Splogspot in the Splogosphere
It's been a busy Sunday in the blogosphere, indeed. Just when I thought I could put this splog thread behind me, I caught this entry by an old friend (and I hope current one), Evan Williams – the original rock star of Blogger.com. I sent him the following email in response to his post, since I couldn't add a comment directly to it…
Killing Blogspot was a “Modest Proposal.”
My biggest beef is that Google didn't move to fix this problem earlier. Why did it take digital fist-shaking, in a *VERY* uncoordinated manner, to wake them up?
Even if splogs are a fraction of the traffic that comes from Blogspot, it's still sucking up Blogspot mindshare. I'm not scientific in my measurements – but it certainly *feels* like 99% when Blogspot is everywhere I don't want it to be. Or, to put it another way, 99% of the blogspot.com domains *I* see are from spammers. Dramatic, and certainly overstated – but do my non-scientific numbers dismiss the growing magnitude of this issue?
This thread has been a long-time coming, and Google had every ability to stop the problem before last night. “Apparently?” No, the correct word in this situation is “blatantly.” “Apparently” would have been the appropriate word to use if the first Blogspot spam started to show up last night. I'm not an alarmist, by any stretch of the imagination – nor are the others who have previously, concurrently, and subsequently commented on the problem. If you're trying to be humorous about it, I'm not sure this situation calls for levity?
You might remember that I was a registered (read: paid) Blogger Pro user long before you sold it to Google. The last thing I'd want to see is that entire resource eliminated, because I know it serves a great deal of good. However, the scales have started to tip in the other direction – and have been tipping that way for quite some time.
I love Google. I love Blogger. What I don't love is how Google hasn't done anything about the Blogspot problem. They've known about it – MANY of us have known about it. That, however, doesn't excuse those responsible for this situation. I don't wanna follow the money trail; I don't wanna believe that Google would do anything to harm the Internet if it would make their shareholders happy.
Bottom line: Google screwed up, and “we” finally called 'em on it. I'll continue to keep Google as my default search engine, I'll continue to deploy Google AdSense, I'll continue to use Picasa, I'll continue to *RECOMMEND* Blogspot for certain types of bloggers… but that won't keep me from crying foul when I feel that something's not right. And I'm *NOT* alone.
I don't want babies to get thrown out with the bathwater, or I wouldn't have offered a possible solution in my original entry. We obviously have Google's true attention now, and that should see us through to a practical and permanent fix. We all love Google – we really do. We also love what Blogspot has to offer people and the greater blogosphere – but not blindly. I'm confident the right people will do more than apply a temporary band-aid to the Splogspot situation.
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8 Comments
Anonymous
October 16th, 2005
at 11:11pm
Chris,
I used the word “apparently” because I'm not at all tuned in to what's happening with spam on Blogspot these days. You clearly know more about it than I. I didn't mean to offend.
What I do have some knowledge about is what the majority of Blogspot sites are, and, while I'm sure you didn't mean to offend either, I felt the need to respond to “Blogspot has become nothing but a crapfarm.” That's not fair to millions of people who enjoy the service — or the people who work on it.
I'm not saying that they don't need to do more, but it's also not true they haven't done *anything*. They've implemented CAPTCHAs on blog creation and comments and a user-flagging system on Blogspot toolbars. I believe these things have helped, but obviously it's a tricky problem, and it's a woefully unresourced team. I'm sure *constructive* suggestions would be welcomed.
Ev.
Anonymous
October 17th, 2005
at 2:56am
This post, your blog, and indeed your very personality evident from this post make me want to retch.
“digital fist-shaking”
“Google screwed up, and “we” finally called 'em on it.”
“Blogspot for certain types of bloggers”
Blurrrrgh! The reek of hubris and self-importance is foul, indeed.
Anonymous
October 17th, 2005
at 4:26pm
HEY NOW! As I enter my FIFTH year on blogspot, to whom I do pay $, I do take the crap-farm thing personally, resent it, and have posted about it. So there.
Also, I resent Google not spending some of their Ooodles on this and am hoping your, um, prodding, Chris, gets their attention when we trailer-trash sblogspotters can't.
–jeneane sessum
:: jozjozjoz.com ::
October 19th, 2005
at 10:46am
Hey Chris,
Thought you'd be interested in knowing that there's an article in today's WSJ, Markeplace Section, page B1 by David Kesmodel: 'Splogs' Roil Web, and Some Blame Google
Anonymous
October 19th, 2005
at 4:13pm
We recently finished a paper on using SVMs to recognize splogs
The paper compares results using different feature sets for the task of splog recognition as well as some other simple tasks. We've submitted this to the AAAI Spring Symposium on Computational Approaches to Analyzing Weblogs.
Anonymous
October 21st, 2005
at 10:43pm
Well Done Chris,
I am really happy to come to know that Google has finally responded to the splog issue. I had sent them a big email a couple months back, but obviously/naturally, in vain. Anyway, this 'splog boom' did do something good, it made the splogspot.com Splog database grow four times its orginial size ;) (funny)
Regards,
Kailash Nadh
Anonymous
October 22nd, 2005
at 7:58am
I think that one question that needs to be asked is, “Who benefits?” I've never understood the point of these fake blogs, or “splogs” as you call them. If a blog consists solely of rendom chunks of text with the words “online las vegas casino” linking to an online gambling site thrown in on every other line, does this really increase traffic to these sites?
Or is it possible that someone's trying to pour sewage into Blogspot's barrel of wine? Who would benefit from that? Could it possibly be that some of the pay-to-blog services are actively trying to discredit Blogspot and drive bloggers who want to appear “legitimate” towards their services? And has your rant declaring Blogspot “nothing but a crapfarm” with a “1% 'legitimate' minority” of blogs played right into their hands?
- D.B. Echo
http://www.anothermonkey.blogspot.com/
yvgehvicgale
October 17th, 2008
at 6:01pm
And not huge amateur porn issues. I attemptto draw back to avoid.