Social Networking
Riding the social media wave
Monday 30 June 2008, 1:45 PM
Here Today, Gone Tomorrow
You’re caught up in the buzz about blogs and you want to make a quick buck or two in the digital world by becoming a niche blogger. Hold your horses, because things could go wrong in a hurry.
Let me explain. Let’s say a friend of mine called Mr Pink set up a small portfolio of blogs to make a little money each from Google AdSense advertisements. Nothing wrong with that. However, one day Mr Pink woke up, logged on, and all his blogs were gone. Vanished without a trace...
What happened? Well, Blogger.com (owned by Google), determined that Mr Pink was violating its terms of service. Google thought Mr Pink’s blogs were what are called ‘splogs’ or spam blogs.
Spam blogs, increasing being referred to as splogs, are artificially created Weblog sites which the author uses to promote affiliated Web sites or to increase the search engine rankings of associated sites. The purpose of a splog can be to increase the Google PageRank or backlink portfolio of affiliate Web sites, to artificially inflate paid ad impressions from visitors, and/or use the blog as a link outlet to get new sites indexed.
Spam blogs are usually a type of scraper site, where content is often either inauthentic text or merely stolen from other Web sites. These blogs usually contain a high number of links to sites associated with the splog creator which are often disreputable or otherwise useless Web sites. Basically, they’re a scourge on the Internet.
Mr Pink called Blogger.com and told support staff his sites weren’t spam, but they didn’t want to know. He never got his sites back and lost around £2K per month income - overnight. The moral of the story? Besides not using Blogger (WordPress is far better), get yourself your own domain names and Web hosting. There’s obviously cost involved, but the security and control you have makes it worthwhile. At least you’ll sleep well knowing your blogs will still be there in the morning.
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Christian Harris
Founder & Editor, BIOS
http://twitter.com/christianharris
Let me explain. Let’s say a friend of mine called Mr Pink set up a small portfolio of blogs to make a little money each from Google AdSense advertisements. Nothing wrong with that. However, one day Mr Pink woke up, logged on, and all his blogs were gone. Vanished without a trace...
What happened? Well, Blogger.com (owned by Google), determined that Mr Pink was violating its terms of service. Google thought Mr Pink’s blogs were what are called ‘splogs’ or spam blogs.
Spam blogs, increasing being referred to as splogs, are artificially created Weblog sites which the author uses to promote affiliated Web sites or to increase the search engine rankings of associated sites. The purpose of a splog can be to increase the Google PageRank or backlink portfolio of affiliate Web sites, to artificially inflate paid ad impressions from visitors, and/or use the blog as a link outlet to get new sites indexed.
Spam blogs are usually a type of scraper site, where content is often either inauthentic text or merely stolen from other Web sites. These blogs usually contain a high number of links to sites associated with the splog creator which are often disreputable or otherwise useless Web sites. Basically, they’re a scourge on the Internet.
Mr Pink called Blogger.com and told support staff his sites weren’t spam, but they didn’t want to know. He never got his sites back and lost around £2K per month income - overnight. The moral of the story? Besides not using Blogger (WordPress is far better), get yourself your own domain names and Web hosting. There’s obviously cost involved, but the security and control you have makes it worthwhile. At least you’ll sleep well knowing your blogs will still be there in the morning.
--------------------
Christian Harris
Founder & Editor, BIOS
http://twitter.com/christianharris
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