Geektronica makes a few observations about the growing fat of BlogSpot:
I’ve been cruising the Blogspot world lately looking for cool stuff that the bigger geeklogs might have missed (and I found some cool knitting sites as a result last time I did this). What I’ve found, though, is that a large percentage (maybe up to a third) of all Blogspot blogs are spam-logs – sites created to increase the Google ranking of some other site (which is itself usually a Google-spamming site). The ultimate purpose of these spamlogs is usually to drive traffic to a commission-paying pharmacy, pr0n, or casino site.
I can’t wait until they start creating spam podcasts. Though I’m sure it is already underway. Idiots.
[…] *************** This is sure getting a LOT of Blog Space! And, I believe rightfully so Blogspot Spam Blogs Where Geektronica makes a few observation […]
Thanks for the link. I wish there were a way to do something about it without being a pain to legitimate users, especially those with visual impairments. This is one of those cases where Google is claiming neutrality, but I don’t think they can hold on to that “we don’t care” stance much longer.
Better yet, I keep finding spam blogs on blogspot.com that steal their content from my sites. I’m trying to find out how to report it, but haven’t had any luck yet finding an address for someone at blogger.com who cares…
hmmmm,i’ve got a very….cruel, unfit, brutal idea of stopping some of this…attacking spammers with spam…
Blog X is redirecting to Blog Y, both with the same owner, but blog X is just a spam blog that promotes blog Y..
A group of people (the more, the better) will just go to that blog, and post “spam” comments on that blog, example: “Copying is bad”,”you know,creating a spam blog isn’t a good idea nowadays” ….or something like this..
Right, the author won’t have any problems with dealing with 5 “spammers”…but can he deal with 10?15?30?…
I know there are alot of tools to stop that, but…they’re very slight, we can always send some e-mails too :)
Heat
The problem is that spammers are like a tented city, they can up-sticks at the drop of a hat and move on. You can keep adding layer upon layer of “protection” (like rubber letters), and they get round it. In the end it all becomes a massive burden to the genuine user. We went through the whole rigmarole with email and now few people have much faith in the system. The legal hoops you have to jump through to launch a legit newsletter are quite daunting these days. Let’s cut Google a bit of slack here and assume they’re working in the best interests of genuine bloggers by keeping it as clean and simple as possible for as long as possible. The crunch will come some time, I’ve no doubt, and we’ll be faced with a higher and higher bar to jump before they let us into the system. Then it will fade away. People won’t be bothered. It’s a tight call. But maybe the tipping point hasn’t come yet. Let’s hope so.
The morons never cease to amaze me. Sometimes I wonder if there are people out there that make it their lifes work to come up with new methods of spamming.
I really do despair, what gets me going the most is the fact that these morons are taking money away from webmasters that are providing good honest content. They are also setting an example for new niave webmasters to follow.
I’ve been using Blogger since 2001 and I think it’s great. I’ve been considering hosting a new weblog I’m starting on Blogspot, but then I noticed this problem and now I’m not sure whether I will. I don’t think it would be very hard for Blogger/Google to police the problem … just add a “this is spam” button to the Blogspot toolbar (it’s on every free Blogspot blog). I hope they get to it soon, or else people will be running faster from Blogspot then from Tripod or Angelfire …