by Elizabeth M Young

Created on: October 06, 2009

One of the best ways to prevent spam from infecting your blog is to blog at a site that screens spam for you. But when there is no spamm screener, or you don't get that much junk, choose blogging sites that have settings which allow comments screening before they are approved and posted by the blogger. Finally, simply deleting the odd spam that is contained in a cutely worded "comment" is the best way to get rid of pesky sales pitches.

No blogging site is worth it if problematic comments cannot be managed, reported, then deleted.

Pre-approval and deleting options handle much more than spam, they help to prevent trolls from engaging in their witty repartee at the expense of your blog.

WordPress has an anti spam filter, Askimet, that will catch obvious candidates for the spam pile, then let you see the item before deleting it. Sometimes, a person's legitimate comment will have formatting, untranslated, or other characters that cause it to be classified as spam, which is fine. Sometimes, the sender will be related to multiple e-mail accounts, which signals bot technology being used to send mass spam.

If the comment is legitimate, but garbled, the individual can be notified that there is a problem with their formatting and to resend their comment, again, IF it is legitimate.

the Askimet plug in will inquire at the Askimet database, which has algorithms for identifying potential spam, then place the item in comments, under the "spam" category for further review. The Askimet plug in, combined with WordPress layout is a great tool for handling mass spam attacks because bulk deletes can be carried out.

Google Blogger has highly sophisticated and customizable anti spam filters at the blog settings page. Comments can be restricted to members only, people who are logged in at Google, registered at your blog, and so on. Best of all, a "word verification" step can be required before comments can be posted. Finally, comments can be moderated before they are approved, and back links to the senders can be provided.

Finally, there is a "catch 22" to tagging. As we choose the most attractive tags for our blogs, we attract as many viewers as we can, then revel in the big party that we are having. But, spam bots are also attracted to popular tags and to popular blogs. There are no answers for the need to publicize our blogs in the most successful way possible, but using Digg, Reddit, Blog Catalog, and other sites can attract an interested audience of real people without attracting so many automated spam bots that run through the search engines.

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