I used to be good at catching a spammy comment and was equally good at marking it as spam. But recently, I always have trouble telling spammy comments apart from the real comments left by real people, whether or not they are bloggers. I have found that either the spam robots were getting better by sounding more and more like a real person, or I wasn’t getting better at detecting them.

When I think a certain comment is suspicious, the first thing I would do is to visit the site. If the site was an aggregator of some kind, or if it was written in a foreign language, or if it did not appear to me like a site that was maintained by a real person, I would mark that particular comment as spam.

If I was convinced that the site was maintained by a real blogger, I would then check out the “About Me” page to get the blogger’s name. I really don’t mind it if you used a nickname, or “your name @ your site” for example “Patrick @ Pays To Live Green” or “Nicole Price @ Great Prices Here” because I understand that it is a form of personal branding. But “Webmaster Radio” or “Genel Kultur” or “Affiliate Marketing” or “Discover” or “diet” certainly DO NOT sound like a real name to me!

The next thing I would look at is the comment. If the comment added value to the discussion on a certain post, I would let it pass, but only after I have changed the name of the commentator. However interesting a comment is, I would never let the commentator be “Affiliate Marketing”. If I couldn’t find a nickname on your blog, I would change your name to “Anonymous”. But if the comment was obviously a time-waster, I would hit the MARK AS SPAM button *flush*

The reason I monitor my comments is because I do not want to allow anybody to think that my blog is their playground. I do not want them to think that it is OK to drop me a useless comment and get some link love back to their sites. Moreover, I want my regular readers and regular commentators to know that my blog isn’t flooded by spammy robots. As much as each comment is important to me, I would rather have fewer meaningful comments than more meaningless ones. What values do those meaningless comments bring to my blog and my readers? None.

Because I do not receive hundreds of comments daily, I am able to mark a certain comment as spam (or otherwise) within 24 – 48 hours. But if you have a huge following, or if you receive a lot of comments, what do you do with these spammy-sounding comments? Do you give them the benefit of the doubt?