Splogbomb at blogspot?
from blog maverick (Oct. 16):
Do a search for HDNet on Icerocket.com or any of the other engines and look at all the Splogs there are. And they have URLs like this So google, at least for the time being, we shut out adding new blogspot posts to our index until we clean all the bullshit you dumped on us out of our indexes. We will turn them on once our filters are in place, which hopefully will be tomorrow So google, at least for the time being, we shut out adding new blogspot posts to our index until we clean all the bullshit you dumped on us out of our indexes. We will turn them on once we update our filters to resolve this fine mess you got us into , which hopefully will be tomorrow
I apologize in advance to real bloggers whose post might not make it in as quickly as before. We wont lose your posts. They are just going to be delayed.
I also apologize in advance if someones blog or posts got filtered out in our effort to deal with Splogs.
So please Google. Add a challenge system. Dump the flag you tried. It was a nice try, but doesnt get the job done. Its not an imposition to ask a blog poster to confirm their post with a link inside an email, or a word confirmation. It may not eradicate the problem, but it will improve the quality of information available in the blogosphere considerably.
***Splogs-->
Spam blogs, sometimes referred to by the Neologism splogs, are Web Log (or "blog") sites which the author uses only for promoting affiliated websites. The purpose is to increase the PageRank of the affiliated sites and/or get ad impressions from visitors. Content is often nonsense or text stolen from other websites with an unusually high number of links to sites associated with the splog creator which are often disreputable or otherwise useless Web sites.
Splogs have become a major problem on free blog hosts such as Google's Blogger service. These fake blogs waste valuable disk space, bandwidth, and pollute search engine results.
The term splog was popularized around mid August 2005 when it was first used by some high profile bloggers but appears to have been used a few times before for describing spam blogs going back to at least 2003.
Several splog reporting services have been created for good willed users to report splog with plans of offering these splog URLs to search engines so that they can be excluded from search results.
(from Wikipedia)
****
ZDNet on splogging:
The attacker, or splogger, used automated tools to manipulate the Blogger-BlogSpot service and create thousands of fake blogs loaded with links to specific Web sites (home mortgage, poker and tobacco sites among them). The move was designed to doctor search results and boost traffic to those sites by fooling the search-engine spiders that crawl the Web looking for commonly linked-to destinations.
"It's been going on for months," said Matt Haughey, who runs the MetaFilter community Weblog and has blogged about the splog menace. "Over the weekend there was one guy's gigantic explosion. Someone basically scripted a bot to be able to (create) thousands of (fake) sites."
Unlike e-mail programs, blogging services don't have the capability to easily detect and filter out spam, said Bob Wyman, chief technology officer at blog search and tracking service PubSub.
Some affected bloggers complained that Google was to blame. "Google: Kill BlogSpot Already!" Pirillo wrote in his blog Monday.
"BlogSpot has become nothing but a crapfarm, and your brand is going to go down with it," he wrote. "If your motto truly is to do no evil, then you need to start putting some resources behind an effort to curb this train wreck."
****
blog maverick had a favorable comment about google's response on splogging and then launched into a promo for IceRocket. One response was the following:
Comment by Anonymous Loser
The problem is that IceRocket is not innovative in the least. It deceptively lists Overture sponsored results in the unsponsored results pane for web searches (try a web search for "search engine" on Icerocket and then on Overture). This violates the Yahoo/Overture syndication guidelines and the FTC guidelines for sponsored link disclosure.
The blog trends tracking feature is blatently copied from BlogPulse.com. Blog search results take longer to be indexed than on Technorati (which allows you to add searches to your watchlist to keep track of updates). Blogdigger.com allows you to subscribe to search results and also seems to be indexed more frequently.
When IceRocket.com develops a truly innovative feature, I won't mind you shilling for them in your blog. Until then, try to make your self-promotion a little less blatent.
Do a search for HDNet on Icerocket.com or any of the other engines and look at all the Splogs there are. And they have URLs like this So google, at least for the time being, we shut out adding new blogspot posts to our index until we clean all the bullshit you dumped on us out of our indexes. We will turn them on once our filters are in place, which hopefully will be tomorrow So google, at least for the time being, we shut out adding new blogspot posts to our index until we clean all the bullshit you dumped on us out of our indexes. We will turn them on once we update our filters to resolve this fine mess you got us into , which hopefully will be tomorrow
I apologize in advance to real bloggers whose post might not make it in as quickly as before. We wont lose your posts. They are just going to be delayed.
I also apologize in advance if someones blog or posts got filtered out in our effort to deal with Splogs.
So please Google. Add a challenge system. Dump the flag you tried. It was a nice try, but doesnt get the job done. Its not an imposition to ask a blog poster to confirm their post with a link inside an email, or a word confirmation. It may not eradicate the problem, but it will improve the quality of information available in the blogosphere considerably.
***Splogs-->
Spam blogs, sometimes referred to by the Neologism splogs, are Web Log (or "blog") sites which the author uses only for promoting affiliated websites. The purpose is to increase the PageRank of the affiliated sites and/or get ad impressions from visitors. Content is often nonsense or text stolen from other websites with an unusually high number of links to sites associated with the splog creator which are often disreputable or otherwise useless Web sites.
Splogs have become a major problem on free blog hosts such as Google's Blogger service. These fake blogs waste valuable disk space, bandwidth, and pollute search engine results.
The term splog was popularized around mid August 2005 when it was first used by some high profile bloggers but appears to have been used a few times before for describing spam blogs going back to at least 2003.
Several splog reporting services have been created for good willed users to report splog with plans of offering these splog URLs to search engines so that they can be excluded from search results.
(from Wikipedia)
****
ZDNet on splogging:
The attacker, or splogger, used automated tools to manipulate the Blogger-BlogSpot service and create thousands of fake blogs loaded with links to specific Web sites (home mortgage, poker and tobacco sites among them). The move was designed to doctor search results and boost traffic to those sites by fooling the search-engine spiders that crawl the Web looking for commonly linked-to destinations.
"It's been going on for months," said Matt Haughey, who runs the MetaFilter community Weblog and has blogged about the splog menace. "Over the weekend there was one guy's gigantic explosion. Someone basically scripted a bot to be able to (create) thousands of (fake) sites."
Unlike e-mail programs, blogging services don't have the capability to easily detect and filter out spam, said Bob Wyman, chief technology officer at blog search and tracking service PubSub.
Some affected bloggers complained that Google was to blame. "Google: Kill BlogSpot Already!" Pirillo wrote in his blog Monday.
"BlogSpot has become nothing but a crapfarm, and your brand is going to go down with it," he wrote. "If your motto truly is to do no evil, then you need to start putting some resources behind an effort to curb this train wreck."
****
blog maverick had a favorable comment about google's response on splogging and then launched into a promo for IceRocket. One response was the following:
Comment by Anonymous Loser
The problem is that IceRocket is not innovative in the least. It deceptively lists Overture sponsored results in the unsponsored results pane for web searches (try a web search for "search engine" on Icerocket and then on Overture). This violates the Yahoo/Overture syndication guidelines and the FTC guidelines for sponsored link disclosure.
The blog trends tracking feature is blatently copied from BlogPulse.com. Blog search results take longer to be indexed than on Technorati (which allows you to add searches to your watchlist to keep track of updates). Blogdigger.com allows you to subscribe to search results and also seems to be indexed more frequently.
When IceRocket.com develops a truly innovative feature, I won't mind you shilling for them in your blog. Until then, try to make your self-promotion a little less blatent.
posted by Lawrence B. Ebert at 5:10 AM
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