Isn’t it great when a new comment comes in on your lovingly crafted blog? But when you look closer, what a sad disappointment it is to see it’s in Cyrillic, crammed with links, and clearly dumped there by a Russian bot. So, how do you counter the spam bots flooding your WordPress site?

 

I trawled the net looking for solutions to the daily deluge of spam my Bashful Blagger articles receive. And this is what I found…

But first, some quick facts and interesting figures. I wondered (perhaps naïvely) why my blog was getting so much comment spam. Simple answer: the CMS (content management system) I use is WordPress.

WordPress was created in 2003 by two bloggers, Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. It basically began as a platform just for blogs but today the free, open-source program is often used to create all kinds of websites. Like mine, created to let readers know about my (sapphic) coming of age books, Revealing Philippa and Becoming Janice. But I digress. Since its humble beginnings, user-friendly, easily accessible WordPress has become the most popular CMS in the world.

WordPress Statistics updated in March 2025

The WordPress CMS powers 43.5% of all websites.
Around 513.58 million websites are built on WordPress.
WordPress dominates the CMS market with a 61.7% share.
Source: WPZOOM

Obviously, “the more, the merrier” is what motivates automated software applications, aka spam bots—or rather the Doctors Evil (closely related to the Doctors Nyet) who created them. Because there are so very many WordPress websites around the world, they form a mighty good target for the zillions of spam bots scanning the net, looking for blogs to drop their comments in. Their nefarious goal: to use your blog post as an advertisement for their own site in the hope that innocent visitors will click on their links to increase their search engine rankings.

But you already know that, don’t you?

What I didn’t know when I began posting weekly (strongly!) on Bashful Blagger, back in December 2023 (this is post #62) and still don’t understand today is exactly why all these Russian language comments are trying to clutter my posts. Seems like wasted effort to me. I mean, I write in English and don’t read Cyrillic. And I reckon it’s safe to assume Bashful Blagger’s readers don’t speak or understand it either. Chances are, they won’t click on the Russian cuckoo’s links.

Ban the spam

Anyway, here are five top sites I found that offer excellent advice on how to beat the bots, Russian or otherwise. Must admit, they basically all say the same thing—they describe what you should tick and untick in the Discussion section of WordPress settings—but all five posts are very well written and make interesting reading. So check ’em out.

• WordPress essentials: Combatting WordPress comment spam by Maddy Osman
• How to Stop Spam Comments on WordPress  by Pavel Ciorici
• 4 Effective Ways to Stop WordPress Comment Spam by Mulan G.
• How to Reduce and Prevent the Number of Spam Comments on my Website by Ali Dolphin
• How to Stop WordPress Spam Comments by Rachel McCollin

But hey, it’s not just the bots that may be clogging your comments. We, real people, can do the same either on purpose or unwittingly. Here’s a refreshing take from the other side of the coin.

• How NOT to be a Spammer: A Guide for Authors by Anne R. Allen

Canned the spam

But oh dearie-me, what about poor real spam! Read this article by Laura Hood to find out How Spam became one of the most iconic American brands of all time.

“Cold or hot…Spam hits the spot!”
Source: Classic Film/flickr

To go out with a bang… how did real spam get turned into fake spam? Wiki knows: “The term originates from a Monty Python sketch, where the name of a canned meat product, ‘Spam,’  is used repetitively, mirroring the intrusive nature of unwanted emails.”

Comment competition

Count the cliché’s intentionally egging this article! Submit your total in a comment below and next week the winner will get a free subscription to Bashful Blagger (jk).▼