Interacting with your audience is still one of the best ways to build a popular WordPress website.
And the easiest and most effective way of going about it is by allowing commenting and taking the feedback of your viewers. But unfortunately, 56% of all internet traffic is from an automated source such as hacking tools, scrapers and spammers, impersonators, and bots.
According to another source, about 85% of the comments on blogs are spams. This means that only 15 of 100 comments that you will get on your website will be authentic comments.
Now how do you filter spams form legitimate comments on your website?
Here is where Akismet Anti Spam plugin comes in.
When you activate Akismet its starts filtering out spam form your website based on the information that it has from all of the other websites which have this plugin.
Akismet anti-spam plugin is filters spam from contact forms and comments sections.
The importance of Akismet can be understood by the fact it is one of the few default plugins that you get once you install WordPress.
Why should I use Akismet Anti-Spam Plugin?
Well, its pretty simple,
To protect your website from spam.
- It comes pre-installed with WordPress, meaning that WordPress finds it so important that they think everyone should have it.
- Google recommends that you use Akismet to prevent comment spam.
- It automatically checks all comments and filters out the ones that look like spam.
- Allowing spam on your website shows that you don’t really care about your website.
- Google can penalize you for links found in spam on your website.
- You put your users at risk of clicking on the spam links.
- It is regularly updated and a reliable plugin.
- It’s a free plugin and even if you upgrade to a plan it’s very affordable.
Akismet Anti-Spam Plugin History
The name Akismet comes from two words Auttomatic and Kismet. Auttomatic is the company behind Akismet.
Akismet was developed WordPress co-founder by Matt Mullenweg, the man behind WordPress himself back in 2005.
He developed it for his mother so she could blog safely without spam. which was a major problem at that time. Akismet was introduced when not many solutions were available to control spams.
The original plugin was not as successful as he had hoped it would be. Spammers downloaded it and reverse-engineered it to see how it worked.
But Akismet’s algorithm was improved as such that it learned from its mistakes and with the help of contributors.
So now if a bunch a websites report the same content as Akismet would also strat identifying that content as spam.
How to Install and Activate Akismet?
You can easily install Akismet by following these steps:
- Log in to your WordPress site as the administrator.
- In the left-hand pane, click Plugins.
- Under Akismet, click Activate
4. Click Activate your Akismet account, and then click Create a new Akismet key by following the instructions given.
5. Once you receive the Akismet confirmation e-mail, go to the WordPress plugins page again.
6. Under Akismet, click Settings.
7. Click I already have a key.
8. In the Akismet API Key text box, paste the API key that you received in the e-mail message.
9. To configure Akismet, click Settings under Akismet
10. Click Save Changes.
Approving Comments With Akismet
Once you have Akismet installed and activated, every comment that you receive will need to be manually approved.
You will receive a dashboard notification in the comment tab.
When you hover over the individual comment, you will see the following options:
- Approve
- Reply
- Quick Edit
- Spam
- Trash
Depending on you policy you can decide what you want to do with the comment. Akismet automatically filter most of the known spam comments, the ones it doesn’t you can mark as spam manually.
Monitoring Spam With A.kis.met Anti-Spam Plugin
Akismet antispam plugin allows you to monitor its activity. As soon as it’s installed it starts filtering out spams.
It shows you its activity stats is the form of tables depending on the type of plan that you are using.
login into your Akismet account and click on the Active Site section, here you will see the activity and blocked spams on all the sites you have added.
You can also have a look at these amazing stats from your WordPress dashboard.
you’ll see the type of able if you are on the basic plan.
This gives you a good and easy to comprehend overview of Akismet monthly spam blocking activity.
The advanced stats give you a more detailed and a wider picture of your website spam activity and how Akismet is blocking them.
Akismet Criticism:
Akismet is sometimes criticized for
- Giving false positives, meaning that some legitimate comments get marked as spam.
- You wouldn’t know if your comment gets marked as spam.
Conclusion
If you are a website or blog owner, it is essential that you do something to block spams. Spams are bad for your website’s health, they affect your website ranking as well as your online credibility.
Akismet is a pre-installed anti-spam plugin that you get when you install WordPress. All you have to do is activate it.
It’s a good plugin that serves its purpose well. We use it on our and our client’s websites.
However, there are many other anti-spam plugins that you can use depending on the needs of your website.
What anti-spam plugin do you use? Let us know in the comment section below.
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