The Wall Street Journal has an article on Blog Spam and Google’s response to it (or lack of it as many argue) today which features, among others, one of my favorite ProBloggers – Jon Gales from Mobile Tracker.
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I have no doubt that splogs are a massive problem especially for Google and other SEs that have link based algorithms but in general web + blog surfing I have only ever come across one splog or more accurately a splog network by an Aussie media/pr guy who rates himself quite highly but shows his real worth via his splog tactics. I don’t think the general web surfer sees the problem therefore Google haven’t been pushed hard enough to respond. Hopefully less than favorable coverage in the business/financial media might spur them into action.
Yeah, I’ve never actually SEEN a splog. Except when Google’s Blog Search first launched. It was overrun by splogs, but is getting much better. The splogs were easy to spot, and I didn’t visit any of them, however. Hopefully, google will get a handle on the problem soon.
I always liked the term “Blams” better, but it looks like “Splogs” is here to stay :)
Yeah, these Splogs are all over the place, screwing-up the Blogosphere big time. I’m glad that a top publication like WSJ is writing about it, and hopefully other “mainstream media” will follow and put the pressure on to solve the problem.
Also, nice to see Jon Gales quoted in there.
I’m convinced that Google will have to act in due course, the problem isn’t going away and with the spread of tools to create this junk we’ll see even more.
In a recent blog entry I blamed the Internet Marketing community who “seem to have convinced every wannabe net millionaire that page generators are the way to hit it big”.
People are buying into this hype by the boat load, “make 5000 pages in 6 minutes with google code inserted” it’s the next ‘get rich quick’ scheme.
John, the problem is that it does work. The fact the these sites come up in the search engines is proof of that. It isn’t so easy to determine what’s a splog by using a mathematical formula…especially if you want to err on the side of caution and not put any legit websites out of business.
You are right, determining splogs from blogs is not an easy task, however, Jeff Johns and I at Splog Reporter (http://www.splogreporter.com) have come up with a system that does just that. Check out Splog Reporter for more information about the product. We feel we really have something that could benefit the blogosphere.
Hi I don’t understand what a slog is, is it a site that takes all of another site content and doesn’t write anything themselves like this one? http://www.newlaunches.com/index.html