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by: Priya Shah
The engines, namely Google, are striking back at sploggers and their
malevolent creations, the splogs. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Splog
According to media reports Google has taken measures to impede those
attempting to use its Blogger service to create and maintain fake
blogs.
http://www.marketingvox.com/archives/2005/10/24/google_trying_captcha_to_obstruct_sploggers/index.php
Blogger's official corporate blog mentioned the "spamalanche" that
has search engines, blog search engines and net advertisers in a
tizzy. http://buzz.blogger.com/
They are now working together to eliminate the economic incentive
for splogs by identifying them at their source - by domain - and not
indexing them.
Can CAPTCHA Stop The Spamalanche?
The "CAPTCHA" test is a method by which automated programs that post
or create blogs can be foiled--where the user is asked to type in a
sequence of letters from a line that people can read, but computers
can't decipher.
Blogger is currently working on ways to reduce false positives and
ensure that once a blog with word verification has been established
as legitimate, the blogger will no longer need to solve the CAPTCHA.
Why Create Splogs In The First Place?
Splogs generally fall into one of two categories, notes Mediapost:
Link farms, which pack hundreds or even thousands of blogs with
gibberish or recycled content, and contain multiple links to a
particular Web site, which allow them to game Google's PageRank
algorithm, creating artificially high organic search rankings; and
spam blogs that simply recycle content with AdSense or other
advertising on them in the hopes of making money from errant users
clicking on the ads.
http://publications.mediapost.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=35418
Splogs most often get their content by scraping - the process of
sending an electronic copying bot to take everything it sees,
recreating it on an unlimited number of instant documents, writes
Jim Hedger.
http://news.stepforth.com/blog/2005/10/splogs-scraping-adsense-fraud.php
Literally millions of instant sites have sprung up over the past
twelve months, most of which are free-hosted Blogs, containing
content scraped out from the original sites.
Why Splogs Are Evil
An article in the Wall Street Journal notes that the splogs are a
big source of frustration for several search-engine start-ups that
focus on blog searches, such as IceRocket.com LLC, Technorati Inc.
and Feedster Inc.
http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB112968552226872712-h37m_YUT3BqCvLRfhl6rqzKObnE_20061019.html?mod=rss_free
Jim Hedger makes some excellent points about why splogs are a menace
to genuine bloggers, notably that:
Splogs are content thieves and can cause honest webmasters to get
caught up in technical and financial issues by losing search engine
listings and advertising revenue
Splogs use up blogging resources, especially those of Blogger and
Blogspot
Slogs clog up the search results with crappy and irrelevant sites.
Splogs devalue the legitimate uses of blogs as communications and
marketing tools
Splogs might lead future blog readers or users away from the growing
blogosphere.
Pete Blackshaw, chief marketing officer of Intelliseek, a firm that
monitors and searches blog content, said that spam blogs make it
harder to convince companies to blog.
http://publications.mediapost.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=35418
What Can You Do About Splogs?
It’s not just the engines that are fighting back. There are a few
knights in shining armour out there, like Frank Gruber, a blogger in
Chicago who became frustrated while encountering splogs in search
engines, and recently launched a site called SplogReporter, reports
the Wall Street Journal. http://www.splogreporter.com
SplogReporter lets anyone submit the Web address of a suspected
splog. Gruber has created an index to rate how "spammy" a blog is,
and is building a database of splogs that he may share with search
engines.
Google engineer, Matt Cutts, provided tips on how to report spam to
Google on his blog.
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/update-jagger-contacting-google/ Use
his tips to report spam and do your bit to clean up the blogosphere.
I first wrote about spam-blogs here, and recommended that instead of
using blogs for spam, marketers must focus on building content-rich
sites and getting high-value links to them.
http://www.blog-maniac.com/spam-blogging.htm
Don't restrict yourself to just the SEO benefits of blogging.
Appreciate the value that blogs can add to your marketing and public
relations strategy and use them the way they were meant to be used -
as cutting-edge and "cool" tools for communicating with your target
audience.
(CC) Creative Commons License
About The Author
Priya Shah is a partner in the search engine marketing firm,
SEO & More http://www.seoandmore.com. Request the whitepaper
Boost Your Search Engine Visibility With Blogs And RSS
http://www.seoandmore.com/blogs-rss/
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