I have switched Spam Karma off… temporarily, to test Typepad’s new Antispam plugin
As is well known I am not a huge fan of collective intelligence as the sole arbiter of whether a comment is “spam or ham”, and long term I am most likely to switch back to Spam Karma, possibly using Typepad Antispam as an additional filter.
I am also going to grab the code from Igor so I can test Typepad Antispam in conjunction with his Project Honeypot though I think that too is best served as a Spam Karma filter/plugin with probably a high threshold.
Typepad Antispam was quite easy to set up
Grab A Typepad Key
If you have been blogging for a while and commenting on Typepad blogs, you most likely already have a Typekey account, you might just have forgotten the password ;)
Install Plugin And Add Key
Upload and activate the plugin, then add your key.
Auntie… Help!
The biggest immediate problem is that Akismet Auntie Spam doesn’t work with Typepad Spam. Hopefully that is something we can persuade Engtech to fix :)
The second problem is that I have already had at least one clearly automated porn spam hit me for moderation. With Spam Karma, automated spam doesn’t have a chance. It wasn’t a borderline case, it had tons of porn keywords and links in it.
I have used the dedicated plugin they provide, but apparently the guys at Techcrunch just modified 3 lines in Akismet to get it to work. That would immediately solve the Auntie Spam issue, and is something I will look into on a temporary basis.
It also suggests that a Spam Karma plugin will be a trivial task to get working.
7 Comments
Hello Andy,
Talking about spam, I noticed that our blog’s been link-back targeted by .info scraper sites of the same nature as the one you described, that got past your newly-installed Typepad anti-spam filters. I noticed too that after this happened, some of our pages that were previously ranked for our intended keywords, disappeared from Google results for the same keywords. Is there a connection to the inlinks coming from those .info spamming sites? I’d certainly appreciate your opinion on this. Thanks.
I think Matt Cutts has confirmed in the past that overall link profile can be taken into consideration, especially if for some reason your site attracts closer inspection.
It isn’t something I worry about because I try to build sites with a strong link profile. Then the scraper links can be looked on as assets.
I also syndicate content freely, which again builds links. If a single page gains lots of links from syndicated copies, it is fairly clear to Google where the original is, even if a few of them strip the links out or nofollow them.
You might find this post useful
http://andybeard.eu/2007/08/blog-plagiarism.html
Andy, you funny! You sent me an email but you did not tell me you wrote this post! LOL I am going to email you the PHSDL filter script code with instructions for installation!
Thank you,
Igor
Andy, you better keep an eye on your moderation cue. Typepad AntiSpam is a bit sensitive and marks comments for moderation when posted consecutively! It even adds blog owner comments to moderation cue.
Nothing new, I have always spent a lot of time on comment moderation
Andy, thanks for your quick response to my question, I really appreciate that.
Hello Andy,
Dave has announced he will stop supporting Spam Karma at http://unknowngenius.com/blog/archives/2008/07/14/spam-karma-is-gpl/
What’s your plan? I’m launching many new blogs and am at the “which plugins do we install” decision point. You are my go-to expert on cutting edge technical advice.
Thanks for all you do.