Real Comments In Spam?

by Deneil Merritt on August 2, 2009


I had a few people contact me about their comments not showing on my blog. I want to say that I am sorry for that. Some of you, your comments go to spam. I have to look through the spam to find your comments. Sometimes I miss them and they are deleted with the spam. It’s a simple human error, we all make mistakes. I am going to tell you 2 ways to fix this problem.

First the simple problem of getting your comments to show on my blog. If your comment went to spam, wait 24 hours and see if I replied to it or other readers replied to it. If it’s still not there then it may have gotten deleted with the spam. In this case you can just post the same comment over. I am sure I will catch it then.

How To Get Off The Akismet Blacklist

Before I get into this I want to say, if you are spamming people’s blogs then you will always be on akismet blacklist. (Even if you try to get off of it) Getting off the akismet blacklist is a lot easier than you think. I don’t know why they put some people that do real comments on the blacklist. For you  guys and gals you lucky I know how to get you off that list. So your comments will show on everybody’s blog and not go to spam.

First you want to contact the maker/makers of akismet. Tell them your problem. Then every time theirs a comment on your own blog and you want to reply. Logout and reply to their comment like a normal visitor. Log back into your wordpress admin area and approve all your comments. Contact a few of your friends or people you network with. (I prefer to view everybody here as my friends, unless you hate me lol) Tell them to approve your comments as well. (Remember to leave real comments)

Using smiley faces can result in your comment mark as spam – Tip From Web Career Girl

This is all it takes to get off akismet blacklist. Now your comments will not go to spam.

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{ 34 comments… read them below or add one }

Doug Dillard August 2, 2009 at 7:20 pm

Good post Deneil… I am having this same issue with a couple of people’s comments. One thing I noticed, which I am not sure is the cause is… both the people (who comments ended up in spam in folder) were using “Hotmail” for their email address. I wonder if that could be a factor?

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Harsh Agrawal August 2, 2009 at 8:15 pm

Akimset is going crazy these days, I updated the Akismet 2 days back with the latest version and the number of spam which I’m receiving on my blog is endless… :(

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Greg Ellison August 2, 2009 at 8:22 pm

It is always endless battle with spam comments. Spammers getting good at their tricks. On my one blog Akismet has blocked over 7,826 spam comments. I wish those were real comments then spam. Greg Ellison

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Stefan August 2, 2009 at 9:12 pm

It feels like there are way more spam today then a few years – or even months ago. I actually had a site without spam protecting, resulting in most of my visitors found my site when they searched for different combinations of porn.

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George Serradinho August 3, 2009 at 3:29 am

Thanks for this info. I saw I was been blocked and blacklisted by some blog owners and sent them emails about my problem. After a while I saw that my comments were showing.

I also think that some blog owners don’t check their spam and just delete everything and that might also cause your comments to not show.

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Typhoon August 3, 2009 at 8:06 am

I do feel bad when gr8 plugins like Akismet do some false things. I have seen that there is daily 1 or 2 real comment in the Akismet blacklist. I think this happens because the IP(if it’s dynamic) they are using might have been used by some spam bots earlier. Sad for some people.

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Klaus at TechPatio August 3, 2009 at 2:49 pm

I think I’ve tried to have my comment caught by akisment two times, I don’t really know why, I think I may have used a bad word perhaps, but in the 2nd case, I haven’t got a clue.

I also noticed some real comments get caught in my own akismet spamfilter, I have no idea why, they looked legit to me. Maybe it’s just a combination of words that sometimes makes akismet spam them?

Does anyone know, if you’ve once “approved” a comment from a certain e-mail address, can that e-mail address still be caught as spam in akismet?

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Web Career Girl August 3, 2009 at 3:23 pm

Great tips! I also found that my comments were going in some people’s spam simply because I was using smiley faces! More than one and it detected it as spam.

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Trey - Swollen Thumb Entertainment August 3, 2009 at 8:39 pm

Hi Deneil,

I never knew how easy it was to get off of Akismet’s blacklist. That’s really good information to know, and I think that is worth of a blog article by itself!

Also, I appreciate the advice of not using smileys in blog comments. I shall cease to do that immediately! Thanks for the juicy nugget of valuable info.

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iWrite2Know August 4, 2009 at 3:14 am

Thank you for educating about the Akismet’s blacklist. It’ll definitely help me in my future endeavors.

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Extreme John August 4, 2009 at 9:17 am

It’s actually pretty funny that your writing about this, I had the same problem for the longest time because of how many times the letter “x” appears in my email address, than out of nowhere it stopped blocking me.

At one point I ended up getting pisssed off at one blogger because I am a basic guy “You Comment I Follow, I Comment You Should Follow”, and for some reason that person would never comment.

The problem has been resolved and all is good now, I think it’s important to point this out because so few bloggers know about it and so many end up losing valuable comments.

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Ching Ya August 5, 2009 at 1:25 am

Deneil,
That’s one of the weirdest thing I found since using Akismet. Luckily I was pre-warned by a friend that I should constantly check in the Spam box. Had found a couple of mistreated commentators and approved. Didn’t know about the smiley face would affect that too, I always see that as a friendly gesture. They shouldn’t put that as one of the possibilities though.

Thanks for the info.

@wchingya
Social/Blogging Tracker

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Nihar August 6, 2009 at 12:05 pm

You are right. it has happened. lot of ppl who visit my blog contact me via contact form and ask me to approve their comment.

Good that you have provided how to get out of it.

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Ricky Peterson August 11, 2009 at 2:17 am

Thanks Deneil for educating on how to get off with the akismet blacklist.

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Deneil Merritt August 26, 2009 at 9:19 am

With betting, just go with the betting sites affiliate program. Adult on the other hand. I would go with blacklabelads. Just login with your adbrite login as its the same company.

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jason August 3, 2009 at 11:01 am

I had one recently that was spam and it was an Hotmail email.

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Deneil Merritt August 3, 2009 at 5:41 pm

Thank you…I doubt its hotmail. I have a few people that comment and have hotmail. Only akismet knows why these things happen.

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Doug Dillard August 3, 2009 at 12:22 pm

Was it actually SPAM… or was it a real comment that was in your SPAM folder?

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Deneil Merritt August 3, 2009 at 5:45 pm

lol, as your blog grows the spam will always be there. I just wish that most of the spam for my blog is trackbacks from auto blogs taking parts of blog posts with backlinks to my blog. :) Got to love free backlinks.

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Deneil Merritt August 3, 2009 at 5:50 pm

Yeah it is a endless battle. I wish all the real comments never went to the spam folder. That way I could just delete all the spam.

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Deneil Merritt August 3, 2009 at 5:57 pm

lol, I don’t mean to laugh but that is funny. Lesson learned though, never blog without spam protection.

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Deneil Merritt August 3, 2009 at 5:59 pm

You welcome. At least you took action, some people just keep commenting even though most of their comments are not showing.

Yeah, that could be part of the problem as well.

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Deneil Merritt August 3, 2009 at 6:03 pm

We all wish that the plugin works perfect but I guess it’s too much to ask from it. As for those bloggers, let them know how to get off the blacklist.

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Deneil Merritt August 3, 2009 at 6:10 pm

I think once a person get caught in spam an x amount of times they get put on the blacklist. Once you get on the blacklist, all your comments are mark as spam when using the same ip address and email address.

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Deneil Merritt August 3, 2009 at 6:13 pm

I did not know that, I will add that to the post.

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Deneil Merritt August 3, 2009 at 8:48 pm

I am happy you found this information useful.

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Deneil Merritt August 4, 2009 at 9:14 am

You welcome, this does come in handy sometimes. You never know when you will be on akismet blacklist.

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Deneil Merritt August 4, 2009 at 9:34 am

lol, you got pissed at a blogger. :) That’s rich.

I felt I lost too many valuable comments, so I just had to post about it. Maybe a lot of bloggers will read this post. We will have more real comments and less spam. Maybe not less spam but at least more real comments.

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Deneil Merritt August 5, 2009 at 3:14 am

Ching, I agree it is weird. Glad you was pre-warned about akismet. I love using smiley faces but I try to limit them to one per comment. Hopefully my comments won’t go to the spam folder.

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Ching Ya August 5, 2009 at 4:08 am

One per comment — I can live with that. Thanks for the tip.

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Deneil Merritt August 5, 2009 at 4:45 am

Ching you welcome.

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Deneil Merritt August 7, 2009 at 12:50 am

It’s a real problem that needed to be solved. Make sure your readers get this information.

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Deneil Merritt August 11, 2009 at 2:24 am

You welcome, I am sure it will come in handle for everybody atleast once.

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Stefan August 25, 2009 at 7:33 pm

No worries, it was actually both weird and funny. Got me to think about how easy it would be to create a serious site within the niche. The problem is that you are not allowed to have AdSense (betting, adult, etc).

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