7 Type of Comments to Delete from Your WordPress Blog

Earlier days, webmasters and bloggers consider adding comment section on their blog as an option for having high user engagement. In fact, this was a good idea to improve the time on site thus reducing bounce rate. However, in recent days comment spamming and unnatural linking in comments became biggest headache. It led to a situation that many WordPress bloggers disabled native commenting and started using registered services like Disqus and Facebook. In addition, most WordPress themes make the comment links as nofollow so that those links are not used for SEO purposes. If you are a new blogger managing comments, here are few types of comments you should delete from your WordPress blog to have positive blogging attitude.

Blocking Automated Spam Comments in WordPress

We have more than 2K articles available on our site with comments enabled. We can notice more than 90% of the spam comments are generated by automated bots. Therefore, it is essential to block the comments generated by bots.

• We recommend using Akismet or similar plugin to block spam comments automatically. These plugins do multiple checks and prevent automated comments generated by the bots.
• In addition, you can use security plugins or use default settings to block the spammer’s IP address.
• Moderate to filter comments with specific number of links or contain specific words.
• The other options is to insert reCaptcha protection in comment section using separate plugin to block bots.

At any case, make sure to have a preventive mechanism for blocking automated comments. Further in this article, we will discuss about managing and deleting spam comments left by real users.

1. Spam Comments

Besides automated bots, there are real users who leave spam comments without any links. Since they are real users, your blocking mechanism will not work to block their comments. This is also a surprising fact that people take time to leave spam comments without any purpose. Therefore, make sure to have approval or moderation mechanism on your blog. Otherwise, your blog will become a junk yard to have thousands of spam comments.

Good part is that you can easily identify spam comments, by looking at the text. Below is an example and you will frequently find similar comments on your blog.

You can simply trash those useless comments to protect your content. Sometimes, you may receive multiple spam comments from the same IP address. In this case, copy and paste the spammer’s IP in “Disallowed Comment Keys” text box under “Settings > Discussion” section. This will block the IP address and prevent the user to leave further comments.

2. Offensive Response

Many readers do not aware of the effort required to publish an article. Therefore, you will get no or little appreciation while getting so many offensive comments. People may write offensive comments especially when your tips or solutions did not work for them. You can consider publishing the comment if it is legitimate and polite. Otherwise, simply delete the comment without publishing.

Other form of offensive is leaving aggressive comment while replying to another user’s comment. It is also your responsibility as a moderator / blog owner to keep the positive attitude in conversations. When users exchange comment offensively, you can step in and hold or delete the comments. This will help other readers to focus on the content instead of getting lost in irrelevant comment discussion.

3. Unnecessary Links

Commenters can provide their website URL in the link text box when leaving a comment. However, you will get different type of links in comments.

• Many people leave their own website URL inside comment content in a hidden manner. For example, linking a space or dot in the text will not be visible when you manage comments in smartphone using plugins like Jetpack. Though WordPress comment section will show the URL, many comment management plugins will not show these hidden links. Unfortunately, you have to find these comments manually before approving them. The best solution is to go to “Discussion” settings in your dashboard and setup holding comments for moderation when they have one or more links.

• Some users link particular page URL in the website link instead of site URL and some crazy commenters may also leave their Facebook page URL. You can delete all these comments with inappropriate URL to keep your site clean.  

4. 404 Links in Comments

Other problem with the URLs in comment section is, you will get 404 errors when the linked sites are no more available online. You can use third-party broken link checker tools to trace out these broken comment links. After finding the relevant comment, you can either remove the link or delete the entire comment to solve 404 errors.

5. Few Words Response

One of the annoying response from many commenters is responding with few words like “Thank you”, “Useful”, etc. In our experience, few word comments are purely left for linking purpose. You do not need to publish these comments, unless they add any value to the discussion.

6. Fake Name and Email

Users expect bloggers to provide legitimate information. The irony is that most users comment with fake email and username. In most cases, you can find the username is same as the name of linked website. In our opinion, you can ignore those leaving comments with fake name and delete them. Unfortunately, you have to review the comment manually for verifying and deleting this type of comments.

7. Codes in Comments

Unless you are running a design blog, we recommend to disable using codes in your comment section. Though this is useful to receive coding tips, it can potentially cause damage to your website’s security. In addition, coding needs proper syntax for clear understanding. Otherwise, it will look untidy and affects the readability.