What is the Akismet spam plugin? Akismet is an automated spam filter for blog comments.
The Akismet web service checks for comments that look like spam.
Then puts them in the spam section in your admin panel.
You can then review these comments and approve them (if they aren't spam) or leave them where they are.
It is similar to how an email program like Outlook filters spam.
Akismet knows the tricks and techniques used by spammers from watching millions of blogs and forums.
It has learned all the tricks of the trade.
So it can warn you of comments on your blog that just don't look real.
Lets talk about the main features...
The Akismet spam plugin has a useful stats section, which shows you the total spam, ham (not spam, or good comments), missed spam, false positives (a legit message marked as spam by mistake), and accuracy rate of the spam filter.
You also have the option of viewing these stats over different time periods...
daily, 6 months, 1 year, or all time.
In the admin section, you can see which comments were identified as spam and cleared by Akismet.
And which comments were categorized as spam for you to review later.
This saves the blog owner a lot of time and effort.
Links are highlighted in comments so you can see clearly whether they look legit or not.
You can set the Akismet spam plugin to automatically delete spam on posts more than a month old, so you don't even need to review them.
And show the number of comments approved beside each comment author, so you know which authors look credible.
Why do you need to use the Akismet spam plugin on your blog? So no one can use your blog for their own gain and harm your blog in the process.
When you get spammy comments left on your blog, It's free advertising and exposure for the spammer's blog.
They do this a lot to try and build backlinks to their own sites and get your readers to buy their products.
They peddle porn, fake pills, money making scams and malware using these comments.
How do you identify spam comments? Well, they usually offer no value.
The sites they link back to are low quality.
And they offer products that are irrelevant or offer no value to your readers.
Spammers also use trackbacks and pingbacks to generate comments.
These are just ways they notify you that they are linking to your blog post from their site.
You will see these types of comments a lot in your spam section when you use the Akismet spam plugin.
You can tell because they have usually cited a part of your blog post in the comment.
It's not a real comment, as these are usually written and posted manually.
The Akismet spam plugin saves time by automatically filtering all these comments as spam, so you don't have to.
And it is very accurate.
There is the odd occasion when a comment does get wrongly identified as spam.
However, this is rare.
In Summary The Akismet spam plugin is one of the most important and essential plugins for any blog owner.
It can protect the quality of your content by filtering comments that offer no value to your readers.
This in turn, keeps the blog's reputation good.
And doesn't harm your search engine rankings and traffic in the long term.
The Akismet spam plugin isn't over-complicated and is easy to use.
It was developed by Automattic, they are the creators of WordPress itself.
So it's gonna be good!