Getting Pingback Spam? Use Your Comment Blacklist

November 13th, 2007

In the past, I’ve never had to worry about trackback/pingback spam because this site’s old hosting didn’t allow them for whatever reason. About a month ago, I actually moved my servicing over to Hostgator to be with my other blogs.

One thing I noticed right away after the transfer was completed is that I am now receiving trackbacks/pingbacks for this site. Unfortunately, along with the trackbacks/pingbacks comes trackback spam, which mostly seems to be .cn domains.

So, do you approve these to try to pad your comment numbers? I personally don’t approve them if I determine they are spam, but instead choose to blacklist those domains. This won’t actually stop the spam, but it will prevent me from receiving additional spam trackbacks/pingbacks in the future.

You can find your Comments Blacklist in your WordPress dashboard under the Options menu and the Discussion sub-menu. You can enter the domains that are sending the spam here (one per line) and then forget about them.

Comment Blacklist

How do you handle trackback/pingback spam?

Ryan Wagner says:

I use the moderate trackbacks plugin:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/moderate-trackbacks/

That way all trackbacks are sent to the moderation queue for me to approve. Well, that’s assuming that they make it past Akismet.

There is also a similar pingback plugin:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/moderate-pingbacks/

November 13th, 2007 at 9:26 am

Dining Tables says:

I believe that your principled stand on spams is the right way to go.

November 13th, 2007 at 10:52 am

K-IntheHouse says:

I never looked under the hood for those options! Thanks Kyle! I have been getting irked by the trackbacks from some splogs and getting tired of deleting them manually!

November 13th, 2007 at 11:49 am

Shivaranjan says:

Kyle-
I ban domain by blacklisting that sends me the spam track using Spam Karma 2 if they get past Spam karma

November 14th, 2007 at 9:16 am

Madhur Kapoor says:

Even i am getting such sort of spam these days and most of the time , Akismet is not able to block it. I am going to try the plugin suggested by Ryan

November 15th, 2007 at 9:17 am

Kyle Eslick says:

Ryan – Thanks for the plugin suggestions! For some reason, all of my trackbacks go to my moderation queue anyway (unless I’ve blacklisted them).

November 15th, 2007 at 4:25 pm

No problem, I’m guessing that you might have a keyword in your moderation list that all of the trackbacks are matching? I don’t know why they would all be going to moderation otherwise.

November 16th, 2007 at 9:33 am