Ultimate Comment Cleaner – Remove Spam & Unwanted Comments, Delete Comments in Bulk

Open Tools → Ultimate Comment Cleaner → Smart Rules and click a ready-made rule such as Gambling spam or Russian / Cyrillic text. Rules check every new comment as it arrives and also clean up existing comments hourly, daily or weekly, so removing spam comments needs no manual work. Caught comments go to a quarantine you can restore from.

Use Manage Comments to search and filter by text, name, email, website, IP, links or date, then select the comments and delete, mark as spam or quarantine them in bulk. For a one-off clean-up of many comments, use Bulk Clean. To keep unwanted comments away in future, add a Smart Rule.

Go to Tools → Ultimate Comment Cleaner → Smart Rules and click Gambling spam (keywords in English and Russian). Click Test on existing comments to see what it would catch, then Save Rule. For comments written in Russian generally, also add Russian / Cyrillic text.

Use the Chinese / Japanese / Korean text ready-made rule, or create a rule and switch on the writing systems you want to catch. A rule flags a comment when at least the share of letters you set (30% by default) is in those alphabets.

Open Bulk Clean, choose the Spam status, click Preview Count, then pick Delete permanently and apply. Large clean-ups run in batches with a progress counter, so they do not time out. You can also choose Move to quarantine to keep them restorable for a while.

In Bulk Clean, set the date range (or use Only older than (days) in a Smart Rule for a schedule), choose the statuses and post types, check the preview count and apply. Use Export Selected first if you want a CSV copy.

Yes. In Bulk Clean leave the filters on "All Comments", preview the count, and choose to quarantine, mark as spam or delete them. This plugin cleans comments up. It does not turn commenting off, which you do under Settings → Discussion.

By default it is moved to quarantine: hidden from your site and from the normal comment screen, but kept so you can restore it. Choose "Mark as spam" or "Delete permanently" per rule if you prefer.

It can, which is why rules default to quarantine and have a test button. Restore a good comment from the Quarantine tab and it is never caught by your rules again. You can also add trusted email addresses or domains to the allowlist in Settings.

Both. Each rule can apply to new comments as they arrive, to existing comments on an hourly, daily or weekly schedule, or to both.

14 days by default. Change it in Settings, or set 0 to keep them until you delete them.

Yes. Comments Akismet already marks as spam are left to Akismet. Your rules add extra checks on top, such as keywords and writing systems.

New comments are checked once, when they are submitted. Scheduled clean-ups use the WordPress scheduler and work through your existing comments in small batches in the background.

No. All checks run on your own server and no data leaves your site.

Quarantined comments stay hidden while the plugin is deactivated. Reactivate it to see them again. If you delete the plugin, they are handed back to WordPress as spam.

They are imported as Smart Rules that delete exactly as before. A trigger that had no age limit (and so could have deleted every approved or pending comment) is imported switched off. Review it under Smart Rules.

Yes. Bulk Clean has a "Preview Count" button, rules have a "Test on existing comments" button, and every confirmation shows the exact number.

Yes. Use "Export Selected" or "Export All Comments" to download comments as a CSV file.

You need the manage_options capability (typically Administrator role) to use this plugin.