Summary: Is Akismet marking your comments as SPAM by mistake? I'll show you what to do if Akismet catches your comments as spam, and how to ask Akismet Support to fix it
I've been keeping Dave Doolin busy by leaving blog comments on his blog, as all of my blog comments went to his SPAM queue. Dave was awesome enough to notify me about that, so I figured my comments were being marked as SPAM by Akismet, the default SPAM filter of WordPress which is also used in other sites and platforms.
I realized that it was indeed so, I was being blocked by Akismet, which effectively means my comments automatically went into the spam queue on all blogs and other sites protecting themselves from SPAM with Akismet. Not good.
I leave a lot of blog comments, but I know I'm not a spammer, even that I use some advanced blog commenting tricks, I always leave blog comments that carry some value.
Luckily, getting out of the Akismet trap was easy (I'll show you how to do that too).
How to check if Akismet marks your comment as SPAM (for whatever reason)
Are your blog comments not appearing when you leave them on blogs?
This can happen for two reasons
- Blog's comments are moderated, or
- your comment gets picked by the spam filter of that blog.
(different commenting systems handle comments differently, so you might not see anything right away, even that things are OK, or the comment is just being moderated, approved by the admin.)
If you see your comment right away, with a text "your comment is being moderated", that's normal. However, if your blog comments are not appearing at all, there's a chance you've been caught in the Akismet SPAM queue by mistake.
There is no way to absolutely make sure you are blocked by Akismet. Thus, the only way is to contact Akismet Support as instructed below and ask them to check it for you.
The Akismet test blog no longer exists, because it was against WordPress.com service policy.
I created a "Akismet test blog" on WordPress.com, because I didn't know it was against their policy. That blog is now deleted, and no one should create a blog in WordPress.com just to test Akismet ,or as they said it:
Akismet test blogs or facilities not run by WordPress.com staff are forbidden on our service. -WordPress.com Support
How to get off the Akismet "hot list"
Akismet thinks you are spammer.
No worries, these things happen.
Here's how to get your name cleared...
To get off the Akismet hot list, go to Akismet.com contact page and send a message - and choose purpose of the support message: I think Akismet is catching my comments by mistake.
- Go to http://akismet.com/contact/
- Choose Purpose: "I think Akismet is catching my comments by mistake"
- Give the URL of your blog and your email address so they can de-spam you.
- (put the email and URL in the "message", even if you add them to the contact details)
Naturally, the above works only if one is legit and not really a spammer. I think their logs show why one has been marked as SPAM by Akismet, so dumb-ass comment spammers are out of luck (which is just awesome).
It might take a while, days or even a week, depending on how much Akismet support has stuff to do, but eventually you'll get a mail if they managed to fix the issue, and if it all works out, your comments are no longer blocked and marked as spam by Akismet.
For me it took about a week to get the answer from the support (that they fixed the issue) and after that my blog comments were no longer blocked. High five to Akismet support for great work.
Summary
Even if you're using blog commenting the right way, your blog comments can be mistakenly marked as spam by Akismet.
If this happens, go to Akismet.com contact page and tell them you've been marked as spam by mistake. Tell them the email and URL you think are blocked by Akismet and they will help you out.
Change log:
- Jun 2, 2010: Added the screenshot of Akismet support contact form
- Jun 27, 2010: Created a simple Akismet test blog
- Aug 29, 2010: Deleted the test blog as it was against WordPress.com policy. Edited the post accordingly.
References:
6 links to this post.
35 comments.
I've never seen this information anywhere else on the web.
I faced a problem of getting blocked by Akismet, I went on to figure out how I can verify it and then how I can get it fixed. It was starting to get annoying to get into spam queue of all blogs, and I didn't even know it, let alone why… But now I fixed it for myself, made a post to help others – that's what I do :)
And all this largely because you mailed me that you only had Akismet running and I was still being blocked. Something no other blogger did to me, and that my friend, makes *you* awesome.
I tweeted this to Dennis Edell who always has his comments blocked by Akismet, he really could benefit from this. Thanks for posting.
Awesome post that fixes a widespread issue, Antti. I think many just tolerate the situation or contact the blog owner, who also may not know what to do, other than fish the comment out of the spammer. But who wants to do that continually for a regular reader?
I had this occur quite often with Gordie last year. I deactivated then reactivated Akismet and the issue went away. like many others, I did not know about this. In hindsight, I guess I got lucky keeping ole Gordie out of the spammer. :-)
Awesome post that fixes a widespread issue, Antti. I think many just tolerate the situation or contact the blog owner, who also may not know what to do, other than fish the comment out of the spammer. But who wants to do that continually for a regular reader?
I had this occur quite often with Gordie last year. I deactivated then reactivated Akismet and the issue went away. like many others, I did not know about this. In hindsight, I guess I got lucky keeping ole Gordie out of the spammer. :-)
Excellent post. I had no idea there was a way to check if your comments are getting caught in Aksimet's filter. I'll have to check now ;)
Thanks for sharing!
Wow. I had this problem a few months back. It was apparently cause by a bad email address in a comment. I asked them to stop and they did. I need to keep this post handy because I will certainly forget what to do when it happens again.
This is very interesting seeing that I have of late been getting huge amounts of comment spam. Although I do not use Akismet I can see potential problems. Not only with Akismet, but will all anti-spammers.
At some point they are going to catch the real stuff. It's the nature of the game. Spammers are getting more and more sophisticated. Making their spam more like real comments.
It takes a real commitment to stop that from infesting your blog.
Hi Antti,
Thanks for posting. An absolutely post for this problem. Thank you, keep up the goo work.
Aye, it's good that Akismet or any other SPAM filter catches spammers. The “problem” with Akismet is that once you're blocked mistakenly by Akismet on one blog, you're blocked in all of them! And since Akismet is default on WordPress, that's a lot. Not to mention any other service which uses Akismet since it is universal filter.
Aye, it's good that Akismet or any other SPAM filter catches spammers. The “problem” with Akismet is that once you're blocked mistakenly by Akismet on one blog, you're blocked in all of them! And since Akismet is default on WordPress, that's a lot. Not to mention any other service which uses Akismet since it is universal filter.
Another wonderfully helpful post. I don't think I have been bitten by this but if it ever does raise it's ugly head I know how to tackle it.
Thanks for the information. When it comes to a lot of this I have know idea what is going on. thanks for lwetting me know. Now I know what to look for when I leave a comment.
Debbie
I had no idea about this. If it is a spam bot, that is not going to happen, so you are still safe. Thanks for this clear step-by-step information
Wow, thanks for all of the information!
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Good catch by Dave. This is another reason I love Disqus…it's near perfect.
well, Check out how to check if Akismet catches your comments as SPAM by mistake, and how to get in the clear if it happens to you
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posting comments on Akismet love is closed :(
Now that Podz is down, I wonder how we can find out if we're on Akismet's black list?
Thanks Andrew for the notice! I created a new blog at http://akismetlove.wordpress.com/ which hopefully works as well as the original :)
The original “Akismet love” -test is indeed closed, but I created a new one at http://akismetlove.wordpress.com/ to serve the same purpose! (and updated this post of mine too)
my website in maked as spam so, I do not do anything to make it happen, maybe the other one?
I'm sorry, I don't understand your comment…
Did you try to say that you left a comment on the “Akismet test” post and it didn't appear? If so, then your comment has been marked as spam and you should contact Akismet support. As said, sometimes that just happens.
Update: When leaving a comment on the “Akismet test” post, type in a comment with more than one word, a full sentence preferably. I noticed that comments with just “testing” get caught by Akismet. I updated the instructions on the post as well.
This is an excellent information because this just happened to me too, when I don't comment that much. I'm hoping to get the problem rectified!
Susan, I'm happy this helped you – I made the post to help others in the first place after all :)
For me it took some time, but eventually Akismet support replied that they fixed the issue, and since that my comment were not stuck on the spam queue anymore.
Dave directed me here when all my comments were being blocked. I contacted Akismet and they said I was not on their black list. So lets see if this works!
Okay it kind of worked with the Facebook login. Now I'm going to try it with my regular address.
Shirls here again. My comment below looks sort of anonymous.
I have no idea how Disqus's Facebook connect works, not very well it seems… But as for spam goes, you are not blocked when you use Facebook/Twitter connect, unless your comment is spammy…
Oh, and this post is not the place to test whether or not you are blocked – you should go to http://akismetlove.wordpress.com/ -blog instead. This is my personal blog, and I “unspam” stuff that doesn't seem to be spam :)
For blogs using Disqus comments, I recommend that you register at http://disqus.com/profile/ and create your profile there. After that you never have to login or enter details when commenting on blogs with Disqus in use.
Because of how Akismet works this issue will snowball over time. I have recently written numerous posts about it and provided information on when it deletes comments bloggers never see, how to tell if Akismet thinks you're a spammer with pages where you can test to find out, and I am building a list of blogs that no longer use Akismet.
my comments are marked spam , and i cannot use the keyword like “iphone 4 jailbreak” inside name even with @ symbol . i also use the following email address often : moderators.rewardpoints@gmail.com and sourishnath@gmail.com
Using keywords might be against blog comment policy (each blog has rights to define their own). Not everyone want to see such an obvious keywords on their blogs, and even a normal comment seems spammy when you have keywords in the “name”. Thus, I'm not surprised your comments have been marked as spam. If you do use keywords in the “name”, your comments need to be twice as good/valuable as normally. Don't expect to get away with “nice post!” :)
two of my blogs are being filtered by askimet. luckily, i found this blog.