Originally published December 14 2005
Spam blogs attempt to inflate search engine ratings
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
The new trend of spam blogs is motivated by increasing the search-engine ratings of certain websites. These "splogs" are a direct result of the rise in readership of blogs, and cause confusion for services that track blogs.
For instance, the first blog to link to my recent plea to mitigate techno-logical incompatibilities was one called Relationships.
It placed a snippet from my column among a laundry list of relationship-oriented articles on the Web, with no extra editorial commentary or evidence that a human intelligence was behind the choice.
That's right---in addition to e-mail spam and instant messenger spam (spim), there's a new form of exploiting the Net's openness---splogs.
David Sifry, CEO of blog tracker Technorati, found that in some days spam postings inflate the blogosphere by 18 percent---but since he's not catching all the splogs, that number is probably low.
Some splogs, by well-calibrated "keyword stuffing," are devoted to inflating the search-engine ratings of other Web sites---these are often created in bulk by automated programs that are openly sold on the Net.
(Never mind that I was talking about DVDs.)
Here's how they work: first find a subject that draws consumers who may be valuable to advertisers on Google or Yahoo, and register for the programs that let those search companies place ads on your blog.
If you've done it right, Google's search engines will identify your blog as a prime place for a high-value ad.
Because programs like Google's AdSense pay out each time someone responds to the ad, it's possible to make a bundle from this.
Google's Jason Goldman says that the company has tightened up the blog-creating process also; Google now offers a quick way for readers to report bogus pages so they can be blocked from its search engine.
(Other blog hosts and search engines are also fighting spam blogs.)
But he admits that like e-mail spam, the effort to stamp out splogs is taking on an arms-race aspect, where tricksters counter defensive efforts with new techniques.
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