…that’s how many spam comments we’ve gotten on the blog in the past week. Akismet (spam plug-in for WordPress) is pretty amazingly effective at routing these junk comments into the spam folder (though this past week a handful got through to our main unapproved queue which usually doesn’t happen). Each of the spam comments is an attempt to get certain keywords with links onto our site. The keywords used to be all sex-oriented, butthen they transitioned into drugs (weight-loss and more sex). Sometimes the mix changes but those are the two basic topics.

Here’s what I don’t understand. Akismet has stopped almost 26,000 spam comments from making it onto our site since we launched. And as I mentioned above, the frequency has increased dramatically in recent weeks. And yet, not a single spam comment has ever gotten through onto our blog. Not one. I realize that sending all these comments our way costs the spammer essentially nothing. But isn’t there a point at which the returns are so close to zero (or in fact zero) that even running the script is not worth their effort?

Thank god for Akismet.