@thewordpressghost
For tips on how to spot spam these may help > http://onecoolsitebloggingtips.com/2012/05/20/mark-spam-as-spam/ and http://onecoolsitebloggingtips.com/2010/05/06/trackback-and-pinback-spam-what-to-do/

How do I know someone is not a spammer if Akismet says they are a spammer?

Here are a few things you can check:

• The name and email address look legitimate, where both "match" with each other. (No gibberish.)
• View the domain—and website URL, if listed—and see if the site is legitimate.
• Read the context of the comment in regards to your post. Generalizations usually mean the comment is spam.

These aren't hard and fast rules, of course. One thing you can't check is if the same IP address is leaving a lot of spam on blogs with Akismet active, so if Akismet marked a comment as spam, that could be another factor.

How do I know someone is not a spammer if Akismet says they are a spammer?

Just to add a little perspective here 50 spams daily is a drop in the bucket compared to what most blogger are coping with. On wordpress.org installs Akismet catches hundreds of pam conmments every day. All we have to do is quickly skan what's int the spam filter, mark any legitimate comments to "unspam" them, and click the "empty" spam button to get rid of the rest. http://en.support.wordpress.com/unwanted-comments/
Please read "5 things every blogger should know wbout spam" on this page > http://akismet.com/how/

Thanks for helping us with the issues

I have also noticed an influx of spam over the last two weeks. On one day I had 51, but the majority of the comments are repeated - maybe 7 or 8 different comments repeated 4 or 5 times.

A bit weird... I delete them all, next day the cycle starts over again.

Is there any way to block sentences or websites?

Thanks much

You haven't done anything to cause that. Comment spammers can be tricky, and Akismet always does its best to adapt and adjust to their sneaky methods.

As long as Akismet keeps marking the spam comments correctly, you can actually ignore the comment spam section as spam comments older than 30 days will automatically get permanently deleted.

Let us know if you have any other questions. :)

I have a blog that gets minimal views (just passed 1,000 total according to your calculations - only took me 5 months :P ) but suddenly I've received a whole load of spam comments per day (this morning I found 20). Is there something I've done that is causing this, or something I can do to stop it? Thankfully your spam filters work like a charm, but it's kind of annoying to have them needing to be cleaned out. If there's nothing I can do, no worries, just thought I'd check.

Thanks for all the help you guys give, you rock!

Ben
http://befasterblog.wordpress.com
Blog url: http://befasterblog.wordpress.com/