If your website incorporates a blog or public forum allowing users to express their comments and suggestions, there is a significant likelihood that spammers will attempt to exploit the platform by posting undesirable content and links through comment fields. Google has recently provided guidance on actions you should take to mitigate user-generated spam on your website:
Enhance the security of your Blog:
Ensure the security of your website forum by regularly updating and patching your forum and blog software. Spammers exploit vulnerabilities in outdated versions, underscoring the importance of keeping your software current.
Use CAPTCHAs to block robots:
Typically, spam is generated by automated robots. To counter this, a CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart) is incorporated into forms, requiring users to demonstrate their human identity before posting on your site. Users are prompted to perform manual tasks such as filling blanks with simple math calculations, recognizing patterns, and more. Google’s reCAPTCHA stands out as one of the most widely used CAPTCHA services.
Block suspicious behavior and check the top posters:
Implement time limits between posts and employ measures to block excessive traffic from individual IP addresses. Automated bots can be discerned from human behavior through various activities, and many forum platforms provide configurations that automatically thwart suspicious actions. It is advisable to scrutinize the posts of new users with an unusually high number of contributions to ensure they are not spam messages.
Disable some types of comments:
- You can also think of disabling comments on old blog posts. No user will ever visit posts which are more than 1 year old. Hence very old entries shouldn’t have a functioinality of posting a comment by users. Spammers will have 1 less way of hacking your site.
Always use the moderation feature of your CMS blog or forum
Automatically posting a new user’s content on the website should be avoided. For instance, users may need to attain a specific privilege before being able to publish their comments. The posting rights should be reserved for registered users only, with no allowance for anonymous posting. Content from new users should undergo an approval process, with the admin moderating before making it publicly accessible.
Blacklist obviously spam terms:
If you find out that many spam entries on your site contain the same words, block these words. Most forums and blog tools offer features that enable you to automatically mark posts with particular words as spam.
Always use the rel=nofollow attribute for links in where the users have added some data:
As a thumb rule, any blog tool will automatically add the rel=nofollow attribute to user generated links. This functionality will stop the spammers from targeting your site by their own generated links.
Use anti-spam plugins:
In addition to the aforementioned measures, employing anti-spam plugins can effectively maintain a spam-free environment for your blog and forums. Akismet, a popular anti-spam service, provides plugins compatible with various blogging and forum systems, including WordPress. Automatic and user-generated spam can adversely impact your web pages’ ranking on search engines like Google. If aiming for a high ranking, ensuring original content and quality links on your web pages is essential.
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