Blog commenting used to be a great way to start a discussion with online visitors. However, due to spam, many blogs are unable to activate this feature. Why is blog commenting becoming more and more harmful? Is there a solution to this problem?
Let's explore.
Blog commenting in the good old days.
Just several years ago, blog comments make the blogosphere a more vibrant space for everyone. When a blogger publishes a post, everyone can join in and say their piece just by leaving a comment before exiting the site. This is done through a comment form that is at the end of every blog post. If the commenting feature is enabled, visitors will be able to leave comments on each and every post.
Unfortunately, the default settings for most blogs allow visitors to leave their URLs. When a comment is approved, the entire comment plus the URL is published on the blog. Soon, many webmasters discover that this is a great way to get back links from established websites - for free! All they have to do is to leave a couple of lines, and they get free back links!
In fact, this method of acquiring links worked so well that some people have even developed custom tools just to send in comments to get links. This type of practice is harmful to the Internet community because the comments are often irrelevant. Quite often, due to thousands of spam comments left by these automated tools, bloggers are forced to disable the commenting feature.
Webmasters who do not know what they are doing use these very same tools to try and build back links. As a result, they started acquiring thousands of links in a very short space of time. The search engines soon caught on with what is happening and started to ban sites that use this method.
Is there no way to combat this problem then?
Fortunately, developers have come up with solutions to help keep the situation under control.
1) Plugins - There are special plugins that bloggers can install on their own blogs to catch nonsensical comments. These comments will either be quarantined, or deleted immediately.
2) Captcha - This is a great way to stop automated tools. Software cannot answer questions like human beings. So a question is asked at the end of the form to ensure that whoever is submitting the comment is a human being. No bots allowed!
3) Moderated comments - Bloggers can choose to moderate all comments so that only legitimate comments appear on the blogs.
4) Closed discussions - After X number of days, the blog can be set to automatically disable discussions. That will eliminate the chances of having spam comments on older blog posts. A plugin is installed to achieve this.
As a final word of advice, do not use blog commenting as a means to get back links. There are other proper ways to do so.
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