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Automattic Kismet (Akismet)

by Web Dandy on January 11, 2016

kismet: noun — destiny; fate

Origin: early 19th century: from Turkish, from Arabic qisma 'division, portion, lot', from qasama 'to divide'.

Akismet, launched on 25 October 2005 is by Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com, Jetpack and Woocommerce (acquired in May, 2015).

Akismet is a web service that filters spam from comments, trackbacks, and contact form messages from WordPress websites using the Akismet plugin.

Each time a new comment is posted it's submitted to Akismet which runs hundreds of tests on the comment. This information is captured and used to block future spam. If it's spam, it's either sent "to be moderated" or deleted depending on your settings. If spam gets through the site owner can mark it as spam and the comment (along with information on the IP address it was posted from, the email and URL used as well as the comment content) is added to the Akismet database. Akismet is constantly learning and evolving, effectively improving spam detection over time.

On the 29 October 2013, Akismet tweeted that they had captured over 100 billion spam comments and pings!

Finding Your Comments Are Going To Spam

If when you try to post a comment it doesn't immediately appear or if no message appears saying "Your comment is awaiting moderation" and instead the page reloads at the page top and the web address shows the page URL with #comment-xxxx at the end, it's a good sign that Akismet is seeing your comment(s) as spam.

So what should you do?

1. Contact Akismet at http://akismet.com/contact/.

  • Search for "spam" in the search box under "How can we help?" which will bring up the Aksimet contact form. This will return various search results e.g. "All of my comments are being marked as spam. Please fill out the form below, giving as much detail as you can, and we'll look into it for you".
  • Scroll down to the contact form and check "I think Akismet is catching my comments by mistake" and fill in the form with as much relevant information as possible. Then wait to hear back from Akismet.

2. You should receive an email with the title "[akismet-fp] Contact form".

  • You may be asked to complete a test comment form, so that Akismet can review what happens to your comment and try to diagnose the issue. The email will contain a link to the form (the link is set to expire so fill in the form with a test comment and your usual name/email/URL as soon as possible).
  • Akismet will let you know if they have been able to resolve the problem. If they say your comments were being blocked as spam and they have unblocked you it's still worth asking them if you can leave a test comment on the Aksimet blog (Aksimet will supply the URL) to check that your details no longer "trigger" Akismet to send your comments to spam.

Please note: Akismet will only "unblock" you one time.