server and database.
Keep your WordPress site clean and well-maintained, and install one of these as soon as your site is up and running.
Disclosure: Some of the links in this article contain affiliate links, which means we may earn a commission if you click through to visit us, at no extra cost to you. See how SidelinePlay is funded, why it’s important, and how you can support us.
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