WordPress Blogging

On the Internet, worthless comments or SPAM is defined as an unsolicited advertisement aggressively published in public media.

It is often in a manner that is unethical and detrimental to other people’s enjoyment of the services rendered by the said media.

When blog commenting became a very popular way of building backlinks for a particular website, blogs all over the internet were littered with spam in the form of such blog comments.

It was quite common that a reader will post an “invitation” to visit a particular URL even if such an invitation and such a URL don’t have anything to do with the blog post or the resulting discussion.

These spamming activities became so prevalent, so incessant, and so widespread that WordPress itself started banning accounts that were associated with such approaches.

Many WordPress plugins also introduced the “no follow” function.

Basically, when this function is turned on, the blog pages will tell search engine spiders not to provide any weight to the URLs that will be posted in them.

It was hoped that such a feature would make spammers surrender, as the links they will ram down blogs’ throats will not lead to better page ranks for their own websites.

It was a case of wishful thinking on the part of blog owners.

The “no follow” feature dissuaded some spammers, but most of them still persisted.

URLs left in blog comments, after all, weren’t only meant to build up a website’s link popularity.

They were also designed to garner – or perhaps, the proper term is “steal” – a blog’s visitors.

These URLs in blog comments were also designed to generate direct traffic.

So, what can WordPress bloggers do?

Search for a WordPress plugin that prevents Duplicate Comments

These plugins determine comments on the same page which have:

– the same content

– the same name for the author

– the same email address used

These plugins will not automatically delete duplicate posts.

Rather, the plugin will lead the person who just submitted a post to an error page where he/she will be required to change a significant portion of his comment before it can be accepted for publication.

This is a reasonable compromise, as duplicate comments can sometimes be accidental and readers should always be given the benefit of the doubt as they are the lifeblood of blogs.

To me, spammers are just like hackers. They get their kicks by trying to ruin the work of someone else because they think it is fun.