I was reading about this over at SEOmoz and pretty much have to agree. Just like any blog, mine get plenty of comment spam. Akismet takes care of most of it, thank goodness, but some does require the human touch… to the delete comment button.

It’s interesting seeing the spam go from blatant to sneaky. I see lots of the “great site” kinds of comment spam, which is nothing more than a way to get your link in where the name goes. It’s easy to figure out that those should be deleted.

But how do you handle comment spam?

Akismet so far works great for me. Catches the vast majority and I don’t have to put in a barrier like CAPTCHA or registration, both of which can decrease legitimate commenting. I also have the first comment by a given user moderated, so if I delete the comment they will continue to be moderated but otherwise their later comments appear promptly. And of course, if they start to spam then I can take care of it.

I don’t like using the NoFollow tags, and use a plugin to keep it off my blogs. Since I’m doing what I think is a pretty reasonable job of controlling spam on my blogs, why use it?