The streak of breaking records at Akismet is not coming to an end. In November, we broke 500 million spam message caught per day. Maybe the streak will continue, with 600 million spam messages caught in a day in December, we can only hope.
Since last month, we saw a rise of 44% in spam comments caught, and a 136% rise since last year in November. You can see the daily stats in this chart:

In total, Akismet caught 12,204,897,000 spam messages in November. Let’s compare the number of spam comments Akismet caught to the distance between the Earth and Saturn, which is 1.2 billion kilometres when the two planets are closest together (that’s 746 million miles).
If each spam comment were one kilometre, the total number of spam comments Akismet flagged in November would be enough for 9 one-way trips to Saturn.

As usual, Akismet saw much less ham going around, for a total of 159,568,500 this month – making up 1.3% of all comments Akismet checked. If each ham comment were one kilometer, they would make only enough for a tenth of a trip to Saturn. That’s only enough distance to get to Mars and back.
Your own blog’s comments may have also seen some dips and rises. If you’re having any trouble with missed spam comments, false positives, or any other issue, please feel free to contact us about it, and we’ll be happy to help.
This post is part of a monthly series summarizing some stats and figures from the Akismet universe. Feel free to browse all of the posts in the series.
Akismet doing great job. it should keep up.