Splogs Clog Blog Services

SuperWebTech writes "A new generation of spam has emerged lately in the form of automatically-created spam blogs, or "splogs." One wily programmer manipulated Blogger's API to create a "spamalanche" of thousands of blogs whose sole purpose was to increase their real sites' pagerank. This clogged search engine results while filling RSS feed services with useless listings. Though Google, Blogger's owner, is doing its best to fix the problem, in the meantime several services have stopped listing any site they host. So far nobody has found a solution."

Well let's get old fashioned

[Xarius]

So far nobody has found a solution.

Use the same solution you do in the real world when a person or group starts spouting off nonsensical crap.

Ignore them.

P.S. stop relying on google so much, PageRank is obviously flawed if it can be so easily manipulated by spamtards.

Word verification?

[badasscat]

Wouldn't a simple word verification requirement when creating a blog cure this? I don't think many people would bother creating "thousands" of new splogs if they knew they needed to manually enter in user data for each one... why should you even be able to start up a blog using an API?

Blogger already requires word verification for posting comments (if the blog admin turns it on) - am I missing something or would this also work to at least alleviate the splog problem too?

This is what Google Blogs if for...

[michaelzhao]

Google has recently announced an idea that would benefit bloggers. The idea is to have a separate blog search similar to sites like "Technorati". At first glance, this benefits bloggers. However, it benefits Google even more. By having Blog searches separate, they can significantly cut down on Google-Bombing. Google-Bombing really screws with their search algorithms.

I think this may be the beginning of a wholehearted launch of "Google Blog". This issue has also been reported on the "TWiT Podcast" hosted by Leo Laporte. I can't remember which episode number it is, but if you search iTunes podcasts database, you should be able to find it.

Example of Google-Bombing. Go to Google and search "Miserable Failure" and hit "I Feel Lucky". Regardless of what your opinions are. That type of behavior is still wrong.

Re:It's Obvious Day at Slashdot

[KidHash]

That story is about comment spam, where as this is about people creating spam blogs

In case you still can't see, that makes the two things completely different..

Re:Username trend?

[De Lemming]

Flag all usernames that meet that basic regex criteria.

With all the efforts spammers do to avoid baisian filtering on e-mail, don't you think they will change their username format to something else half an hour after you implement this regex? Probably to something more variable (and dictionary based).

Hand filter that bunch.

And hand filtering thousands of blogs which are created automatically does not seem feasible...

Re:Username trend?

[Otter]

Well, that'll work today. Then tomorrow the sploggers* will catch on and use more complex names, and Blogger will be stuck with that now-useless cruft forever.

* I hate most blogoneologisms, but kind of like this one. Can we look forward to splogcasts in the future?

Re:Charitable donation

[sinserve]

Money is traceable, and not many internet users want to be traced. [insert obvious Freedom-Fighter argument here].

PageRank's fatal assumption

[G4from128k]

PageRank appears to assume that each link is made independently of the target site. These splogs and other SEO tricks violate that assumption when commercially linked entities create links to each other's sites. Biasing the vote of a link based on some site credibility measure only helps slightly as automation lets sloggers create massive numbers of spurious links. With PageRank, its too easy to buy votes.

Google needs some mechanism judging if a link is a fair link (made by an independent person/process) or "bought" link created by on on behalf of the same site that being linked to. I'd bet if Google analyzed these splogs and other SEO-generated sites, they'd find an excessive number of links from the splog to the target (or other in-network splogs) but few links from the splog to other relevant sites. Perhaps Google should reweight sites that seem to focus too many links in one direction. Of course, this is only a temporary solution as SEOs/sploggers could just use Google to find a set of random, but relevant, links to add to their splog.

The deeper problem is that no matter what Google does, some clever SEO will find a way around it. And since sites seeking to be at the top of the search out number Google engineers by a wide margin, the SEOs would seem to have the advantage. The only group with greater numbers than the SEOs are Google users. I suspect the ultimate solution will mean social ranking systems where each Google user gets to rank pages and have a reputation for page ranking. The user reputation system would mitigate attempts by SEOs to either up-rank their pages or down-rank competitor's pages.

Advertising: Out of control

[Andrewkov]

Is it just me, or is there way too much advertising these days? Radio is almost completely unlistenable to me since most stations play about 20 minutes of commercials each hour, TV has the same problem. Hell, even when you *pay* to get into a movie, you have to watch 20 mins of trailers for other movies, plus actual televeision ads!! Not to mention all the product placement in movies. Email is almost completely useless because of spam, and blogging is heading that way. Usenet was killed by spam years ago. Most of us here are using AdBlock and other techniques to reduce advertising on web sites. You can't even download shareware anymore without it coming bundled with ad-ware. And now I'm getting voice mail spam on my cell phone (any idea how frustrating it is to listen to a voice mail while in rush hour traffic, navigating the menus and stuff, since it might be a work or family emergency, only to find out it's spam?). Plus I can't even drive on the highway without being bombarded with billboard ads, not to mention that every car in front of me has a nice little manufacturers ad glued to the bumper. And then there's Google style ads -- little text only blurbs that are related to your search (or gmail content). These are even more insideous, since they're harder to filter out.

Sorry for the rant, but this is all just becomming too much, and it's only getting worse. Are we as a society willing to accept this in the name of free services?

Re:Charitable donation

[gid]

But at if they clean out someone's paypal account, then the spamming turns into a real crime that can be punished. I'd bet some spammers aren't yet ready to upgrade to outright stealing.

Re:Advertising: Out of control

[Hoi Polloi]

"Are we as a society willing to accept this in the name of free services?"

This isn't even necessarily part of receiving a free service. Just look at the examples you cited, did you pay to go to the movies? So why do you have to pay to see ads? I truly doubt that the cost is being held down for you by the ads, more likely it is just extra profit for the theaters at your expense.

Re:Charitable donation

[orkysoft]

Yes, and those two bucks will also be very affordable for poor people in third world countries. They'll just have to go a day without food, no problem!

Re:Word verification?

[fm6]

OTOH, trolls are smart, whereas spammers aren't.

Yeah, right. It takes a lot of brains to sit around making lame comments. Whereas designing software to defeat spam filters and CAPCHAs requires no brain power at all.

Public access = spam = stupid implementation

[gr8_phk]

Email allows anyone to send it - the result is SPAM. Blogs allow anyone to post comments - the result is spam. We should have learned this by now. Blogs need a handy way for bloggers to moderate comments before they appear. C'mon it's not rocket science.

Re:PageRank's fatal assumption

[courtarro]

If this adjustment were made, spammers would start subscribing to their own splogs. You're just moving the hoops to jump through farther and farther from the end goal (finding what you need online).

Re:Advertising: Out of control

[IamGarageGuy 2]

Personal note - weened my 5 year old off of McDonalds. Just went with the phrase "Daddy doesn't go to Donalds" - after a while - he doesn't even ask anymore. The kid knew McDonalds before he was ever there, from birth! - pretty good job if they can advertise to the kids before they can learn to speak.

Re:Advertising: Out of control

[Hosiah]

weened my 5 year old off of McDonalds.

Good choice! Our family doesn't do fast food - period - but this was school we're talking about. So I caved. Have you noticed how much kids are targeted by advertising while in school? My kids bring home marketing junk from places like Home Depot and FedEx (T-shirts and such) that visit class. FedEx actually sent the daughter home with a temporary tattoo. I drew the line there - big business wants to graffitti their logo on my kid's bodies? I pitched it.