Splog Spot Blog » Spam

Splogs are made for money

Jon — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 09:10:38 +0000

Why do people operate splogs? The simple answer is money. Splogs can generate money for its operators without them having to put a lot of hard work on actual content.

Splogs earn money from advertising affiliate programs and other ad-based schemes to generate advertising links. They put in links that will fool you into thinking that these are recommendations to informative articles but are actually ad links — and these people earn from every click.

There are other splogs that earn money from hosting while others are more unscrupulous and earn from every click that an unsuspecting visitor will make on the splog pages.

That’s why you should be vigilant in looking at web sites. You wouldn’t want to be an unwitting contributor of money to these splog owners.

Is Lijit turning into a splog?

Jon — Sat, 30 May 2009 10:17:42 +0000

If you’re a serious blogger you probably have heard about Lijit.

Lijit is a popular search app that’s used quite extensively by bloggers. Quite a number of bloggers use the service because it helps improve how the WordPress search operates. One additional benefit of Lijit is that it also lets people get content from sites that are included in the blogger’s network, and this includes social network sites and other blogs.

Unfortunately, the benefits of Lijit may be overshadowed by a recent new service that many think is eerily similar to splogs.

The whole idea behind the Lijit service is to pool together bloggers who tackle the same subjects and then amalgamate their content into a single site that is called a “publication”. In exchange for this service, content providers will have their sites linked in the hub site’s blogroll — with the articles getting linked back to the source.

What basically happens is that content networks act more like aggregators with the site even republishing the full content of the site’s rss feeds.

The theory is that, if member sites link to this hub, visitors will explore the network site, find new content to follow and this will increase readership for all of the blogs involved. It is very similar, in that regard, to other networks and traffic-generating schemes that have been tried over the years, usually without success.

However, the question remains, is this service a spam blog and should bloggers consider signing up?

The problem really lies with how spam blogs (or splogs) and scraper blogs are defined. The whole idea of slogs can be quite vague that it is hard to determine if you are being lured into propagating splogs or not.

The key will be in how these sites go about their business. For example, it is encouraging that Lijit still uses best practices in reusing content. When clicking on the headline of a story will bring you to the original story and the comments section also brings you to the original page. All of the permalinks in the site lead back to the original link, which is laudable.

On the other hand, the images used are merely hotlinked to the original source.

What lijit is doing may not be outrightly “spammy” but it borders on it. Having said that, if you think the search tool it offers is indispensable, then do use it. But be aware that the site’s behavior can also have negative consequences so try to temper its use by periodically looking at what Lijit does and if you start feeling uncomfortable with new policies then opt out of the service.

Splogs on Your Blogs – Kicking Back

Jon — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 03:55:20 +0000

Splogs are blogs that use your content without permission, posts them onto their sites for profits without even giving you a mention or credit for what they’ve done. They do get away with it and in the process they earn in terms of traffic to their sites thus increasing their profits. Most experts suggest kicking back by adding a simple plugin called RSS Footer that comes from Ytoast.com which allows you to automatically add an extra line of content to your feed that automatically places a footer that say’s “Post From :” with a link to your blog along with your blog’s name. Splogs are simple copy/paste artists who leach traffic from your site to theirs thus getting traffic that should have been yours.
People on the Wordpress forums suggest that you rename the wp-signup.php file which they say is quite effective at stopping them dead in their tracks. Most others have implemented simple yet effective re-CAPTCHA implementation which can be obtained from their site. This seems to be a very effective screen for botnets who automatically prey on your blogs, relying on human vision and interpretation for a security measure that seems to defy current computer technology. But the easiest way seems to be re-naming the sign-up scripts which is being implemented by most bloggers and admins alike. Opinions differ on the best approach so do keep tabs on future posts for new and improved ways to battle the menace that are splogs.

Splogs – Scourge of the Blogs

Jon — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 17:53:37 +0000

Social media has become too much a part of our daily lives that we simply cannot stay away from them. Blogging is one of the earliest manifestations of the social internet, like many other internet based innovations have been subjected to attacks than can be compared to junk email, spam and phishing scams. The splog is a blog post that is randomly sent to blogs, flooding your comments with incomprehensible entries that will result in overloading of your hosting service for the benefit of the people who make them. One of the best defenses would be to keep your plug-in’s updated to the latest versions which allows it to deal with those tagged as junk posts. Use the built-in Wordpress utilities to screen out or block specific keywords but it is recommended that a plugin still be chosen form the wide selection available in the publishing software’s developer boards or even from forums. The third-party screening system prevents unallowed posts that contain random characters and many other junk form getting into your blog, hence not wasting bandwidth or storage space.
If you have the necessary plugin’s use them and activate their features to better protect you, adding another layer of protection from other developers from the open-sourced community. Most pressing software have forums and support forums that try to assess needed changes which can be remedied temporarily or you can wait for the necessary plug-in to go into circulation. unprotected blogs can get over whelmed in a few days, overwhelming the system causing a crash. Whatever the reason these sploggers are after, they are bugging many a bloggers with their drugs, Medicine and other mundane offers. These people can even use this process to boost their ranking on Google or the many other social networks out there. Keep updated and if a comment sounds fishy, thar’ she blows, and just delete themfrom your comments box. Using the Wordpress toolkit can protect you from splogs but too much can prevent mail, comments and recommendations from getting through to you, so use wisely.