F the spam bloggers

October 16, 2005 by Jeff Jarvis

Take a look at this ego feed from PubSub: It is taken over by spam blogs, every one from Blogspot.

Is it time for tough love: Should PubSub, IceRocket, Technorati, et al refuse to index Blogspot blogs until Google does something? Google, after all, should be the very best placed company in the world to deal with spam sites. Funny how the similar ego search on Google blogsearch turns up no spam. Google needs to both fix Blogspot and share its secrets for ignoring blogspam.

More from Chris Pirillo, Dave Winer, Tim Bray, Dan Gillmor,

  • http://oncee.blogspot.com/ Bill Gardner

    Jeff,

    Let’s hope Google does something soon like using word verification. As someone who users blogger, this sort of thing is scary. It’s not fun to be lost in the spam.

  • http://elliottback.com Elliott Back

    I took a look today, and while you more prominent guys may be targeted, it seems that splogs are only 1/3 of Blogspots blogs.

  • http://denbeste.nu/Chizumatic/ Steven Den Beste

    Ultimately there isn’t any permanent solution to this kind of thing. Any system which permits anyone to create readable material on anyone else’s system will be abused by spammers.

    The only real solution is to assume that a certain percentage of people out there are hostile, and to design accordingly. Automatic trackback, for instance, was always a terrible idea because it assumed universal good faith.

  • http://denbeste.nu/Chizumatic/ Steven Den Beste

    By the way, has it occurred to you that it is economically to Google’s advantage to let the current situation persist? As long as Google can keep its own search results clean, then the spam blogs will make everyone else’s search engines useless and thus drive traffic to Google.

    Why would Google want to change the situation? Certainly it would be both illegal and immoral for Google to actively work to pollute the search results of its competitors, but I don’t think that benign neglect of spammer abuse of Blogspot is actionable, and it serves the same purpose. Certainly if that’s what Google is thinking, then it’s slimy. But not illegal, and not actionable. And it’s difficult to see why Google would want to expend any significant effort to try to fix the situation.

  • http://www.sifry.com/alerts/ David Sifry

    Jeff,

    We’ve been working on this situation for months, and we’ve been working together with the big blog publishers to help deal with spam infestations like what happened over the weekend.

    You’ll notice that Technorati’s results should have significantly less spam than before, and we’re continuing to work really hard to keep our index as comprehensive as possible while eliminating spam as quickly as possible, ideally even before any of it gets indexed.

    We also are passing this info on to the relevant publishers so that they can eliminate the problem at its source. It’s going to be a multi-tiered resolution, especially because we all want an open blogosphere that allows and encourages anyone to join in the fun.

    Dave

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  • http://www.jayallen.org Jay Allen

    Unfortunately, this isn’t new. I dare say that the number of spamblogs being created on Blogspot has remained about the same — it’s the tactics that are different. They’ve started using high-profile bloggers feeds instead of pre-generated content which is why you’re seeing your name more often.

    See here for my thoughts on it and a possible PubSub-ian solution.

  • http://jaycurrie.info-syn.com Jay Currie

    The splogging phenomena is simply underscoring the need for a degree of handsorting in the search engines. Google’s proposed trust rank would have the effect of eliminating a good deal of this sort of spam.

    However, if you want to see a really good implementation of a human/machine sorting system go over to Memorandum.com where Gabe Rivera has built what may be the next generation of content seeking algos.

  • http://gr33ndata.blogspot.com/ Green Data

    I am not with you, as blogspot has a option to check if this is a real person or a spam-bon when sending a comment, you just have to write down some letters written in a image (word verification).

  • http://www.mackmo.com/nick/blog Nick Lothian

    Google had just has much trouble with the splogs as anyone (although they have done a lot to improve it in the last 24 hours). The trick it to search their blog search by date – then it was terrible, and can still be pretty spammy. See here for further details

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  • http://www.canonist.com Steven I. Weiss

    Jeff – I’m getting spam in Google Blogsearch here.

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  • http://householdwatch.com Tim

    When a spammer recently forged our domain name it was difficult to get help from Google, but it did not take long for them to penalize our Adsense and Adwords accounts. We had nothing to do with the spam.

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  • http://hypervre-1.blogspot.com Hypervre

    But anyone knows the meaning of a spammer? I thought spamming is when someone gives unwanted emails..

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    Hi My Name Is ivalrt.