Disable Akismet = spike in visits

I recently migrated all my blogs to WordPress 3.0. One of the things you do is temporarily disable all plugins including Akismet spam filter. During the short period of time the spam filter was off I received, and had to later kill, more spam than I would normally receive in a week. And don’t get me wrong this blog constantly receives a moderate amount of spam , which Akismet usually blocks. My site stats reflected the uptick in spam, with a huge spike in visits on the day the spam filter was off. So it would be a good hypothesis that some spammers are able to detect blogs with Akismet and just leave them alone and spend the fraction of a cent it costs to send their toxic crap elsewhere. If this is true, Akismet is not only an awesome spam filter, but it also serves as a deterrent, which is even better. Anyone can confirm or deny if this is true or offer any explanation why I got so many visits exactly when my spam filter was off?

28 comments to Disable Akismet = spike in visits

  • Interesting. I wonder how you would be able to tell if askimet is installed? Isn’t all done server-side?

    Maybe they just see if their comment posted then stop trying if it didn’t.

  • Jason ,

    May be they are just putting a test comment and then pinging it back, If comment is present just flag the site and put it in the database. 🙂 for further spam

    BTW Nice to read your views.

    Regards

    Vipin

  • It’s exactly like Vipin says – the spambots can detect if their comment appeared on the site. I have seen this sort of behavior with spambots before. Another approach taken is to post an innocent looking comment – designed to bypass filtering and manual moderation – so that the comments posted after that will get automatically approved, which is what many systems do for confirmed “safe” commenters.

  • I think that the blacklist is already built into Akismet. Don’t know for sure but that is such an obvious way to catch spammers that I doubt that they would neglect it. By the way, need a Dedicated Servers

  • It is always better to have Akismet spam filter enabled. It will save you a lot of time that you would otherwise have to spend on cleaning out hundreds of spam comments that you will receive daily.

  • Never even attempted to disable Akismet. I bet it would really show how valuable it is when it’s turned off though. I don’t really have to bother with spam, but I bet I would if I turned it off for a few hours. It’s interesting that a spike in traffic occured with it off. These spammers are getting smarter and smarter everyday!

  • Never tried disabling Akismet either and I’m afraid what might happen if I do. So did you have to spend a whole day sorting all through the spam?

  • Oh yes, I can totally picture bots that check if their “innocuous” spam got approved and then hit you later with the hard core links to ED drugs and pooooorn. I can see that building up over time if you have no filter. But how were the bots that normally leave me alone able to find me so quickly in the first place in the mere 15 minutes that the filter was off.

  • Does it not follow that : spike in traffic = page rank 1 ??

  • Unfortunately a lot of the spammers have search bots that can detect things like Akismet and simply return lists of sites that dont have it. That said they also check to see if the site has do-follow links and since your site doesn’t it is a little surprising that you got so heavily hit by spammers.

  • admin

    Luke, no it does not follow that a huge spike in raw numbers = page rank 1. There is good traffic and then there is bandwidth wasting spam. Receiving heavy spam never bolstered an online relationship or helped build a community or helped anyone sell anything.

    And Datingsa, I’d like to know about these search bots that detect Akismet. If that was true I guess I could have gotten on that list and gotten slammed all within 15 minutes. I used to have do-follow links but I discontinued them because they attract spam and they were diluting what little google juice I have.

  • […] I recently migrated all my blogs to WordPress 3.0. One of the things you do is temporarily disable all plugins including Akismet spam filter. During the short period of time the spam filter was off I received, and had to later kill, more spam than I would normally receive in a week. And . . . → Read More: Disable Akismet = spike in visits […]

  • Does it mean your blog has lot of loyal spam visitor? 🙂

  • I might try disabling Akismet as I have never tried it. I’ll let you know my results once i’m done!

  • akismet is probably the best tool i’ve found for my blogs. i think that if someone uses a blackhat method to drive clicks to their site, this could be a good method for diluting the ctr.

  • Disable Akismet that you will gain a lot of spam comment un-wanted. This plugin help you save time to approve for spam comment.

  • It will never ends with those spammers and spam tools

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  • I actually had Askimet off for about a month…it was a giant mess. I did see a lot of traffic, but only from my server-side analytics. Google Analytics didn’t show any increase, so the quality must come into consideration in their algorithms. Interesting, none-the-less.

  • I know what you mean about spam. I just started a site and I have had to deal with spam comments constantly. I guess I am lucky that it is a new site and I might receive maybe 1 or 2 comments a day.

  • I used aksimet but it don’t exactly filters spam. Many useful comments get in spam bucket and you loose a positive feedback.

  • Colleen

    I have only had a very very few get thrown in the spam bucket that shouldn’t have been. Course, it also depends on how strict you are.

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  • Akismet is the blogs saviour, i have a small blog for newely released websites http://www.justoutblog.com
    when i was disabling akismet , i used to get between 10 to 20 spams per day, but what i did is disabling the
    comments lol 🙂

    Regards
    ————————————————
    http://www.demoforweb.com the free host for
    web designers, web developers & webmasters

  • Oh yes, I can totally picture bots that check if their “innocuous” spam got approved and then hit you later with the hard core links to ED drugs and pooooorn. I can see that building up over time if you have no filter. But how were the bots that normally leave me alone able to find me so quickly in the first place in the mere 15 minutes that the filter was off.

  • May be they are just putting a test comment and then pinging it back, If comment is present just flag the site and put it in the database. 🙂 for further spam

    BTW Nice to read your views.

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