It seems that all my comments on blogs in the past few days are getting labelled as SPAM. I started to wonder after a few days when my comments weren’t showing on blogs that normally welcome my comments. I checked with a few friends and checked on some of my other blogs, just to confirm this. It appears that my name / email address / URL / IP address combination are somehow triggering these filters. It came as a shock, as I don’t really bombard blogs with comments, I guess that for every 50 or 60 blog posts I read, I leave 1 comment.
Getting off the Akismet Blacklist
After reading around, a little the only solution I’ve come up with is to contact Akismet and fill out a support question. And wait until you hear back from them.
So for now I will be taking it easy commenting on blogs. I’ve tried to change the name, leave the email address and IP address and omit the URL, and it still thinks I’m a spammer. 
Knowing when you are blocked by Akismet
I would be really nice if there was a way to find out if your name / email address / URL / IP address were indeed flagged as SPAM, but maybe this would counteract the good work that Akismet does. Actually, thinking a bit more, there might be one way, if your comment is held in moderation by wordpress, and it’s supported by your theme, it will display a notice, saying that you need to wait for your comment to be approved, that it’s awaiting moderation. Some themes even display your message to only you (using session variables). And when it’s flagged as SPAM you don’t see any difference on the blog post once you’ve added your comment.
Let’s see when I can get back to commenting on other people’s blogs …
9.5.2008
If it continues to be a problem, you could use a proxy until the issue is resolved. Firefox has an addon that is very easy to use.
10.1.2008
Well, I think I am banned too, let see if my comment will appear here
Now – serious – I gave a real email to you and I would really be grateful if you mail me if there is any solution provided to you by akismet. Thanks!
10.3.2008
That doesn’t always work though. There’s too much evidence that Matt uses Akismet as his own personal censorship tool. We’ve actually banned it from our own servers and moved over to a self hosted solution based on Spam Assassin. That way we can see what is occurring and aren’t at Matt’s mercy.
10.7.2008
Hi Mike, I seriously doubt that Matt has the interest or time to be doing such things.
I fear that you have put 1 & 1 together and got 11.
paul
11.17.2008
Seems as though I have magically ended up on a blacklist to for Akismet. This is very very annoying but would explain a lot of the problems I’ve had over the past months
11.19.2008
Hi Marie, that comment was in my SPAM collector too. But I manually marked is as NOT SPAM. I would take the steps that I did, i.e. fill out the form, and in the mean time maybe use a different email address for leaving comments.
Hope you get off the list too.
Paul
2.10.2009
This is exactly what I experience with one of my sites, although my comments are always relevant. It would be helpful if there was a way to tell whether your site was on the blacklist or not.
6.20.2009
Thanks for the advice and have put a request through to Akismet.
I have been scratching my head all morning as comments would not go through, I resent the same comment using a different domain, works, with my main domain, blank page appears.
Och well, hopefully their support team are nice
7.18.2009
Thanks for sharing this info, they really need a better way to fight spam as Akismet causes problems for many legitimate blog posters too.
12.4.2009
I use Akismet for all my blogs but it’s so powerful that sometimes I worry that I’ll get banned myself. lol
12.21.2009
@Jason, I doubt you’ll check back here since it was over a year ago, but you can’t just use a proxy as Akismet will ban the domain too.
If you read the forums at sitepoint someone claimed to have been banned for using keywords in the name field. That’s crazy if you ask me. Who wants to only build links for their personal name? On the flipside, I’ve used my site name as the anchor text on many “dofollow” blogs with no ban.
1.1.2010
Hello,
I’ve been having the same problem. It’s very unfortunate for me as I only write quality comments and not just a general comment like “great post” “thanks for the nice article”. I have a few blogs that I’ve been following for several years now, and I’m been commenting on them on a regular basis. But my latest domain torinocreative.com has been black listed. My solution to the problem is, since I’m pretty close to some of the blog owners, I’ve been contacting them by email and I ask them to unspam my comments. But I don’t know how long I can do this for.
I don’t even know if this comment is going to show up as I’m using the same domain name that has been blacklisted. If anyone has found a way to be removed from the blacklist please please share.
Thanks
Artin
1.1.2010
Hello, the best way is to alter your email address and stop linking to your domain. That will raise less flags for akismet.
Paul
1.12.2010
I was asked by one of my editors to check this out – since engaging in web 2.0 conversations is part of his responsibilities. The main concern is whether a competitor can ban your domain using this, because I suppose Akismet uses the comment body as well to look for banned domains (hence invalidating any references, even when not in a href tags). Any comments on this?
Gabriel
1.14.2010
One main strength in Akismet is it’s central power, as in it deals with hundreds if not thousands of blog comments every second. And a high percentage of these are spam.
I think some of the bigger flags for them would be
* keyword lists (i.e. viagra, cialis, etc)
* having a link(s) in your comment body
* high volume of comments per IP in a short space of time.
I don’t think that one comment marked as spam or even multiple comments will get your black listed.
If you suspect someone doing some “anti-social-behaviour” and misrepresenting your company by impersonation and bad quality comments then it could be quite likely that you would get banned. But do remember that the first set of comments will probably get through. So check your google webmaster to see if someone is doing some comment (spam) without your permission.
HTH,
Paul
2.6.2010
I think my site (in my signature) is being blacklisted by Akismet! I contacted them but still haven’t received a response yet. (If this comment goes to the spam folder, please despam it if you somehow see it.) Thanks.
-Melinda
3.5.2010
Yes Melinda it was flagged as SPAM.
3.7.2010
What’s to stop someone from blacklisting an email that is not theirs (e.g. an ex)?
I’m not fond of the potential for abuse.
3.16.2010
Hi Welly, I guess there are multiple factors that go into this, like IP address, which can’t really be easily faked (plus you would have to guess your targets one in the first place)
Paul
3.27.2010
I hope they remove me from black list too
4.3.2010
I’m trying to figure out if I’m banned right now
4.4.2010
Ahhh this might explain why I’m often stuck when I try to post. I’ve been reading a lot of health related websites to get a better understand of vitamins ( which I’ve linked to this post). I of course added comments with links to my website when applicable.
Was this comment market as spam? I would be really curious to know…
4.6.2010
i do agree that askimet just blindly does so and in an automated way.
4.7.2010
kmkpro : your comment wasn’t in the spam queue
4.7.2010
GC : yes you were in the SPAM queue… Maybe change your email address when leaving comments. Also use your real name, I have change yours from Grout Colorant to GC here, as your comment violated our comment policy.
4.7.2010
We’ve run into the problem with medical sites as well, even with Typepad’s solution as well as our own in house solution that we now use. Once you start throwing around the same medical terms that spammers are using, it’s hard to tell the difference between the two different types of comments. We (sort of) solved it with our inhouse system with bumping up the weight of how often a website is being included with a comment as well as how often comments (and trackbacks) are being made from a single specific IP address. My understanding of both Akismet and Typepad’s (and I’ll be the first to mention that I’ve not contacted either one of these companies so my statement is purely suggestive) is more weight is placed on contents of the comment as well as the url being reference within the Website field.
6.7.2010
Same problem i am facing, dont know y akismet blacklisting my comments..
6.8.2010
Hi Sunny, the good news is that this comment wasn’t in the SPAM queue !
6.12.2010
I have a theory………
I just got banned through my domain. I tried it from a different IP and I am positive that it is my domain that is banned.
So I tried to email them… will update you if that actually works.
My solution:
If you mark these comments as ‘NOT SPAM’ in enough wordpress blogs then hopefully askimet will unban you.
Its almost impossible for most SEO companies to find all the blogs that their URL was listed in and request that that webmaster unban them, however, my theory is that if you get your url banned in 10 blogs, but then you try posting to 10 new blogs (where you know or are the webmaster) and mark your own posts as not spam (if doing it on your own domains they must be on different IPs)… then you will be unbanned by Askimet.
Just FYI- I have no idea if this ACTUALLY works, but I’d love some feedback from experiences
6.12.2010
I have a theory………
I just got banned through my domain. I tried it from a different IP and I am positive that it is my domain that is banned.
So I tried to email them… will update you if that actually works.
My solution:
If you mark these comments as ‘NOT SPAM’ in enough wordpress blogs then hopefully askimet will unban you.
Its almost impossible for most SEO companies to find all the blogs that their URL was listed in and request that that webmaster unban them, however, my theory is that if you get your url banned in 10 blogs, but then you try posting to 10 new blogs (where you know or are the webmaster) and mark your own posts as not spam (if doing it on your own domains they must be on different IPs)… then you will be unbanned by Askimet.
Just FYI- I have no idea if this ACTUALLY works, but I’d love some feedback from experiences.
ADMIN- I just tried the first post with my URL in the website field and it did not post, so you should be able to see that on the backend…. please mark it as not spam!
6.12.2010
Hi Bob , you were right it was in the SPAM queue, and I marked it as not spam. When I was banned back in 2008 when I wrote this post I went to my blogs and client blogs and it took more than 10 not to have me banned as far as I remember. Maybe it’s time related aswell. (FYI I only approved one comment here (the one in the SPAM queue), and I changed your user name after I approved the comment)
7.20.2010
Hi Paul. I’ve been posting comments to get backlinks for my site and I think I’ve already got on the askimet blacklist. Please confirm this. Thank you.
7.21.2010
Hi Pavel, yes your comment was flagged as SPAM