Akismet questions

I'm trying to learn more about how Akismet works. Any experts out there with information like this:

1) I have read elsewhere that the system will ban based on either URL being linked in comments OR on IP source of the comments. True? Any other criterion they ban on?

2) If a URL is blocked, is the entire domain blocked? For example, if I get www dot madeupdomain dot com/deeplink/deep.aspx blocked, is www dot madeupdomain dot com completely blocked by them? Or just the specific URL?

3) Once you're on their blacklist, is there an average amount of time before you get off the blacklist?

4) I've read some people suggest you can contact them and ask to be removed from the blacklist. Any other tricks to get off the blacklist short of asking them? I think I know of one but want to see what others might have tried too.

5) I've read that if you try to submit a comment on an aksmt-protected blog and you get just a blank page after you click submit comment, that means you're aksmt blocked. True?

6) If 5 is true, does the comment go into the spam queue of the target blog? Or is it just killed and not sent at all?

Any other info about their systems would be appreciated, I've been researching how they work for awhile and have learned some interesting things.

peace,
gregs.

I'm really surprised that no one has bothered with this thread! This is a pretty damn important topic in my mind, and could do with some serious looking into. I've been doing a few experiments myself recently to try and determine some of this information. Based on these, I can respond to some of your questions:

1) Akismet does appear to ban on URL or IP. It doesn't necessarily link one to the other. Here is how I determine that:I have done this many times myself, and the result can be surprising. You can do Step1 and the comment will pass, then do Step2 and the comment gets caught by Akismet, you can then repeat Step1 again on the same blog and the comment will pass. This suggests that a comment can be blocked by IP without getting the URL blocked.

I have also done this same test with the URL being the variable. The same rule applies, a banned URL can get caught by Akismet. However change the URL but keep the comment and IP the same and it will pass Akismet.

2) Yes usually if a URL is blocked then the entire domain gets blocked. However I think it maybe different for mainstream domains such as YouTube. I have had URLs from major sites blocked, whilst obviously Akismet is not going to ban the entire domain of such a site. So it seems they have a different set of rules for 'large' websites.

5 & 6) Yes this is true. Blank page means the comment has gone into the Akismet bin and not the moderation queue. I have verified this on my own blogs.

On another note, this is one issue with Scrapebox and Wordpress. If a comment goes gets caught by Akismet, then Scrapebox will report it as a success. I have tested this many many times. So if you are using an active fast proxy which happens to be blacklisted in Akismet, then Scrapebox will show you a very high success rate - however you will be waiting forever for your comments to appear as they will have gone into the Akismet bin.

So testing for a good proxy is very important. It's not enough to know that the proxy is active and fast, you also need to know if it is blacklisted in Akismet. I have come across dozens of high quality proxies that are great in every way - with the exception that Akismet has banned them, which in short removes a lot of their usefulness.

Thank you for conducting the experiment, now I have issued this to my SEO group as a way to get our ass off aksimets net.

We need more people like you sharing their experiences and thoughts on everyday stuff that needs to be explained and learn the hard way through experiments.

thanks once again

yes! thanks a lot for this really useful post.

@Kendra - yes, thank your sharing your tests. I've been doing a bit of testing myself for the past couple weeks, was hoping to compare notes with others in this thread.

There is a lot of obfuscation in how @kismet actually works, I'm sure that is intentional on their part and I would really like to hear from others who have encountered them in the past. Since they are the largest blocker/censor of blog comments (google Matt Mullenweg and censorship for an interesting read), their activities effect anyone attempting to comment on blogs - in automated or manual ways.

Yes, the s-box userbase is a prime participant in that right now, but I know there are other BHer's who have done the @kismet dance in the past with other tools/scripts and even with manual commenting. Id be very interested in hearing from others about their experiences.

I know we sometimes try to fly beneath the radar, and even on BHW we tend to be careful about what we share in "public", but the more datapoints we gather about this, the better for all of us. PM me if you have info you aren't comfortable sharing in the open.

@Gregstereo, you're right there is a lot of obfuscation regarding Akismet, unfortunately it is made worse by the nonsense that keeps being perpetuate at the moment, both here at BHW and elsewhere. Many people are saying things that simply are not true...and this really isn't helping matters. And of course many are believing the nonsense and further spreading it about.

Either way, there are some 'simple basics' regarding Akismet and there are some very complex things about it...much in a similar manner to Google. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if Google buy Akismet at some point.

I'm going to send you a PM by the way...

and kendra greg is one of my scrape box proxie
users who is using my proxies even today

this thread needs to grow. I have learned 3 things already. We need more stuff in this thread more hard earn evidence and experimental facts

1. whitescreen and nothing happens after a comment = aksimet caught on you
2. URL is not banned if the IP is changed always
3. IP is not banned if the URL is changed always

That so far is enough to get me going on how I will do my comments.

Anybody tried commenting with domains which 301 redirect to the main site? This way it wouldn't matter if the domain gets blocked by aksimet, since the link juice is still being passed directly to the original domain - or would aksimet block that also?

Hi Greg

Sorry if I'm a bit late, just found this post. I have some WP blogs and I will try and answer as best I can for you,

1. There are 2 sections, moderation queue and black list - within each you can choose your options for restriction on each blog individually.
"When a comment contains any of these words in its content, name, URL, e-mail, or IP, it will be marked as spam".

2. The whole domain is blocked inc deep links, I also get blocked by "commercial style" keywords on many blogs.

3/4. Been on one blacklist a year and still on it, emailed and asked to be removed - ignored and I didn't spam, just wrote quality comments taylor made to each blog, but maybe 15 in a day and got badly burnt - on an auth site....

5.The white page seems to totally block, it doesn't get as far as the spam folder I don't think, this seems to be a Akismet block for banned blogs, the spam folder seems to be an invidual site block, if this makes sense - this is my thought...

You can also hold links in moderation queue by a set number of links being contained in a comment - this is a site side block.

I'd appreciate any work arounds you know of to get my sites free

Thanks Greg and good luck!

Suzie xx

p.s. I have scrapebox and am still learning cautiously how to use it, seen a few posts by you about deeplinks, could you give me a few tips on how to locate them? Footprints seem to be my weakness, as I don't have a techy background, more marketing.

Thanks

gregstereo I have pmed you the last time but I will post it here as well.

Yes it's true: contacting akismet will remove your domain from their blacklist. I have contacted them last week and within 2 days they replied back and said that everything works now. I can start spamming again with my main domain.

Make sure you think of a good story to tell them why your domain was blacklisted.

@suzieq - sorry, I just saw your response to this thread thanks fro FrozenSpade bumping it up. Thanks for the info and I'll post more in a bit.

@ FS - got your PM and will PM you back shortly. And +1 for what spade says - social engineering them into believing that forces out of your control got you blacklisted are your best bet.

Hi,

Interesting thread that I'd like to resurrect. A couple of questions;

- Does anyone have any estimate as to how many blogs actually have this plugin installed upon them? A rough approximation would be greatly appreciated as I have no idea of the type impact a ban would have on blog posting.

- Related to the question above; anyone who has been blacklisted, did it affect your blog posting SEO efforts in a noticeable way? I'm guessing higher value blogs perhaps more often get more spam and so are more likely to have the plugin installed.

- If I have multiple sites hosted on the same server, could one URL being black listed result in all the other URL's on this server also being black listed?

- Does a ban affect anything else other than blog posting, e.g can you be barred from leaving forum sigs etc (If NO, do any other black lists exist for this type of thing that I should be aware of?).

Many thanks,

Tom

xbox360gurl70s said:

this thread needs to grow. I have learned 3 things already. We need more stuff in this thread more hard earn evidence and experimental facts

1. whitescreen and nothing happens after a comment = aksimet caught on you
2. URL is not banned if the IP is changed always
3. IP is not banned if the URL is changed always

That so far is enough to get me going on how I will do my comments.

Click to expand...

1. so true, i experienced this.
2. not sure, but i experienced a situation that if i change the url for example by adding "index.php", i can pass akismet.
3. not sure.

A buddy of mine makes sure to akismetize the blogs that give him the white screen. Most of the owners remove the plugin the day they find themselves on the other side of the moon or so I'm told.

glad this was revived too. i was doing some manual posting the other day to a site that i havent spammed. using my own dsl ip.
got the white screen. i have only made REAL replies and got this in the matter of days. maybe 10 comments relating to the post. stupid.

another thing i have noticed is that you click submit and the screen just refreshed. no comment shown and no comment waiting for mods approval.

pretty dumb that ONE blog owner can click spam and your screwed. or you use a word they dont like