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Tuesday, January 26, 2010
If you allow users to publish content on your website, from
leaving comments to
creating user profiles,
you'll likely see spammers attempt to take advantage of these mechanisms to generate traffic to
their own sites. Having this spammy content on your site isn't fun for anyone. Users may be
subjected to annoying advertisements directing them to low-quality or dangerous sites containing
scams or malware. And you as a webmaster may be hosting content that violates a search engine's
quality guidelines,
which can harm your site's standing in search results.
There are ways to handle this abuse, such as moderating comments and reviewing new user accounts,
but there is often so much spam created that it can become impossible to keep up with. Spam can
easily get to this unmanageable level because most spam isn't created manually by a human spammer.
Instead, spammers use computer programs called "bots" to automatically fill out web forms to
create spam, and these bots can generate spam much faster than a human can review it.
To level the playing field, you can take steps to make sure that only humans can interact with
potentially spammable features of your website. One way to determine which of your visitors are
human is by using a CAPTCHA , which stands for "completely automated public Turing test to tell
computers and humans apart." A typical CAPTCHA contains an image of distorted letters which humans
can read, but are not easily understood by computers. Here's an example:
You can easily take advantage of this technology on your own site by using
reCAPTCHA, a service
owned by Google. One unique aspect of reCAPTCHA is that data collected from the service is used to
improve the process of scanning text, such as from books or newspapers. By using reCAPTCHA, you're
not only protecting your site from spammers; you're helping to digitize the world's books.
Luis Von Ahn, one reCAPTCHA's co-founders, gives more details about how the service works in the
video below:
If you'd like to implement reCAPTCHA on your own site, you can
sign up.
Plugins are available
for easy installation on popular applications and programming environments such as WordPress and
PHP.
[[["Easy to understand","easyToUnderstand","thumb-up"],["Solved my problem","solvedMyProblem","thumb-up"],["Other","otherUp","thumb-up"]],[["Missing the information I need","missingTheInformationINeed","thumb-down"],["Too complicated / too many steps","tooComplicatedTooManySteps","thumb-down"],["Out of date","outOfDate","thumb-down"],["Samples / code issue","samplesCodeIssue","thumb-down"],["Other","otherDown","thumb-down"]],[],[[["\u003cp\u003eWebsites allowing user-generated content are vulnerable to spam, negatively impacting user experience and search engine rankings.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003eSpam is often generated by automated bots, making manual moderation difficult.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003eCAPTCHAs, like reCAPTCHA, help differentiate human users from bots, effectively reducing spam.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003ereCAPTCHA leverages user input to improve text scanning for digitization projects, offering a dual benefit.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003eImplementing reCAPTCHA is simple with readily available plugins for various platforms.\u003c/p\u003e\n"]]],["Spammers exploit website features like comments and user profiles to drive traffic to their sites, potentially exposing users to harmful content and harming the host site's search ranking. To combat this, websites can utilize CAPTCHAs, which distinguish human users from spam bots. reCAPTCHA, a Google-owned service, offers this technology, also using collected data to digitize text. Website owners can implement reCAPTCHA via signup and available plugins for various platforms.\n"],null,["# Protect your site from spammers with reCAPTCHA\n\nTuesday, January 26, 2010\n\n\nIf you allow users to publish content on your website, from\n[leaving comments](/search/blog/2008/09/keeping-comment-spam-off-your-site-and) to\n[creating user profiles](/search/blog/2009/06/spam20-fake-user-accounts-and-spam),\nyou'll likely see spammers attempt to take advantage of these mechanisms to generate traffic to\ntheir own sites. Having this spammy content on your site isn't fun for anyone. Users may be\nsubjected to annoying advertisements directing them to low-quality or dangerous sites containing\nscams or malware. And you as a webmaster may be hosting content that violates a search engine's\n[quality guidelines](/search/docs/essentials#3),\nwhich can harm your site's standing in search results.\n\n\nThere are ways to handle this abuse, such as moderating comments and reviewing new user accounts,\nbut there is often so much spam created that it can become impossible to keep up with. Spam can\neasily get to this unmanageable level because most spam isn't created manually by a human spammer.\nInstead, spammers use computer programs called \"bots\" to automatically fill out web forms to\ncreate spam, and these bots can generate spam much faster than a human can review it.\n\n\nTo level the playing field, you can take steps to make sure that only humans can interact with\npotentially spammable features of your website. One way to determine which of your visitors are\nhuman is by using a CAPTCHA , which stands for \"completely automated public Turing test to tell\ncomputers and humans apart.\" A typical CAPTCHA contains an image of distorted letters which humans\ncan read, but are not easily understood by computers. Here's an example:\n\n\nYou can easily take advantage of this technology on your own site by using\n[reCAPTCHA](https://www.google.com/recaptcha/about/), a service\nowned by Google. One unique aspect of reCAPTCHA is that data collected from the service is used to\nimprove the process of scanning text, such as from books or newspapers. By using reCAPTCHA, you're\nnot only protecting your site from spammers; you're helping to digitize the world's books.\n\n\nLuis Von Ahn, one reCAPTCHA's co-founders, gives more details about how the service works in the\nvideo below: \n\n\nIf you'd like to implement reCAPTCHA on your own site, you can\n[sign up](https://admin.recaptcha.net/accounts/signup/?next=/recaptcha/createsite/).\n[Plugins are available](https://recaptcha.net/resources)\nfor easy installation on popular applications and programming environments such as WordPress and\nPHP.\n\nPosted by [Michael Wyszomierski](https://wysz.com/about/), Search Quality Team"]]
