Another mainstream media outlet, the Washington Post, has an article on splog. It basically pretty standard stuff. They did one small mistake though, they confused comment spam and splogs. Comment spam are not splogs. They are two separate things.
Another mainstream media outlet, the Washington Post, has an article on splog. It basically pretty standard stuff. They did one small mistake though, they confused comment spam and splogs. Comment spam are not splogs. They are two separate things.
In addition to polluting the internet, it seems sploggers are starting to create more problems. Randy Charles Morin of KBCafe had set up a free RSS subscription service, that would let blog owners make it easier for visitors to subscribe. A splogger started using this service and put the Javascript for the service on thousands of blogs, causing bandwidth problems for the service. Unfortunately Randy has has to shut down the service because of this issue.
Thanks to Mark Woodman for pointing this out.
Mitch Ratcliffe responded to my entry that criticized his How to get Google to fix BlogSpot post. Since I think this is an important issue. I elevated this to a full post instead of the argument getting lost in the comments.
Here is Mitch’s response in full:
At no point do I suggest click fraud, what I suggested is that when bloggers receive spam postings they go to the sources of those sites and click the ads there. It would not target legitimate Blogspot (or other hosts that facilitate splogs) publishers, just the abusers. It would not be “random.”
This would create pain for advertisers—it won’t drive them away, because AdSense works—but it will make them demand Google explain why they are getting much lower conversion rates. They will petition Google for relief, which is what advertising customers do (and I speak from experience as a publisher). These kinds of campaigns could be conducted in narrow timeframes by groups of bloggers who are tired, as I am, of cleaning spam postings out of their comments and trackbacks.
Finally, there is a general tone that this is wrong because it is bad business. I am suggesting a political statement, not a business decision. If Google bans me for clicking other people’s ads, they would have to prove I was commiting fraud, which is not the case if I am clicking on ads on other people’s sites. I’m justs surfing. But, frankly, if Google cut off AdSense on my site it would do nothing to my ability to earn money from the site. There are other ad programs that will pay me a few dollars a month, too.
We shouldn’t be so timid about the information environment we live in. Google’s contributing to information pollution and we should act to stop them.
I think you are naive, JoeChong, if you think Google can afford to impose quality controls. It would slash their margins, raising ad prices overall, and prevent many bloggers and publishers from ever being seen by Google searchers.
This is my response.
First of all, in my mind, if you click on an AdSense ad with no intention at all of seeing what’s on the other side, you are committing click fraud. I’m sure Google would agree. This is a similar tactic that a website owner would take when he sees a competitors website advertising on AdSense, and click on the ad just to hurt his competitor.
Wikipedia defines click fraud as: “Click fraud occurs in pay per click online advertising when a person, automated script or computer program imitates a legitimate user of a web browser clicking on an ad, for the purpose of generating an improper charge per click.”
Second, I think you are confusing two different types of spam: comment spam and splogs (spam blogs). These are two different techniques spammers use to get links to their sites. Just to be sure, I checked the links of 18 of my comment spams and not one pointed to a blogspot blog or a splog.
Your assertion that the type of click activity you suggest won’t drive advertisers away from AdSense is also wrong. Many AdWords advertisers already don’t participate in Google’s content network (third party publishers) and only place ads in Google own search results. They have been burned in the past by low quality sites so they opt out of the whole content network.
Your strategy is equivalent to someone saying that they don’t approve of porno magazines, so to hurt porno magazines, they will go into every store that advertises in porno magazines and shoplift from them. Once the stores figure out that people are shoplifting from them because they advertise in porno magazines, the advertisers will stop ads in porno magazines and so the porn will go away. It is such a back-assward way of doing things.
Again, as an AdSense publisher, an AdWords advertiser, and a person who hates splogs, I am pleading with you not to partake in this type of nonsense. It just doesn’t make sense. This activity will help the sploggers and hurt the AdSense/AdWords ecosystem.
Mitch Ratcliffe has a blog entry on How to get Google to fix BlogSpot.
I think the advice in it is terrible. He suggests: “The solution to the problem it to click gratuitously and never make purchases on the links at blogspot sites and to keep doing so to drive down conversion rates.”
This is called click fraud. Don’t do it. This will do nothing but achieve the following:
Again, I can’t stress enough that this is a bad idea and would encourage sploggers to create even more splogs.
Update: The problem is now fixed
I got this following comment from Brady Westwater to my post about Blogger adding captcha. I wanted to elevate this to a full post to see if anyone could help him out.
on October 20th, 2005 at 12:20 am
I have not been able to post for two days. All I get is:006 Please contact Blogger Support.blog/46/41/4/lacowboy/index.html
Doe anyone have any idea what this means? Is it a website?
And there is no one at blogger support who will return e-mails..
To contact him, you can find his email if you go to his blog and check his profile.
Blogpulse has a nice piece that lists a bunch of sploggers and what they have been up to. It gives a good overview of many of the reasons why sploggers do what they do.
Seems like splogs are starting to get national attention outside of the blogosphere. The Wall Street Journal published an article on splogs today: ‘Splogs’ Roil Web, and Some Blame Google.
It seems like Google has taken a small step towards stemming the tide of splog on blogger. They have implemented a captcha system for suspicious blogs. The captcha will only be used if their spam detectors identifies the blog as spammy.
I’m glad to see some concrete action being taken. Obviously much more needs to be done.
Found via: fighting splog
Google has publically responded to the outcry about splog via their Blogger Buzz blog. One thing they talk about is improving their spam detection algorithm.
A big goal in deploying the filtered NextBlog and Flag as Objectionable was to improve our spam classifiers. As we improve these algorithms, we plan to pass the filtered information along automatically.
That’s certainly a good start. Another thing they have done is published a list of deleted subdomains. Currently there are over 13,000 subdomains listed.
They dismiss using captchas for each post as a solution because it limits accessibility and does not allow posting via API. I agree that captchas do have problems and are not the ultimate solution. I do think, however, that some type of limit will need to be placed on posting, or else the sploggers will keep getting the upper hand. Not indexing new blogs for a few days until they can be determined whether they are splog or not may help a little. Limiting the number of posts up-loadable via the API may help as well.
They also note that this is going to be an ongoing problem. It sure is.
Found via fighting splog.
Fighting Splog has an explanation for this weekends outrage about splogs. It seems there was a single splogger who created tens of thousands of splogs. Presumably these splogs also happened to target popular bloggers names.
He, like most, puts the blame squarely on Google:
I wonder if Google will finally do something about splog problem now. Honestly I really doubt it and here is the reason why. Currently Google makes money whenever spammers makes money.
I think that has been a lot of the problem, Google has not really had any incentive to do anything. Hopefully, now that the splog problem has gotten more attention, Google will not be able to avoid doing something this problem.
Google does say they “Do no evil”. Splogs are evil. They need to do something about it.