Evil Akismet
I know I don’t post here half as often as I should and this isn’t really the point of the blog but Im gonna have a little rant about something here. As you mayknow I have my finger in a few different SEO pies and have relationships with a lot of programmers so I get to test a lot of public betas and private software. I use a lot of these tools as they were intended and let the creators know how I got on, I also use some of the tools a lot after testing period is over.
?One of the tools I use regularly is the free blog comment tool?I love the tool as it makes finding relevant blogs to link from as easy as pie (thats a lot of pies already, maybe Im hungry……). Its a great tool and does what it says on the tin, however I recently went to get some comments from a site I have done no blog commenting on, no outsourcing or any link building services that did any blog commenting.
?The first comment I had gave me a blank white screen, akismet’s major footprint. I thought ah maybe my IP is banned, reset router, new IP, resubmitted…. no dice. So I changed up anchor text to be a very common name, changed IP, changed useragent changed comment….. no dice… still blank screen.
Now I tried changing everything and I was still getting the usual reply from Akismet “Fuck off spambot” but I am no spam bot. I don’t even like spamming, it annoys the hell out me receiving so I limit the amount I do myself. I want to reiterate I have never spammed this domain, it has no history from before I bought it, all my comments were perfectly legit, on topic hand written comments that have never been near spam.
?Basically what has happened here is a blogger like myself has seen the anchor text and website and thought nope your a link builder so Im not going to allow your legit comment, hit the spam button and got my whole domain banned. Obviously lots of people use Akismet not realising they literally have the power of the blogosphere at their fingertips.
?The worrying thing about all of this is that it shows quite clearly that literally just a couple of bloggers can get a whole domain banned by akismet, this will seriously limit the number of links that site is ever able to generate and in turn limit its potential rankings, not to mention the amount of time and money wasted in trying to build links using this plugin.
To summarize I like what Akismet tried to do but they have become a law unto themselves and are fucking some of us in the ass. Don’t forget this. I for one am going to contact them to remove domain bans right away as it is too easy to impact competitors with such minimal effort.
On-Page SEO Tools | admin | 23 July 2009 |
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By Robert, October 22, 2010 @ 4:33 pm
my domain has been blocked the same way. I can’t post any comments with its web address, not in website field nor in comments text as a link.
I wrote akismet and no response. What can I do ?
By mark, April 24, 2011 @ 6:12 pm
The problem with Akismet is that it and their users easily and wrongfully blacklists countless of domains of which doesn’t deserve the permanent life time ban. Akismet has become a new sort of Internet police that can easily be used to black list ones competitors.
The fact is that it doesn’t take much to get on this ban list, and when some blog owner has decided that you belong there? Well there isn’t anything that you can do. Akismet won’t answer your requests. It’s a complete missuse of power from bottom to top.
In my view, Akismet has the same status as all the crappy spam filters we see in email accounts. You still have to treat the spam folder as your inbox. Important mails end up in the spam folder every other day. What’s the point of a spam folder when you still have to treat it as an inbox and sort through all those mails in order to not miss any wanted mails?
The same applies to Akismet. Even on the local level the blog owners doesn’t have any power to white list a domain. What I mean is as simple as follows. If a blog owner finds a comment in the spam folder which he doesn’t think belong there and white list it, the domain will still be black listed even on the local level. So the next time that person comments on the blog it will still count as spam, even though the owner has explicitly marked it as okay on his blog.
By admin, April 24, 2011 @ 10:44 pm
I totally agree. I constantly have to check through the akismet list of comments because I have missed out on so many comments in the past due to the filter.