Splog wars
I’ve taken my interest in splogs a step further today with ‘Cashing in on fake blogs’ in The Guardian newspaper. It seems that Google, AdSense, and Blogger/Blog*Spot are used to create most splogs. Having found a huge list of splogs* on topics ranging from the ordinary to the unmentionable , I’m not disagreeing. If you visit a few of them, you’ll see the adverts that provide the financial incentive for the current splog frenzy. *The latest weekly report lists 81,000 splogs…updated 21 November: over 105,000 entries including 16,000 relating to ‘casino’, and 18,000 for ‘poker’. I ought to point out, before somebody else does, that gambling splogs do not generally contain Google AdSense ads as that’s against Google’s terms of service. Such splogs often include large numbers of links to other sites to boost page rank. For example, there are at least 12,000 blogspot.com hosted ‘casino’ entries in the list.
Like the war on spam, I don’t expect splogs to be reduced significantly any time soon. However, bloggers like Splogfighter (who has downed – by reporting to Google – several thousand more splogs since I filed the story) are doing great work. Read also JoeChongq’s comments on how not to fix the Blogspot issue. If you know of any good anti-splog sites that I haven’t mentioned in previous posts, please leave a comment. Sploggers are welcome to defend themselves here too (if anyone can identify a major UK-based splogger, please e-mail me with the details).
I also suggest you read BlogMaverick (Mark Cuban, the owner of IceRocket.com) for these outspoken posts which heightened my interest, saw the setting up of Splog Reporter by Frank Gruber and helped bring the issue to wider attention.
Finally, here are seven related WordPress-based splogs (just to prove not all splogs are Blogger/Blog*Spot) that have been operating for nearly two months: (1,2,3,4,5,6,7) . From investigations on another site, I know that the splogger is using Rss2blog to fill the splogs with daily postings from HighBeam Research RSS feeds. All these splogs bar one are in Google’s index. And they all use AdSense adverts. Just how effective is Google’s splog detection? Not very, it seems.
It gets worse too. This splog of the seven has five links to other splogs like this one which in turn has links to three more splogs. And so on. If you’re reading this post Google, the AdSense publisher number is ca-pub-0307593686794080. How many splogs does this person have?
If you want to report splogs using AdSense, click on the Ads by Gooooogle link, then click on ’send Google your thoughts on the ads you just saw’, change the subject on the pull down to ‘report a violation’ and make an appropriate comment.
Nice article on Splogs. Your point about the parallel about Splogs and Spam is quite an acute one especially when you consider that the cost of setting up both are marginal, the cost to the community increasing with each new splog and the gain to the individual splogger rising with the each inflicted pollution.
Google’s problem is trying to balance the revenue from wide adoption of Adsense with the consequent attractiveness to less reputable parties.
However, bear in mind that the fact that Google has a vested interest in reducing Splogs (as you mentioned later in the article) however is a significant one considering that they control the cashflow as it were.
Out of interest Mike, is it wise to link to the splogs without a rel=”nofollow” as you may be inadvertantly aiding them in search engine rankings.
As I already said in my comments on spamhantress you should also have in mind that besides splogs that include large numbers of links to other sites to boost page rank. there are some that include link to external sites also (or even just) to look as legitimate blogs. While that may sounds purely theoretical I know for sure that such technique have already been used by some webspammers visible in msn an yahoo serps. I don’t know what was the reason for that: exact knowledge or just an experiment…
Jumping ahead 2 years – this problem has gotten much worse, not better at all, and Google seems to have no desire to stop the millions of pages of crap – why would they? It’s making them a TON of cash.
Integrating Adsense right into the blogger platform so that any monkey can do it is just shameless…
[A link to sunjuiced dot com has been edited off this comment. Since when did solar lights have anything to do with the post's subject?! - Michael]
@ Scott,
So you thought Google would be interested in stopping the trend when it’s generating a lot of money for them? No, I don’t see that happening soon.
[Again, I have deleted a URL with contents which appear to have no relevance whatsoever to this topic (seo2-0 dot com which talked about lego!) - Michael]
Adsense has hit an all time low with these new implementations and will negatively impact smaller publishers and advertisers as they will eventually be priced out of the market.
[here's a comment from somebody who had included a link to ontariofishtrips dot com! Edited off! - Michael]
I doubt google will stop anytime soon remember they are the ones making the money.
[Link to damink dot com dot au slash board removed - inappropriate! - Michael]
Michael, your edits and the contexts of those edits are actually funnier than the articles themselves.
I have several blogs. If someone is looking for a link but takes a good 15 minutes writing a strong on topic article, so be it. Its a real comment, and sometimes even a small article in itself if the person feels strongly enough about the topic.
Powerful stuff!
I leave their link there even if its NOT relevant to the topic, after all they took the time and created a short article that many people might find interesting.
Did they have ulterior motives?
Ha ha, of course they did, but did they also give you and I a service or do you and I a favor by showing Google that our blog was worth human consideration in the form of written comments ( that were not spam ) yep they did that too.
Anyway, i agree with your assessment on the poker and casino guys, they are using michelle’s software to great/enormous effect. Michelle’s software is capable of using real articles from article directories as its feed source. Lately I have even seen someone ingeniously using this same autoblogging software with a source from a quotes service.
It made for comedic reading when I saw it, because it was like chinese sayings in the middle of a blog and every once in a while it was so dead right and correct.
I blog frequently, and I am coming across idiotic robot comments more and more. In some blogs without a captcha, the owners have had to close the comment section down because it was so bad.
Have a wonderful day, all. You can delete my website from the link area too, ha ha.
Da poker guy.
[Thanks, Trevor, for your comment. Always good to get a real comment rather than the stuff that Akismet zaps all the time! I keep coming across blogs that probably use rss2blog (Michelle's software). I removed your link - pokerincanada dot com. - Michael. ]
Yeah splogging is definitely a growing problem.
I think the fact that Google has made Adense such an easy tool to set up and startearning immediately has been one of many culprits.
You start to see people form blogs centered solely around Adsense. Where it should be the other way around !!
And then they make 50 or more Adsense Blogs on content that is at best marginal
[I have removed the link to www dot freemoneyin5minutes dot com. Good comment otherwise! - Michael]
I would have loved to leave a link but it’s not worth it as you might delete it. To get to the point, you complain about Michelle’s blogging software but you actually place a link to it?
Additionally, did you realize that many of the link samples of the bad guys you gave are no longer working? So, I needed to see examples of your sploggers and couldn’t reach them [half of these are no longer working - the bad guy samples (1,2,3,4,5,6,7) ]. Think about it – that was actually very good advertising for the blog software RSS2blog!
The lessons I learnt here, since I didn’t know about sploggers before are: 1. what splogging is all about and b. how to do it myself because the link to the site was posted by the complainant. Therefore, what have you really achieved? Perhaps a new potential splogger!
have a great day. www dot ontome dot com — may I? [You may, but I made sure it didn't link! - Michael]
[This post is nearly three years old now so that's why the links are broken. RSS2Blog is well known anyway. If you want to read more, Wikipedia has a good description of splogs (spam blogs). -Michael]
Google’s problem is trying to balance the revenue from wide adoption of Adsense with the consequent attractiveness to less reputable parties.Integrating Adsense right into the blogger platform so that any monkey can do it is just shameless…
I’m sick of splogs. However, you’ve linked to a lot of them here – at least try to use “nofollow” on those links – you’re passing pagerank to the splogs. Legitimising them. If I owned one of those splogs, I’d be pleased with you. Why else do you think they ping everyone – to get the trackback link. You’re linking to them for nothing. Stop it! Please.
[You checked the links before leaving your comment? They've been dead for several years. And don't complain about me dropping your link to 24hourtrading dot co uk off your comment. According to Yahoo site explorer, you seem to be doing quite well without my pagerank! -M]