Blog Comment Spam: Moderation Rules, rel=ugc, Approval

The short answer for anyone running comments, a forum or member profiles: hold new comments for approval, write down what gets rejected, and mark every user-submitted link with rel="ugc". This is written for blog owners, community managers and small publishers who open a text box to the public and want to keep it useful. Whether a commenter gains anything from leaving a link is a different question and sits outside this topic; here the focus is the person holding the gate.

What Google calls user-generated spam

The definition and its examples

Google's spam policies (Opens in a new tab) define user-generated spam as spammy content added to a site by users through a channel intended for user content. The page lists comment spam on blogs and spammy posts on forum threads as examples. It also observes that site owners are often unaware of the spammy content sitting on their pages. That last point shapes the rest of this topic: the failure is frequently not a clever spammer but an unattended text box.

The same page gives only a pointer for owners, a link to tips on preventing abuse of public areas. It does not describe moderation steps, thresholds or tooling, and it does not mention rel="ugc" at all. Everything below that goes beyond those statements is labeled as a practical suggestion, so you can see where a documented fact ends and an editorial judgment begins.

Where link spam enters the picture

Link spam, per the same policy page, means creating links to or from a site primarily to manipulate search rankings. Its examples include forum comments with optimized links in the post or signature, automated programs or services that create links, and widely distributed links in footers or templates. The page also says paid links are acceptable when qualified with nofollow or sponsored. Read together, a comment section is one of the places where someone can try to leave exactly that kind of link, on a page you publish.

What the policy page does not say is what happens to your own site when a spam comment stays up. That consequence is not described, so any claim about penalties from a single stray comment would be speculation. The defensible position is narrower: spam examples are listed, you control your public areas, and cleaning them up is your job.

What readers see

Set search aside for a moment. A reader who scrolls past an article about bread baking and meets a string of casino links will judge the whole page by that string. That is an observation about trust, not a measured effect. It is still enough to justify moderation, because every approved comment appears next to your own writing under your name.

Choosing the gate: approval queue models

Three models and what each costs

There are three common ways to run a comment queue. Holding everything for approval keeps spam off the page entirely but costs human time on every comment. Approving a person once and trusting their later comments is faster for regulars, with the risk that a trusted account turns bad. Publishing first and cleaning later feels open but depends entirely on the owner actually looking, which the spam policies page suggests owners often do not do.

None of this is drawn from a Google document, which is silent on queue design. Treat the table as a practical suggestion and choose by how many comments you receive and how many hours a week you can give them.

A decision rule for the whole setup

Practical suggestion: pick the strictest model you can sustain, not the strictest one you can imagine. If you can review comments every working day, publish-then-review is workable. If you can look once a week, hold everything. If you cannot look at all, close comments on older posts. An unreviewed open field is the one configuration that the spam policies page describes as a problem, because owners do not see what lands there.

Writing the rule list

A queue without rules turns into mood. Write the rules once, keep them short, and tie each to something visible in the comment itself. A workable starter list follows.

1. Does the comment respond to something in the article? If not, reject it.
2. Does it contain a link beyond the commenter's name field? Check whether the link supports a point or only promotes something.
3. Is the commenter name a brand, a product or a keyword phrase instead of a person's name? Review before approving.
4. Has the same text appeared on other posts? Reject and consider blocking the source.
5. Is the comment only generic praise with no detail? Reject unless the commenter is a known reader.
6. Does the link hide behind a single character or an unrelated word? Reject. Google's page names linking a single small character as an example of hidden link abuse.
7. Does the comment expose private details such as a phone number or home address? Remove those details or reject.

Only the sixth item has direct support in the policy page. The rest is editorial scaffolding. The list is seven items because seven is easy to apply, not because seven is special.

Link attributes in practice

What Google's outbound link page says

The page on qualifying outbound links (Opens in a new tab) describes three values. Use sponsored for advertisements and paid placements, where nofollow is still acceptable but sponsored is preferred. Use ugc for user-generated content such as comments and forum posts. Use nofollow when other values do not apply and you do not want Google to associate your site with the target or crawl from it. Several values can be combined in one rel attribute, separated by spaces or commas.

The page adds that marked links will generally not be followed, though the targets may still be crawled if Google finds them through sitemaps or other sites. It does not say whether the values are treated as hints. For links pointing at your own site, it suggests a robots.txt disallow rule rather than nofollow. If you want the broader comparison of all four labels, the article on dofollow, nofollow, sponsored and ugc covers it separately.

Verify the markup, not the setting

Practical suggestion: do not trust a settings checkbox. Open a published comment, view the page source and read the actual anchor. A comment can expose links through more than one path: the commenter's website link beside the name, links typed into the comment body, and links created automatically from pasted addresses. One path may carry the attribute while another does not. Check each path on a live comment.

Rewarding trusted contributors

The outbound links page notes that you might remove the ugc value for members who have consistently contributed high-quality content over time. It sets no criteria. If you take that route, write criteria down, such as a minimum period, no rejected comments and an editor's explicit approval, and make the removal a human decision. An automatic rule that strips the attribute after a certain comment count will be gamed by anyone who understands it.

Patterns worth rejecting

A pattern table

These are structural patterns, not quotations. Your own queue will produce others, so treat the table as a starting vocabulary rather than a measured distribution.

The last row matters most. Moderation is not a ban on links; a comment that adds a relevant source can be the most valuable thing under an article.

Example scenario: a recipe blog

Example scenario: the owner of a home baking blog finds three new comments beneath a sourdough post. One asks whether a colder kitchen changes the proofing time and quotes a sentence from the post. Another says "Great post, thanks" and links a betting site from the name field. The third promotes an unrelated gadget. The owner opens the rule list. The first comment is specific and relevant, so it is approved and answered. The second is detail-free praise with a commercial link, so it is rejected. The third is off-topic promotion and the sender is blocked. The decisions take minutes because each maps to a written rule, and the owner then reads the page source of the approved comment to confirm the commenter link carries rel="ugc".

Block or just reject?

Rejecting and blocking are different decisions. Practical suggestion: block only senders showing deliberate abuse, such as repeated text across posts, automated-looking bursts or disguised links. When in doubt, reject without blocking so a genuine reader who misjudged is not shut out.

Cleanup and ongoing hygiene

A one-time sweep of published comments

A new queue does nothing about comments already live. Since the spam policies page notes that owners are often unaware of such content, run one deliberate pass over what is published. List comments containing links, judge each against the rule list, trash what fails, and inspect the rel values of what remains. If your platform cannot filter by links, ask whoever maintains the database to list comment rows that contain a URL.

Old comments and missing attributes

Comments published before you added rel="ugc" may lack it, and a system upgrade does not always rewrite stored comments. A reliable approach is to apply the attribute at render time in the template, so old and new comments follow the same rule. Whether that change belongs in your theme, a plugin setting or custom code depends on your platform, which is a question for your developer.

Letting readers report

Give readers a visible way to flag a comment, even if it is just an email address near the comment form. Log each report with date, comment, and decision. The log shows whether a pattern repeats and which rule needs sharper wording.

Weekly checklist

• Empty the approval queue.
• Skim the rejected folder for mistakes.
• Spot check the rel attribute on a recent approved comment.
• Add any new pattern to the rule list.
• Answer reader reports and update the log.
• Look at comment fields on older posts, which are easy to forget.

When closing comments is the right call

If you cannot sustain the weekly routine, close comments on older posts or after a set period. A closed field carries less risk than an open field nobody reads. Offer a contact form so readers still have a way to reach you.

Forums and profile pages follow the same logic

The spam policies page names spammy forum posts and optimized links in forum signatures. Any member profile field that accepts a website link should apply ugc as well. For the person leaving links on forums, see forum and community backlinks; for the comment side, blog comment and profile links weighs whether they are worth leaving at all. This piece sits on the opposite side of that counter.

When the comment section outweighs the article

If a page has a few short paragraphs and dozens of unrelated comments, the comments dominate what the page is about. That is a thin-content problem beyond moderation, and thin content: how to find and fix it covers the diagnosis. Comments add to a page; they should not be what makes the page worth visiting.

Technical friction as a supporting layer

Account requirements, rate limits, caps on links per comment and bot challenges can lower spam volume. Google's documents give no list of tools, so no product is named here. The test for any friction is whether it also slows down real readers; if it does, weigh the loss against the gain.

Measuring whether it works

Track three plain numbers for your own site: comments received per week, share rejected, and how long a comment waits in the queue. Compare only against your own past weeks. A sudden jump in the rejected share points to a new wave. A growing wait means genuine readers are being kept waiting, which can quiet a conversation.

Quarterly review of the rules

Practical suggestion: every few months read your rule list against recent decisions. Which rules never fire? Which genuine comments were wrongly rejected? Is the queue wait acceptable? The interval is a choice, not a documented figure. Adjust it to your volume.

Quick reference

Communicating the rules to readers

A three-sentence comment policy

A short note beside the comment form does two jobs. It tells honest readers what to expect, and it gives you something to point to when you reject a comment. Three sentences are enough: comments are reviewed before they appear, off-topic promotion is not published, and links in comments are marked as user-generated. The third sentence also tells anyone hoping for a ranking boost that the link will carry a qualifier. If you publish a longer policy page, make it a real page with substance, since a page that holds a few lines and nothing else is a candidate for the thin-content problem mentioned earlier.

Replying when a legitimate comment is rejected

Mistakes happen, and a genuine reader who is silently rejected rarely returns. Keep a short reply template: the comment could not be published because the link did not clearly relate to the article, and the reader is welcome to resubmit without the link or with an explanation of why it is relevant. The template costs nothing, offers a way back and gives a spammer nothing to exploit.

Handling appeals and complaints

Someone will eventually object to a rejection. Practical suggestion: have a second person, or yourself after a day, re-read the comment against the written rule that was cited. If the rule did not clearly apply, approve the comment and tighten the wording of the rule. If it did apply, keep the decision and point to the rule. Writing the reason in the log makes the next case faster.

Applying the same gate to members and profiles

New member restrictions

On sites with registration, the first posts of a new account are the riskiest. A common design is to hold the first posts, disallow links in them, and lift the restriction after a person has posted a few approved contributions. Google's pages do not prescribe this, so it is a practical suggestion, and the number of approved posts is yours to choose. The point is that a link is a privilege earned inside your community, not a default.

Profile fields and signatures

The spam policies page lists optimized links in forum signatures as a link spam example. If your platform lets members add a website in a profile or signature, apply ugc there as well and consider hiding the field until the account has some history. Confirm in the page source that the profile link carries the attribute, because profile fields often use a different template from comments.

This table is a practical suggestion for a platform that allows all five paths. If your site only has comments, only the first two rows apply.

Example scenario: a neighborhood notice forum

Example scenario: a volunteer runs an online notice board for a housing estate. New residents register and post about lost items, repairs and local events. One week, several new accounts post short messages praising a service and put a website in the profile. The volunteer switches on first-post approval, hides the profile website field for accounts without approved posts, and checks the page source of an existing member's profile to see whether the link carries rel="ugc". It does not, so the volunteer asks the platform maintainer to add it in the template. Nothing here depends on a particular product; the steps are a gate, a restriction and a source check.

Final self-check before you call it done

A short audit list

1. Can you name the model you use: hold all, hold first, or publish then review?
2. Is the rule list written somewhere a second person could read it?
3. Have you opened the source of one live comment, one commenter-name link and one profile link to confirm ugc?
4. Did you sweep the comments already published?
5. Do readers have a way to report a comment?
6. Is the weekly check on a calendar, and is there a fallback of closing comments if it slips?

If every answer is yes, the setup is in reasonable shape for a small site. If any answer is no, fix that item before adding more tooling. Remember that limits and recommendations in Google's documentation can change, so revisit the current outbound links and spam policy pages from time to time.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does comment spam get my site penalized?

Google's spam policies page lists blog comment spam as a form of user-generated spam and notes that owners are often unaware of it. The page does not describe what happens to a site because of such comments, so a claim of automatic penalties has no support there.

Is rel=ugc enough to deal with comment spam?

The attribute declares what a link is; it does not remove the comment. Google's outbound links page recommends ugc for comments and forum posts, but moderation still decides what stays on the page. Reject unwanted comments first, then mark the links on those you approve.

Can I use nofollow instead of ugc?

Google describes nofollow as the fallback when other values do not apply. For comments and forum posts, ugc is the matching value. Several values can be listed together, separated by spaces or commas.

Should every comment wait for approval?

Google's documents are silent on queue design. As a practical suggestion, holding all comments suits low-volume sites, while a first-comment-only hold suits sites with returning readers. Choose according to the review time you can reliably give.

Can I remove ugc for trusted members?

Google's page says you might remove the value for members who have contributed high-quality content over time. It sets no criteria, so define them yourself and keep the decision with a person.

What should I do about comments that are already published?

Run one sweep: list the comments with links, judge them against your rule list, delete failures and check the rel values on the rest. If you cannot keep up with moderation on old posts, closing comments there is an option.

Conclusion

Comment spam is a documented category of user-generated spam, and Google's pages leave the practical handling to site owners. A held queue, a short written rule list and rel="ugc" on user links form a sensible baseline. Thresholds, intervals and tooling are your decisions, since the documents supply none. Start by choosing the gate model you can sustain, write the rules, sweep what is already published, and put the weekly check on a calendar. Limits in Google's documentation can change, so check the current pages before relying on any detail.

If you also want to earn links on sites other than your own, you can look at the backlink packages as one option to weigh.