Ian Kallen writes about webspam in the Google ecosystem. This is one area that Windows Live Spaces got right. Until Microsoft has an effective spam blocking system it’ll stick with requiring commenters to register.
On the other hand, why doesn’t Google get more aggressive about blocking spammers? Because to do so would require either shelling out some serious cash to acquire Akismet or another spam blocking system or it would require making things a LOT tougher for its users. Translation: that would retard adoption, something that an advertising-distribution network like what Google really is will have a VERY hard time doing.
I need to go back to my little blog counting experiment that flamed out last weekend. When I was looking through the various blog systems I found that while most Live Spaces have no content, Google’s Blogger has a ton of spammers. Not sure which one is better, to tell the truth.
Thanks to Doc Searls for linking me here.
UPDATE: Matt Cutts, of Google, points out this article is old (April, 2006) and that Blogger has a new system that’s a lot better at cutting down spam. Might be true, but I saw a ton that still was getting through the system last week.
Scobleizer 
You should relook at many of those links, Robert. Take away the ones that are by people under 18, were started in August 2006, and look at the content on the home link rather than the /blog link.
Unless of course you are defining the word “content” now. A large number of the sites that you profiled (even the ones that seemed to be only a few days old) had a large number of photos stored on them, for instance. If personal media doesnt count as content, then what does?
A bit more precision from the outset would avoid a lot of the disagreeable responses that you get…unless of course thats part of the plan to drive “buzz”, links, traffic, and page rank.
Booger
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You should relook at many of those links, Robert. Take away the ones that are by people under 18, were started in August 2006, and look at the content on the home link rather than the /blog link.
Unless of course you are defining the word “content” now. A large number of the sites that you profiled (even the ones that seemed to be only a few days old) had a large number of photos stored on them, for instance. If personal media doesnt count as content, then what does?
A bit more precision from the outset would avoid a lot of the disagreeable responses that you get…unless of course thats part of the plan to drive “buzz”, links, traffic, and page rank.
Booger
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I would say they are in regard of punishing them in the search engine. I cannot imagine they rank them much higher because they are spam. And perhaps they consider this to be punishing.
Also we know that whole accounts are not only thrown out of Adsense, they also suffer from their rankings.
The problem with a lot of the blogger blogs is not so much the spam on them but the spam from them – I can make a Spaces spam attack even without having one.
And registering: This is why I never comment on Maryams blog. Or any spaces blog. I refuse to sign up with so many strings attached. You know how much I love your wifes blog – but even for her I will not.
If you mean ‘doing something right’ as in avoiding comments all together … This is nothing I would call a solution.
Does Adsense / Adwords have a problem with it? Yes. On the other side this would be a short sighted benefit, because in the long run, they will loose money through this.
Problem: Google still is one of the view programms which is a) easy to set up b) running nearly everytime and c) accessible for people outside the US.
Pointing this out still rises the pressure on google. Giving the question over and over again perhaps also. But they will not react other than if it goes for the money.
If no money is coming in, then they will react.
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I would say they are in regard of punishing them in the search engine. I cannot imagine they rank them much higher because they are spam. And perhaps they consider this to be punishing.
Also we know that whole accounts are not only thrown out of Adsense, they also suffer from their rankings.
The problem with a lot of the blogger blogs is not so much the spam on them but the spam from them – I can make a Spaces spam attack even without having one.
And registering: This is why I never comment on Maryams blog. Or any spaces blog. I refuse to sign up with so many strings attached. You know how much I love your wifes blog – but even for her I will not.
If you mean ‘doing something right’ as in avoiding comments all together … This is nothing I would call a solution.
Does Adsense / Adwords have a problem with it? Yes. On the other side this would be a short sighted benefit, because in the long run, they will loose money through this.
Problem: Google still is one of the view programms which is a) easy to set up b) running nearly everytime and c) accessible for people outside the US.
Pointing this out still rises the pressure on google. Giving the question over and over again perhaps also. But they will not react other than if it goes for the money.
If no money is coming in, then they will react.
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booger: you’re right of course. I’m not gonna get close to trying to define blogging again. Photos don’t matter to search engines cause you can’t spam my trackbacks with them. Nor can you spam Google or Yahoo or MSN with them.
So, in the CONTEXT of this discussion “CONTENT” means “things that matter to search engines and that can cause other bloggers pain.”
Photos can’t, so we can leave those off the table for now.
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booger: you’re right of course. I’m not gonna get close to trying to define blogging again. Photos don’t matter to search engines cause you can’t spam my trackbacks with them. Nor can you spam Google or Yahoo or MSN with them.
So, in the CONTEXT of this discussion “CONTENT” means “things that matter to search engines and that can cause other bloggers pain.”
Photos can’t, so we can leave those off the table for now.
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Nicole: yeah, I bug Maryam daily to switch her blog to someplace else. You notice I don’t comment much on her blog either.
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Nicole: yeah, I bug Maryam daily to switch her blog to someplace else. You notice I don’t comment much on her blog either.
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You throw out these inflammatory headlines trying to provoke a response from Google [or Apple in many cases] and to draw traffic.
It gets less interesting every time.
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You throw out these inflammatory headlines trying to provoke a response from Google [or Apple in many cases] and to draw traffic.
It gets less interesting every time.
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Mujibur: funny enough you’re still here. I guess I gotta get even less interesting.
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Mujibur: funny enough you’re still here. I guess I gotta get even less interesting.
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I’m here because your tactics irk the hell out of me.
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I’m here because your tactics irk the hell out of me.
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Google love web-spam. Then user not willing to click on Google Ads in search resylts Google will be happy to direct him to webpage with only Google AdSense links on it.
How I know this ? You can figure it out on your own.
Find one spammy website with a lot of Google AdSense boxes – then try to report it to Google support. Wait a little bit – recieve canned response on your request forwarded – wait a little bit more – nothing will happen ! Summary – Google don’t care about spam as long as they make profits from it.
If they will kick thouse spammers from their AdSense program – spammers will simply move to some other system – something Google not willing to happen – as their weakest link search engine will be still abused by exactly same spammers.
Wanna oppose my comment – tell me effective way of kicking down spammers from Google AdSense.
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Google love web-spam. Then user not willing to click on Google Ads in search resylts Google will be happy to direct him to webpage with only Google AdSense links on it.
How I know this ? You can figure it out on your own.
Find one spammy website with a lot of Google AdSense boxes – then try to report it to Google support. Wait a little bit – recieve canned response on your request forwarded – wait a little bit more – nothing will happen ! Summary – Google don’t care about spam as long as they make profits from it.
If they will kick thouse spammers from their AdSense program – spammers will simply move to some other system – something Google not willing to happen – as their weakest link search engine will be still abused by exactly same spammers.
Wanna oppose my comment – tell me effective way of kicking down spammers from Google AdSense.
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Mujibur: still got you to show up. Thanks for playing!
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Mujibur: still got you to show up. Thanks for playing!
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🙂 I showed up, too. Hey aren’t you filtering your comments these days?
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🙂 I showed up, too. Hey aren’t you filtering your comments these days?
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…OK. Your blog is a conversation, right? So let’s talk about your posting patterns. Whenever you blog settles into a lull, it’s interesting how you tend to make a sensationalistic posting about Apple and Google.
Must be your background in journalism. You used to be interesting because you gave people a glimpse into Microsoft that they weren’t able to get elsewhere. Now what do you offer? Stories of your time around the firepit at the Ritz? Startup misadventures? Sorry, we can get that from more intelligent bloggers.
You’ve become arrogant. Its intersting that blogs are meant to connect people as a means to dodge hierarchy yet already you’ve created a hierarchy of your own with A-Lists and Z-lists, etc.
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…OK. Your blog is a conversation, right? So let’s talk about your posting patterns. Whenever you blog settles into a lull, it’s interesting how you tend to make a sensationalistic posting about Apple and Google.
Must be your background in journalism. You used to be interesting because you gave people a glimpse into Microsoft that they weren’t able to get elsewhere. Now what do you offer? Stories of your time around the firepit at the Ritz? Startup misadventures? Sorry, we can get that from more intelligent bloggers.
You’ve become arrogant. Its intersting that blogs are meant to connect people as a means to dodge hierarchy yet already you’ve created a hierarchy of your own with A-Lists and Z-lists, etc.
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Met: I haven’t moderated my comments in months.
Mujibur: I’m arrogant? Now you’re telling us why we all started blogging. Hint it had NOTHING to do with dodging hierarchies.
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Met: I haven’t moderated my comments in months.
Mujibur: I’m arrogant? Now you’re telling us why we all started blogging. Hint it had NOTHING to do with dodging hierarchies.
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Speaking as a Googler, I know that Google blocks a lot of spam in our index, from blogspot, from AdSense, and I’m sure from commenting on Blogspot. I think the larger or more well-known the blog host, the most attention that host is going to receive. People spend time to try to spam MySpace or digg more so than Friendster or leetdaily.com or findory. It isn’t that Findory isn’t great, but they don’t have the traffic to attract the attention. Likewise, when Daypop was the ur-Techmeme and was really popular, the spammers tried to target it.
I’m not sure I buy this whole “ecosystem” idea either. The post by Niall that the article links to mentions blog hosting, search results, and advertising. Lots of popular hosts get spammed (e.g. MySpace), lots of popular search engines get scraped (from Google to MSN to technorati), and lots of popular advertising systems get abused (from AdSense to Yahoo Publisher Network to affiliate programs). I think spammers will target anything that they think is worth the effort.
If you don’t mind, I’ll go try to say something similar at Ian’s post. 🙂
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Speaking as a Googler, I know that Google blocks a lot of spam in our index, from blogspot, from AdSense, and I’m sure from commenting on Blogspot. I think the larger or more well-known the blog host, the most attention that host is going to receive. People spend time to try to spam MySpace or digg more so than Friendster or leetdaily.com or findory. It isn’t that Findory isn’t great, but they don’t have the traffic to attract the attention. Likewise, when Daypop was the ur-Techmeme and was really popular, the spammers tried to target it.
I’m not sure I buy this whole “ecosystem” idea either. The post by Niall that the article links to mentions blog hosting, search results, and advertising. Lots of popular hosts get spammed (e.g. MySpace), lots of popular search engines get scraped (from Google to MSN to technorati), and lots of popular advertising systems get abused (from AdSense to Yahoo Publisher Network to affiliate programs). I think spammers will target anything that they think is worth the effort.
If you don’t mind, I’ll go try to say something similar at Ian’s post. 🙂
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Hey, wait a tick! Ian’s post is months old (April)–only the link from Doc is new. Since April, the Blogger folks have rolled out a new code base and beta, and I know that they’ve also worked hard on reducing spam as well. In hindsight, working on that new infrastructure was clearly a good idea, especially since it makes spamfighting easier as well.
Was this just a test of the Scoble Emergency Linkbaiting System (SELS)? 😉 I’m gonna stop reading now and go read a book outside. 🙂
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Hey, wait a tick! Ian’s post is months old (April)–only the link from Doc is new. Since April, the Blogger folks have rolled out a new code base and beta, and I know that they’ve also worked hard on reducing spam as well. In hindsight, working on that new infrastructure was clearly a good idea, especially since it makes spamfighting easier as well.
Was this just a test of the Scoble Emergency Linkbaiting System (SELS)? 😉 I’m gonna stop reading now and go read a book outside. 🙂
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Matt: they might have reduced it, but last week I found a TON of spam still out there. Sorry, I thought this was a new article.
I’ll correct that.
Emergency Linkbaiting System? That’s pretty good! I wonder if the domain is still available.
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Matt: they might have reduced it, but last week I found a TON of spam still out there. Sorry, I thought this was a new article.
I’ll correct that.
Emergency Linkbaiting System? That’s pretty good! I wonder if the domain is still available.
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