If you operate a personal online blog, you’re probably already well aware of the problem that is wreaking havoc across the World Wide Web; spam email. Unsolicited commercial e-mail, junk mail; whatever you want to call it, there’s no denying the fact that it costs internet users unnecessary time as well as money. Perhaps one of the groups that is most affected by online spam are personal bloggers; and as any one of them can tell you, spam is no laughing matter.

When operating a blog on the internet, you are responsible for the content that is displayed on your site. This includes not only the content that you write and publish yourself, but the comments that others may leave as well. Unfortunately, a good amount of this is spam – and just like with unwanted e-mail messages, it may be difficult at first to tell which comments are real and which are fake. With a trained eye, however, and a few quick tips you’ll be able to spot blog spam right away, and implement an effective anti spam solution.

- Check user accounts for similar e-mail addresses or IP addresses. Spammers tend to vary their fake e-mail account names only slightly, and they’ll typically all sign up within a short amount of time.

- Take extra caution with usernames that sound too generic. Because they’re only there to post spam, professional spammers usually don’t take much time when making up usernames.

- Keep a look out for cleverly disguised hyperlinks within any user comments. Sometimes you might not even be able to spot a link to another site or advertisement, so you may want to scrutinize all of your user comments extra carefully.