Web form spam sucks.

No one would disagree with me on that statement.

Methods for combatting web form spam also suck, but it seems using a captcha still persists as the most effective method to do it. The problem with using a captcha is it can can annoy the very people you’re wanting to fill out your web forms. On the other hand, those that make the effort to make it past the captcha obstacle are arguably the ones who would also be the best leads since they would also appear to be the most serious.

If you’re an Infusionsoft user, you were probably happy when they introduced the option of adding a captcha to web forms … until you saw how ugly and difficult to read they were. They were even more difficult to read than Google’s reCaptcha (the most widely used captcha on the internet). The big difference being, with reCaptcha, you could at least reload the captcha to try to get one you could read. With Infusionsoft’s you can’t do that without reloading the actual form (and, usually, losing all the form data that was just entered). Great way to alienate your possible leads!

There is some good news though. A short time ago you may have noticed some of those Google reCaptchas all over the internet started using numbers rather than mangled words, making them much, much easier to read. This is something Google will be expanding on with the purpose of displaying the easier-to-read numbers to what they determine to be humans, and the more difficult words to more automated means. Exactly how they’re able to discern that, only Google knows, but even their original version is easier to read than Infusionsoft’s version.

For proof, just go to my contact page and see the Infusionsoft form there. I’ve cleaned up the reCaptcha so it’s less obtrusive, but that is, indeed, Google’s reCaptcha. It gets tested before the form is submitted to Infusionsoft, and I have yet to see a single spam message get through.

Please note reCaptcha is a server-side solution, so you can’t just drop in javascript and have it work. This means either you or a developer you know will need to write some custom code for you and wrap your Infusionsoft form with it. But with PHP, it can easily be done as an “include” or a function that could be used in multiple forms.

And while I *am* an Infusionsoft API Developer, you don’t need the API to do this. So, if you’re having problems with web form spam, feel free to drop the Infusionsoft captcha and use Google’s. (And if you need help with that, just fill out the contact form and let me be your solution.)

The world is better with less spam in it. :)

See this post for part 2 of this.