As your WordPress grows, you will see the spam comments also increase. The easiest way to protect your site from such spams is to use Akismet Anti-Spam.
The Akismet plugin checks your comments and contact form submissions against their global database of spam to prevent your WP site from publishing malicious content.
Akismet is currently installed and activated on over 5 million sites. Three plans are available for this popular anti-spam plugin: Personal, Plus and Enterprise.
The Personal plan is free for personal sites and blogs. For professional or commercial sites and blogs, a premium plan such as Plus or Enterprise should be used.
If you choose the Personal plan for your website, you need to confirm that your site is not a commercial site or free of any ads.
You should verify the following:
- You don't have ads on your site
- You don't sell any products/services on your site
- You don't promote a business on your site
You know, many personal blogs contain Google Adsense banners or other ads. Is it possible to use Akismet for WordPress sites containing Google Adsense ads?
For this issue, WordPress.com said: "If you are earning money from advertising on the site, that means it is a commercial site. So you could use the Plus plan instead: https://akismet.com/account/add-subscription/choose-plan."
If you run a WordPress site with Google Adsense ads, it's illegal to use the Personal plan of Akismet. (Many users might have thought that it's allowed to use Akismet for a personal blog even though the site contains Google Adsense ads or Amazon Affiliate codes.) Instead, you could use the Plus plan or other anti-spam plugin.
I use a WordPress comments blacklist from https://github.com/splorp/wordpress-comment-blacklist, which is a good way to prevent the spam comments without using a plugin. You might want to consider this method if you have ads on your WP site.