Do you know who follows your blog? Do you care about who is following you? If not, you ought to.
I’ve recently gained many new followers. Delighted, you may ask? Far from it. You see, I’ve noticed a trend among these followers. They all have a lot of random numbers (sometimes mixed with letters) in their profile names. Here’s an example:
Not only that, but all of them ended with @gmail.com or @hotmail.com. And they follow in batches.
They not only seemed strange to me, but I also had no way of discovering who these new followers were, as none of them had any links in their Gravatar profile apart from their email address.
I soon realised that most of these new followers were spam-bots. What’s wrong with that, you may ask? There are several reasons why permitting spam-bots to follow and subscribe to your blog is not advisable.
Reasons to Not Allow Spam-Bots to Follow Your Blog
- Reduced Engagement
- Spam followers do not contribute meaningful interactions, which can skew your engagement metrics and give a false impression of your blog’s popularity. They will, however, try to bombard your blog with spam comments and try to spam the comments box of your readers, too.
- Dilution of Community
- Genuine followers are lost in a sea of spam accounts, making it harder to build a real community around your blog.
- Potential Security Risks
- Spam-bots may pose security threats, as they can be linked to malicious activities such as hacking attempts or phishing schemes.
- Impact on SEO
- Search engines may see high numbers of spam accounts as a sign of poor-quality content, which can negatively affect your blog’s search ranking.
- Email Spam
- Spam-bots can lead to unwanted comments and email communication, and may even compromise your email’s reputation if they harvest your blog’s content.
- Negative Perception
- A blog with many spam followers can create a negative impression on potential genuine followers, who may question the legitimacy of your content, especially if lots of spam comments show up on your posts.
- Lack of Valuable Feedback
- Engaging with real readers provides valuable feedback and insights, whereas spam accounts offer no legitimate input on your content.
It’s simple to unsubscribe anyone (including spam-bots) from following your blog. Here’s how to do it. I’m doing this using an iMac Desktop computer.
- On your blog’s dashboard, select Jetpack – Subscribers.
- You will see a list of all your subscribers.
- Click on the three dots (also known as a kebab menu) next to the subscriber you wish to delete and select ‘Remove.’ You have now unsubscribed the account from your blog.
- If you wish to discover more about the subscriber, click the ‘View‘ button. Doing so allows you to gather further information about the subscriber, including whether they have a WordPress blog.
While removing these spam-bots from my blog, I noticed that WordPress had also been busy informing me of purged subscribers.
I had no idea WordPress did this. However, I still had to unsubscribe the purged accounts and remove them from following my blog.
By being vigilant in monitoring your followers, you can help ensure that your blog remains a vibrant and secure space for genuine interaction.
And here’s what happened when I unsubscribed these spam-bot and purged accounts.
Summary
- Allowing spam-bots to follow your blog can lead to several issues.
- They don’t contribute meaningfully, skewing your metrics.
- Genuine followers can be lost among fake accounts.
- Spambots may be linked to malicious activities.
- High numbers of spam followers may harm your blog’s search rankings.
- They can lead to unwanted communication and damage your email reputation.
- Many spam accounts can diminish your blog’s legitimacy.
- Real readers provide insights; spam accounts do not.
- Unsubscribing spam-bots is straightforward through the Jetpack – Subscribers section on your blog’s dashboard.
- After removing these accounts, you may notice a decline in subscribers, which, although concerning, can be a healthy sign of clearing out ineffective followers.
- Staying vigilant about your follower base is key to maintaining a genuine and engaging blog.
Are you aware of who is following your blog? How do you protect your blog from unwanted subscribers?
Layout, content, settings, and format might differ on self-hosted blogs.
The featured image in this blog post is taken from Pixabay. AI checked spelling and grammar mistakes.
I’m getting tough with non-engaging comments. Comments such as ‘Nice post’ are marked as spam.
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