What is Google ReCaptcha?

This is what Recatcha will show on a website

This is a free service that can protect websites from bots that trawl websites and spam through contact forms. It uses clever analysis to decide if it is spam and then prevents it. I you have ever seen the message “You need to be human to submit this form” it is when the Recaptcha thinks you are a bot because either the form configuration is too strict or your behaviour is spammy, such as filling out thea form very quickly, suspicious mouse movements too many submissions, dodgy IP address…it can be flagged as suspicious behaviour.

If you have been notified about the upcoming migration of all Google reCAPTCHA keys to Google Cloud projects by the end of 2025 what do you need to do?

Your options:
Option 1: Manually migrate your keys – migrate your keys from reCAPTCHA  to a Google Cloud project which you will associate with your key and this will provide you with

• Enterprise-grade dashboarding
• Monitoring
• Reporting
• Logging
• Auditing
• Access control

Option 2: Allow for automatic association

If you take no action  your keys will automatically be associated with a Google Cloud project after 90 days and there will be prices applied to your usage.

Usage and Billing: Use this  this pricing calculator forecast to see what charges can be applied to your usage and find out more about billing.

What if you don’t want to use Google ReCaptcha?

Do you really need a contact form?

Not all my clients choose to use a contact form, some of them say they want to be contacted directly by phone or email. If you provide your email address on your websites anyway, you could just use that. It assumes the user has an email account to use to send from – but who doesn’t now a days?  I would say that it makes it easier and a well-designed contact form can significantly increase conversions by providing a simple way for visitors to get in touch.

If you have access to your cpanel or tools to block spam such as the Global Email Filters tool. This will allow you to setup filters for All Mail on Your Account.
You can add multiple rules to match subjects, addresses, or other parts of the message. You can then add multiple actions to take on a message such as to deliver the message to a different address and then discard it. So emails can be deleted or sent to a specific folder.

Keep your form and use ALTCHA Spam Protection  plugin to prevent spam:

Great advice from Jakson – who recommends ALTCHA Spam Protection – free 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRq-QSPVQdI