Do you want to reduce comment spam on your WordPress site? Akismet is the most popular WordPress comment spam protection tool. It is also the only plugin that comes pre-installed with every WordPress website. In this Akismet review, we will take a look at its features, effectiveness, and ease of use.
Akismet review
Spam comments are a big problem for WordPress websites. A large number of spam comments are generated by automated spambots. Manually submitted spam comments are also very numerous.
If you have an established website, you will soon start to notice the rise of spam comments. One way to deal with this is by enabling comment moderation on your WordPress site.
However, we will soon be unable to moderate comments due to the high volume of spam.
Akismet spam moderation queue
This is where Akismet comes in, which catches spam comments submitted to your website and prevents them from appearing on your website or in comment moderation. It is a cloud-based application, so the huge databases used to filter and catch spam reside in the cloud. The impact on your website's performance is imperceptible.
Akismet can catch most spam comments submitted to your website, qatar email database free but not all. You still won't have to moderate the comments, and if you see spam comments that have escaped Akismet, you can mark them as spam.
Setting Up Akismet on Your WordPress Site
Akismet is a project by Automattic , the company behind WordPress. Once you activate the plugin, you will need to generate an API key by creating a free WordPress.com account.
Setting up Akismet on a WordPress site
For detailed instructions, check out this guide on what Akismet is and why you should start using it right now.
Once you enter your API key, Akismet will start working in the background. There are no additional settings to configure.
You can view Akismet statistics by visiting the Settings » Akismet page . The statistics page will show you a summary of the number of spam comments that Akismet has prevented from appearing on your WordPress site.
How to deal with false positives and evaded spam in Akismet
Akismet is pretty good at catching most spam comments. However, users have criticized it for false positives. When a perfectly legitimate comment is flagged as spam, it's called a false positive.
Spam comments appear in the comments under the spam tab. Hover over a comment and you'll see a link to mark it as not spam.
Comments marked spam by Akismet
This way you can report to Akismet if it has flagged a false positive. But the problem is that most users don't look at spam comments. It's quite difficult to look through hundreds of spam comments to check for false positives.
If Akismet marks a comment as spam, the comment author will not see the “Awaiting Moderation” notice next to their comment. If you submit a comment to a site and do not see the “Awaiting Moderation” notice, you should contact the site owner to have your comment marked as not spam. Akismet will learn and stop marking your comment as spam.