Feedster Spin Spam Blog Strategy, Miss Point Entirely
The Newest Front in the Online Wars: Splogs
Now, young Scott Johnson over at Feedster has managed to get himself a spot over on MediaPost where he's talking about the problem of spam blogs or "splogs", if you're a complete wanker. Yet again we see another teeny tiny engine giving it large on how they tackle spam, but worse, he misses the point in its entirety.
Sploggers try to defend their actions by saying it should not matter to the advertiser where users find ads, as long as they are clicked on. Most advertisers are very concerned about the environment in which their ads appear, and would not only be surprised by traffic from splogs, but upset by most of it. It is the equivalent of having your ad sold into The New York Times, only to have it show up in some penny sheet in North Dakota.
Okay, so it's a pretty large assumption to say "most advertisers", like he's talked to "most advertisers" but common sense says he can't be far off the mark. The problem occurs a little later on his piece (which is actually quite good, just a little misinformed)
Blog search companies must maintain an aggressive stance on blog spam, and continue to hone their tools and techniques. Developing and deploying anti-spam tools for e-mail makes it clear that combating blog spam needs to be part of the search company core, not an afterthought or add-on.
Again, it's okay as it stands, but here's the killer: Are you listening Scott? If GOOGLE et al, took some responsibility for who they allow to show their ads, much of this problem would dissappear. Not all of it by any means, but a great deal of it.
Im not sure whether he just missed that point, or didnt wanna say "yah boo!" to the big boys, but it's worth taking time to point out i think.
Following on from that is a bunch of blather about how Feedster is tackling fake blogs. I can't be arsed to post it, it's just a load of old cobblers - Im currently using feedster to research some semi commerical terms and, like all the others, it's full of spam!
If Google can't, or don't want to stop it, what hope has Feedster?
Nothing really to contribute, but
I love it when people call other people "wankers." For some odd reason it just cracks me up.
And yes, I took too much cold medicine.
And we should do nothing ?
Hi there,
Thanks so much for the kind comments ;-) Anyway:
1. I don't disagree with you that this problem actually starts at Google. They're at the heart of this without question. Yes Google needs to be far more vigilant about who they let into adsense, etc. But what should we do? Nothing? Ask them politely to fix things (we've done that). Wait for a big company, with a __financial benefit__ from __doing nothing__ to do nothing? No. If we did that, we're not taking care of our users, our investors or ourselves.
2. Yes I'll admit that we're by no means perfect. No one knows that more than I do. I run the same searches you do and every day we're shutting off more and more spam. That's unfortunately the nature of the best today. (I'd be curious to know what terms you find spam on to see if they're ones we should add to our watch lists; email to scottremovethis@feedster.com).
Scott
hehe..
Not meant particularly unkindly Scott - im glad you see the point.
email
Not me guv, that's you're job.
I'd like to see some kind of reputation algo come into blogsearch personally. Take the top 5000 blogs, have them hand verified, and start from there.
We've talked about this many times in terms of general search, unless im getting my algos mixed up, it's called TrustRank right?
Something similar might work very well in blogsearch.
put me on that North Dakota rag
Definitely disagree with this bit. Sure, I care, if I'm advertising for branding. Who the %#@* advertises for BRANDING on the Web?
Gimme conversions.
Scrapers? Sure. If they convert.
responsibility
Nick
I cant help but think when you're talking about Google taking responsibility in terms of removing spam bloggers from Adsense you talking about treating the secondary problem and not the primary one, because everyone who reads this site knows there are other firms out their who couldn't give a rats you know what about where the ads are displayed (check out a Bittorent site if you want an example, or a lot of the firms on your earlier list of Adsense competitors). Google should take responsibilty, but at the core problem, and thats the provision of free spam blog hosting on Blogger. Sure, you cut off the spam blogs on Blogspot they'll turn up elsewhere, but at least making that a bit more harder (ie: causing a cost to spam bloggers when they've got ot get a domain and hosting, as opposed to what is currently a free equation for most spam bloggers in terms of blog hosting on BlogSpot) is likely to reduce the indicence of spam blogs.
As a publisher
The scraper sites drive me nuts. They devalue my content by reposting it. If you're going to try and get rich quick with AdSense, at least have your own content. Some of these guys even try and load the images from my server.
I think Google's hosting of all this spam on Blog*Spot is absolutely shameful. Not only do these sites muff up even Google's search results, but Google is hosting tons of reproduced copyrighted content.
But as others pointed out, in the short term this is a net gain for Google. If these spam sites infest SERPS, more people will click their ads. That is until Yahoo or MSN starts providing spam free results.