Splogs
Wired just posted a fascinating article about spam blogs or “splogs.” If you look up this blog in Technorati or other blog search engines, you’ll see a lot of nonsense blogs link to me, like a discount mattress blog with text that has nothing to do with discount mattresses, but which does have ads linking to them. (And the same goes for the Technorati hit for Santa Barbara swingers. I’ve never been to Santa Barbara — although I’m told it’s great — and I’ve certainly never swinged there. “Swinged?” “Swung?” “Swang?”)
Like email spam, splogs use the most wonderful features of networked communication – its flexibility, easy access, and low cost – in the service of sleazy get-rich-quick schemes. But whereas email spammers try to induce recipients to buy products, sploggers and other Web spammers make most of their money by getting viewers to click on ads that run adjacent to their nonsensical text. Web page owners – the spammer, in this case – get paid by the advertiser every time someone clicks on an ad.
Run my name through Google and you’ll see even more such splogs because, between CBR and my newspaper writing, my name is out there on a lot of articles for spambots to harvest and reprint.
But many researchers also fear that an eventual solution will reduce the openness, ease, and accessibility that is at the heart of the blog world and Web 2.0. They note that one method by which the blog-search firms weed out spam is by not trying to include comments and trackback in their searches. The result is to strip out bloggy interactivity – getting rid of spam by treating Web 2.0 as if it were Web 1.0.
“The whole purpose of Web 2.0 is user-generated content,” Mullenweg says. “To make that happen, you want the system as easy and transparent as possible. But that just lets the spammers in. So you put in hurdles for them to jump over. They jump over them, so you put in more hurdles. And at the end of the day, you have a system that’s not nearly as easy and open and transparent.”
Which is exactly what I had to do when the tidal wave of trackback spam happened earlier this year.
When I upgrade this blog in the next few months, I’ll likely have to add some mods that specifically go after spammers, like Akismet. In the meantime, I’m ruthless with the blacklisted terms list in WordPress’ built-in spam filters, which means that if someone wanted to leave a legitimate comment about Internet gambling or Viagra on my blog, they’d be out of luck. (Not that, as far as I can tell, anyone’s ever wanted to, but you never know.)
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So if I mention Viagra, you won’t see this? Interesting!
Comment by Widge — September 6, 2006 @ 9:03
I completely support “swang” as the past tense of “swing” when used in that context.
Comment by Widge — September 6, 2006 @ 9:44
I’m having the same problem on mightyhank.com, and I’m not even as prolific as you are! It’s forcing me to reconsider wordpress as a platform–I haven’t been able to find robust antispam and verfication tools for it–that doesn’t mean they don’t exist, just that I don’t have the energy to keep searching (and my programming skills are far too rudimentary to make my own solution yet).
Having said that, I’m considering flipping my other sites over to a new content management system (CMS) and trying to unify them. I have ads on mobileditty.com, but my click through rate is pretty low (especially compared to the traffic). What’s so different about these splogs, I wonder, where they generate so many more clicks?
Comment by f. chong rutherford — September 6, 2006 @ 9:48
Widge, you’ve had a previously approved comment, so WordPress lets you through.
F Dot, Akismet works with WordPress 2.0 and apparently works great. Also, turn off trackbacks and get really ruthless with adding spammers to your .htaccess file and stick the only-in-spam terms into your blacklist under Discussion Options.
I get only a handful of spam each day compared to the hundreds I got each day earlier this year.
And the splogs are gaming Google, so they show up pretty high on the search results for many innocent keywords. Most people won’t click on their ads, but only a handful have to for it to be worthwhile, similar to the economics of spam e-mail.
Comment by Beau — September 6, 2006 @ 12:31
The one thing about google gaming in the past was that eventually, google did something about it–although, given the presence of adsense on a lot of the spammer blogs, I wonder how active google has been in closing a loop that (essentially) would improve their bottom line. Google doesn’t necessarily care where the revenue comes from–just that it comes in. It’ll probably take complaints from people paying for the ads for this loop to close effectively–although, if someone is clicking on an ad and going to the site in question, the advertiser would be alright with this, too. The trouble with the splogs is the same as e-mail (as you’ve identified)–the only real way to address the problem is to change user behavior–and any time you’ve got a change that starts, “if only everyone would stop …” it’s usually destined to fail.
Don’t click on splogs and splog adds! Click on ads for good ol’ American he-man companies like MobileDitty! The only spam we believe in is the kind you eat!
I read up on Akismet and I’ve got a long .htaccess list–but turning off the trackbacks feels like a step backwards (conceptually).
Comment by f. chong rutherford — September 6, 2006 @ 13:32