Test post

Seems a lot of Bloggers are having problems publishing their blog. Just testing this post on this blogspot.com hosted blog...

Spam trends - content spam and articles

They're always going to come up with ways to stay in business. Spammers have managed to put a stick in the wheels of how blogging works by generating splogs. Now, they're going after article sites and publishers. Taking good articles and turning them into junk by auto-generating hundreds of different versions of the same article... That's a real shame.

Watch SE Spammers Activity with Google Alerts

If you are worried about other webmasters stealing your content and creating search engine spam, it's not paranoia. You should set up some Google Alerts with some unique strings from your web pages to see if what other pages come up in Google's index. These alerts get sent to your email either in real-time, or as a daily digest. You can have your alerts monitor web results, newsgroups, news, and blogs.
It's just way too cool!

http://www.google.com/alerts

-Jeffery


Related Tags: search engine, spam, search engine spam, google, google alerts, copyright

Overture Keyword Tool - Spammed Results From abcmesothelioma.com

Spammers will stop at nothing to produce junk in hopes to drive traffic that will click on their stupid ads.

If you use PPC advertising, chances are you are familiar with Overture's keyword suggestion tool.
It's just sad that unscrupulous idiots are spamming this free tool. They're just ruining it for the rest of us. Check this out for example:
http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/?term=mesothelioma%20cancer&mkt=us&lang=en_US

Here's what the results look like:

Searches done in February 2006
Count Search Term
41334 mesothelioma cancer
1986 mesothelioma lung cancer
1039 abcmesothelioma.com asbestos cancer lawsuit mesothelioma
1038 abcmesothelioma.com cancer lawsuit mesothelioma
1027 abcmesothelioma.com asbestos cancer lawyer mesothelioma
886 mesothelioma asbestos lung cancer
722 abcmesothelioma.com cancer disease mesothelioma
626 abcmesothelioma.com cancer health mesothelioma
561 abcmesothelioma.com asbestos cancer mesothelioma settlement
509 abcmesothelioma.com asbestos asbestos cancer lawsuit lawsuit mesothelioma settlement
505 abcmesothelioma.com cancer cancer health lawyer mesothelioma mesothelioma
477 asbestos cancer mesothelioma
466 abcmesothelioma.com cancer lawsuit lawyer mesothelioma
445 abcmesothelioma.com asbestos cancer mesothelioma symptom
441 abcmesothelioma.com asbestos cancer lawyer lawyer mesothelioma symptom
390 abcmesothelioma.com cancer cancer mesothelioma
385 abcmesothelioma.com cancer mesothelioma mesothelioma symptom
368 abcmesothelioma.com cancer health mesothelioma mesothelioma
340 abcmesothelioma.com cancer lawyer mesothelioma mesothelioma
334 abcmesothelioma.com asbestos cancer lawyer mesothelioma settlement
332 abcmesothelioma.com asbestos asbestos cancer lawyer lawyer mesothelioma
320 abcmesothelioma.com cancer disease health mesothelioma mesothelioma
316 asbestos cancer infoonmesotheliomacom lawyer mesothelioma
315 abcmesothelioma.com asbestos cancer cancer lawyer mesothelioma
306 abcmesothelioma.com asbestos cancer cancer mesothelioma
287 abcmesothelioma.com cancer lawsuit lawsuit lawyer mesothelioma mesothelioma mesothelioma
283 mesothelioma cancer law
275 abcmesothelioma.com cancer health lawsuit mesothelioma
274 abcmesothelioma.com cancer disease lawyer mesothelioma mesothelioma
268 abcmesothelioma.com cancer lawsuit lawsuit mesothelioma
266 abcmesothelioma.com asbestos cancer health mesothelioma symptom
252 abcmesothelioma.com cancer cancer cancer mesothelioma mesothelioma mesothelioma
247 abcmesothelioma.com cancer disease disease mesothelioma mesothelioma
245 abcmesothelioma.com cancer lawyer mesothelioma
239 abcmesothelioma.com asbestos cancer cancer lawsuit mesothelioma
236 abcmesothelioma.com asbestos cancer lawyer mesothelioma symptom
234 abcmesothelioma.com asbestos cancer lawyer mesothelioma mesothelioma symptom
231 abcmesothelioma.com cancer cancer mesothelioma mesothelioma
228 abcmesothelioma.com cancer health mesothelioma mesothelioma mesothelioma symptom
225 abcmesothelioma.com asbestos asbestos cancer cancer cancer health mesothelioma
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201 abcmesothelioma.com asbestos cancer cancer lawyer lawyer mesothelioma mesothelioma
201 abcmesothelioma.com cancer health lawyer mesothelioma mesothelioma mesothelioma
200 abcmesothelioma.com cancer lawyer mesothelioma mesothelioma symptom
195 abcmesothelioma.com cancer cancer cancer lawyer mesothelioma mesothelioma
185 asbestos attorney cancer lawyer mesothelioma settlement
184 abcmesothelioma.com asbestos cancer cancer lawsuit mesothelioma mesothelioma settlement
183 abcmesothelioma.com asbestos asbestos cancer health mesothelioma settlement settlement
178 abcmesothelioma.com cancer disease mesothelioma mesothelioma
177 abcmesothelioma.com asbestos asbestos cancer cancer cancer health mesothelioma mesothelioma
177 abcmesothelioma.com asbestos cancer cancer lawsuit lawsuit mesothelioma
173 abcmesothelioma.com asbestos cancer mesothelioma settlement symptom
172 abcmesothelioma.com asbestos asbestos cancer health mesothelioma settlement
171 abcmesothelioma.com cancer health lawsuit mesothelioma mesothelioma
171 asbestos cancer lawsuit lawyer mesothelioma settlement
166 abcmesothelioma.com asbestos asbestos asbestos cancer cancer cancer lawsuit mesothelioma
163 asbestos cancer lawsuit lawyer mesothelioma
162 asbestos attorney cancer law mesothelioma settlement
162 asbestos attorney cancer lawsuit mesothelioma settlement
161 abcmesothelioma.com asbestos cancer health mesothelioma mesothelioma settlement symptom
159 abcmesothelioma.com cancer lawyer mesothelioma symptom
157 abcmesothelioma.com cancer disease lawyer mesothelioma mesothelioma mesothelioma
157 asbestos cancer law lawsuit mesothelioma
156 abcmesothelioma.com asbestos cancer health mesothelioma
153 add cancer link mesothelioma
152 asbestos cancer law lawyer mesothelioma
151 asbestos attorney cancer mesothelioma settlement
150 asbestos cancer law lawyer mesothelioma settlement
148 abcmesothelioma.com asbestos asbestos asbestos cancer disease mesothelioma settlement settlement
146 abcmesothelioma.com asbestos cancer disease mesothelioma
146 asbestos cancer law lawsuit mesothelioma settlement
144 asbestos cancer lawsuit mesothelioma settlement
143 abcmesothelioma.com cancer disease health mesothelioma mesothelioma mesothelioma
143 cancer lung mesothelioma cure
141 abcmesothelioma.com asbestos cancer lawyer lawyer mesothelioma mesothelioma
140 abcmesothelioma.com cancer cancer lawsuit lawyer mesothelioma mesothelioma
140 abcmesothelioma.com cancer disease health health mesothelioma mesothelioma mesothelioma
139 abcmesothelioma.com cancer lawsuit lawsuit mesothelioma mesothelioma symptom
136 abcmesothelioma.com asbestos cancer cancer disease mesothelioma
135 mesothelioma information asbestos cancer
134 abcmesothelioma.com cancer lawsuit lawyer mesothelioma mesothelioma mesothelioma symptom
133 asbestos attorney cancer lawyer mesothelioma
132 abcmesothelioma.com cancer cancer health lawsuit mesothelioma mesothelioma mesothelioma
132 asbestos attorney cancer lawsuit mesothelioma
130 abcmesothelioma.com cancer cancer disease mesothelioma
130 abcmesothelioma.com cancer lawsuit lawsuit lawyer mesothelioma mesothelioma
124 abcmesothelioma.com asbestos cancer cancer cancer health mesothelioma mesothelioma
124 abcmesothelioma.com asbestos cancer cancer lawsuit mesothelioma mesothelioma
124 abcmesothelioma.com asbestos cancer cancer mesothelioma mesothelioma symptom
122 abcmesothelioma.com asbestos cancer lawyer mesothelioma mesothelioma settlement
122 abcmesothelioma.com cancer lawsuit lawyer mesothelioma mesothelioma
121 abcmesothelioma.com cancer lawsuit mesothelioma mesothelioma
120 asbestos attorney cancer mesothelioma
119 abcmesothelioma.com asbestos cancer lawyer lawyer mesothelioma settlement
118 abcmesothelioma.com cancer cancer health mesothelioma mesothelioma mesothelioma symptom
116 abcmesothelioma.com asbestos asbestos asbestos cancer lawyer lawyer mesothelioma settlement
115 abcmesothelioma.com cancer cancer health lawyer mesothelioma

---
Does this mean that thousands of web users have searched for "abcmesothelioma.com" terms last month? No. Someone, probably the guy who created abcmesothelioma.com's website ran a bunch of automated queries or ran repeated queries from a browser (doesn't really matter, it's spam any way you look at it). The queries show up on Overture and now in last month's results. The point is, this sort of spam is annoying, nobody in their right mind would actually go there and click on their ads. Someone please report these guys to Google's Adsense program for TOS violations.

Google Update Not Up To Date Yet

Even after this latest update from Google, there are lots of webmasters and website owners who are left in the blackhole of banned domains although they have legitimate sites, while Google still has a crapload of splogs and autogenerated sites (SE spam) in their index. Many of them never noticed anything until one day traffic just stopped coming in. Imagine one day seeing your traffic go from 3000 visitors a day to a trickle of 40 or so... hmmm... It's easy to panic. But often times a site is not banned, it's just dropped a few pages back in the serps. Which is natural given the nature of search engine algorithms. Things just change all the time.

Things to do:
- check your listing in Google with the site command [site:yourdomain.com]
- type yourdomain.com in Google to see if it's even listed in their index

- Check for content thieves who may have swiped your content illegally:
-- do searches for a phrase that's unique to your site, something you wrote and check it in Google with quotes

This last one is something you can actually do something about by submitting a DMCA violation complaint to Google: http://www.google.com/dmca.html

In any case, what you'll need to get back in (if you were banned) is a lot of patience. And of course, a cool head on your shoulders. It won't do you any good to get pissed at Google's staff...

One suggestion I think would also be helpful is to have someone at Google Answers check your site out and give you an assessment of anything you could do to your site to improve your chances of getting reincluded. http://answers.google.com/answers/

I wish there was an easier way for Google to let legitimate sites reincluded. Blogger does have a mechanism to remove the captcha (that's used to prevent spam - it's triggered by spam filters). And the Blogger staff has been very responsive to this kind of request... Why can't Google do the same? Don't they have the big $$$ and the brains to make this happen?

-j

SplogSpot.com Search Engine Database For Spam Blogs

From the owners of SplogSpot.com: "Maintaining a database of spam blogs will help us to avoid splogs whenever possible. Also, on request, the splogspot spam database will be made available to any good willed person or project :) And the most important of all, you can use the SplogSpot API to determine the genuinty of a blog, when handling blogs in your custom built application or anything like that. SplogSpot also provides a full dump of the Splog database (weekly)."

Providing the free API to access their spam blog database is a great move that will help them gain popularity. This may not be the only splog database out there, but the fact that they're willing to share their data is going to make it easy to ultimately have a service that will encompass a significant chunk of this ongoing problem - spam blogs.

Splogs are annoying. Think of the millions of people it affects. Waste of everyone's time.

Portal Feeder System - The Next Wave For Traffic Generation?

Here's an email I got the other day. As always when you see something like this that promises painless mega traffic, it's not always that easy to see if it's totally legitimate.

As far as I can tell from the sales letter for Portal Feeder it looks like it might actually work. They go on and on about why autogenerated spam sites are bad and why they get banned. Although I seriously doubt Google actually sends the email they talk about at the beginning, warning webmasters to remove potential problems from their sites. I've never heard of anyone getting such emails. And Google support always says they don't review sites individually...

But conceptually it makes sense to build sites that appear as normal as possible and grow "organically" - unlike autogenerated sites that have thousands of pages instantly and never change much at all. They do mention Directory Generator (website death trap) as well as make references to software like Traffic Equalizer. And they tell you to stay away from that stuff. Which I agree with.

So without having signed up for Portal Feeder, I can only tell from the system's components that it has built-in services and resources that can help you grow sites with the least amount of effort according to what they say.

Build a portal site, customize the template, pull in content from an extensive library of articles and press releases, manage all your sites from one central location, etc. For a monthly fee, you get a team of tech support guys and marketers, a private forum to vent, and of course a nice ride along with hundreds of other people all wanting to do the same thing -- make money online.

It's hard enough keeping a blog you're passionate about up to date. Imagine trying to manage a bunch of other sites... where the focus is solely on trying to draw traffic. Even if they hand-fed you and you just had to spend a few hours a day doing it, how long would you last? Of course, if you're making thousands of dollars a day, you wouldn't mind at all. Heck, just hire other people to push the keyboard around at that point. But then, why bother selling the product if all you could do is hire a bunch of people to push keys and manage sites for you? Maybe they're just the most benevolent people on the planet. Just pure generosity. Or maybe they're just want to make money from you.

It's hard for me to look at anything seriously that says "secret way to generate traffic" and "no footprint"... Being secretive and hidden to avoid the radar is a sign of something that is probably against Google's TOS... No matter how you cut it.

If you signed up for Portal Feeder or know of someone's site that was built with that system, please feel free to post a comment here. I'd love to take a look.

Be informed - You make the call.
-J

-----------------------------------------
Hi,

It's Jason Potash.

I can barely keep up anymore!

Since last Wednesday, we got slammed with another
tidal wave of questions about Portal Feeder.

To date, I have been answering your questions one-
by-one in the blog as they are posted. But lately,
I am struggling to keep up!

I appreciate all your questions and interest in
Portal Feeder, but something's gotta change.

So, here's what I propose that we do...

Do you have a question about Portal Feeder?

Or, are you unclear about how Portal Feeder
works... or do you have concerns about content
duplication or "footprints" that the software may
produce, or how Portal Feeder sites will continue
to thrive within the search engines in 2006, etc.?

If you've got questions, NOW is the time to ask!

Post your questions on this page:
http://portalfeeder.com/blog/?p=18#comments

Here are the details...

Over the next few days, Marc Quarles and I will be
combing through your questions about Portal Feeder
and answering all of them.

And here's something else...

Do you have questions or concerns about surviving
within the search engines in 2006? Would you like
to get inside the head of a search engine hotshot
who is rebuilding his $35K per month AdSense and
affiliate empire?

If you read my "Big Brother Conspiracy" report, do
you remember Dr. J?

He was the "AdSense Renegade" who got nailed and
had 31 of his mini-sites de-listed from Google.

Well, Dr. J is back... and on track to re-build
bigger and stronger than before! And you can learn
A LOT from him.

I will be passing some of your questions directly
to Dr. J and picking his brain about best
practises, lessons learned and his "must do"
search engine strategies for 2006.

So, go ahead and post your questions now. As I
said, Marc and I are going to try our best to
answer all of them. But, there is always a chance
that we'll get overloaded with questions again.

If you want to guarantee that your question is
answered, please submit it right away. First come,
first served.

To post your question, click the link below,
scroll to the bottom of the page and "Leave a
Reply":

http://portalfeeder.com/blog/?p=18#comments

I will be in touch in a few days with some
detailed answers to your most burning questions.

P.S. - While you are visiting the blog, be sure to
check out my Portal Feeder "preview pic". After
seeing Portal Feeder and reading more about it,
this might raise a few more questions in your
mind. Click below and view the 11-25 post:

http://portalfeeder.com/blog/

Thanks for reading.

Jason Potash
PortalFeeder.com


This email brought to you by: Jolt Marketing Inc,
Box 201, Stn Brooklin, Whitby, ON L1M 1B5, Canada

Busting search engine spammers using their own keywords

Finding junk autogenerated sites is really easy. Besides finding plastered all over the SERPs in Google and other search engines, you only have to look as far as Overture's Terms Suggestion Tool.

This tool is used by several keyword harvesting software and services like Digital Point's. The idea is to get as many keywords as possible based on a popular root keyword like "dog." Then use the list of keywords to generate the "search engine friendly" pages. It's as easy as copy/paste, click, and FTP.

The lazy spammers don't bother to clean up their keywords to correct for bad grammar or misspellings. So it's pretty easy to find their pages. The more popular a term is and the more money gets bid on it, the more likely you'll find ghost junk sites about them.

Try this: do a search for "dog supply" and you'll see some keyword phrases that are not grammatically correct or just aren't used in normal writing like "booth dog jane27 s supply".
Use that search term on Google with the quotes (exact phrase match). And voila. You've got a bunch of page that are either just autogenerated spam and/or pages using cloacking (hidden words).

By the time you read this maybe a legitimate site might make it to that page of search results. But as of now, they're all spam.

I hope someone (a real human) is using this kind of information at Google (and other search services) to help filter out spam - at least work on some algo for their filter. There is a definite pattern there.

A word to web spammers - It's not too late to change.

Whether you're a splogger (one who creates splogs) or just someone who happened to use any kind of autogenerated software to create search engine spam, I'm sure you've got your reasons for doing it.

Perhaps it's the lure of easy money. Or you just don't know any better. Or maybe you just don't care and want to f*ck things up for everyone else (it's like graffiti)... Whatever your reasons are, even if you're a starving single parent who has "no means to support my children" type person, I just have one thing to say to you:

You reap what you sow.

Don't you want to feel good about what you're doing? Don't you want to make money legitimately without having to resort to tricking people with cloacking and autogenerated junk pages?

Sadly, I think most people who indulge in the making of search engine spam and other shady traffic spam techniques are all missing the big picture. Why not look for a long term strategy that will bring you income over a long time to come. Aren't you tired of worrying if your sites are getting banned (which they all will be eventually as people report them)...

If you want to make money online, you have to put in the time to create something worthwhile. Create something you would not mind sharing out in the open. If you're not sure about whether your site is spammy, it probably is. But to help clear any confusion, read Google's Webmaster Guidelines. Especially the Quality Guidelines section - "...Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings. A good rule of thumb is whether you'd feel comfortable explaining what you've done to a website that competes with you. Another useful test is to ask, "Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn't exist?"..."

Be a good net citizen/webmaster. You'll live longer (from lowering your stress level). People will visit your site and even bookmark it - as well as refer you to their friends. Grow an audience. Your traffic will grow and you will make more money - if that's what you want.

keywordblogger sites getting deindexed

Just did a lookup for keywordblogger's sites on Google:

Results 1 - 100 of about 493,000 from keywordblogger.net for . (0.07 seconds)

That's over 150,000 entries gone from Google's index since Friday!
Maybe they got enough complaints about it... It's about time. Let's see how fast they get knocked off completely.

Search Phrase: "san diego structured settlement"

The junk pages are littering the web "en masse." It's amazing though that with all of Google's resources (talent and money) they still haven't been able to filter our and ban more sites that are autogenerated web garbage - splogs, se spam, or whatever.

In the case of pages generated with Traffic Equalizer or Directory Generator, it seems that you can pretty much tell right away it's spam. The pages all look the same. There are some definite patterns that you can readily recognize without too much analysis. Hell, you can just look at the URL for the most part, 99% of the time they're hyphenated multi-keyword filenames and paths. They just list a bunch of links using a "searh engine results page" format. This kind of pattern is pretty easy to spot. The difficulty in differentiating between legitimate resource pages from a real site that lists link partners or other sites of interest and just a site that uses automated generation software to create "search engine friendly" junk pages. Since the web is basically a bunch of pages linking to other pages, it can sometimes be hard to set up filters that do not ban legitimate sites. Spam filters aren't perfect...

Here's an example: do a search on Google for "san diego structured settlement"
Search results for "san diego structured settlement"

I stopped checking out the results after the first 10 results - all junk sites.

Looks like one of the main ways these spammasters try to circumvent spam filters is to create sites that only have a couple of hundred pages. But then they can just create hundreds of those on separate domains and they all add up. As long as they keep making money, they'll keep trying...

Here's what I sent to Google:

"I was looking for structured settlement services in San Diego. There's so much spam in your search results, it's really annoying.

I would give you a specific URL, but there are just way too many of them being junk autogenerated pages."

Search Engine Spam from keywordblogger.net

How did they do it?
My guess, they used Technorati's API or just scraped their site to grab content to generate their pages. Each tag is then used to create a new subdomain.

Why did they do it?
The belief that having a subdomain with keywords in it will boost your rankings. Each separate subdomain is treated as a separate site. The keywords in the link tags are used to boost their keyword relevance. They've got over 600,000 pages indexed. So there's a lot of inter-linking going on. Their site actually does reasonably well in the SERPs (search engine results pages).

They went to the trouble of displaying sites in their own frames to try and keep taffic leaks to a minimum. But when a site sucks as much as they do, I doubt anyone with an IQ above average would stick around.

Here's a little bit of JavaScript you can use to make sure sites like these don't display their silly ads with your website in a frame from The JavaScript Source (include the code in your HTML):

if (window != top) top.location.href = location.href;



Here's what I submitted to Google's Report a Spam Result:

"This domain hosts a whole bunch of sites that use other people's content to produce search engine spam.

Just look at the tags they use to link to other subdomains.
I think they must have scraped Technorati or used their API to find content...
And they're using that to generate Adsense revenue.

It's totally useless information. There are a lot of pages from that domain. All seems like spam:
site:keywordblogger.net shows there are over 600,000 pages indexed in Google from that domain.

That person is probably making a lot of money from the ads. But it's such useless information that I don't think it belongs in Google's SERPs."

Registration Service Provided By: Registerfly.com
Contact: rapid@registerfly.com
Visit: http://www.registerfly.com

Domain name: keywordblogger.net

Registrant Contact:
RegisterFly.com - Ref# 18399973
Whois Protection Service - ProtectFly.com (utrz121fvmrje@protectfly.com)
+1.8458183604
Fax: +1.8456984014
P.O. Box 969
Margaretville, NY 12455
US

Here's the producer's information (preview-search.com):

http://www.preview-search.com/?method=contact

How do you like the "report abuse" email?
abuse@pre-views.net -- Any abuse, or breach of Terms and Conditions or Rules of Conduct.

-------------
Added 11/05/2005
Apparently I'm not the only one who's complaining about keywordblogger's abnoxious efforts to junk up the web. Chris Siebenmann also mentions their spammy sites here:
Exploring some spamblogs

Just do a search for "keywordblogger" on Google and see what else you can come up with.

Search Engine Spam and Copyright Infringements

So you just discovered that someone has stolen your content and is using it to produce junk pages to generate ad revenue... You're not alone.

Copyright violations is a serious thing. It's not always prosecutable, but you can still do something about it... Even if the guy who ripped you off is in China or Russia (two of the worse offenders).

For example, you could report the bastards to the search engine support team:

Yahoo! - Notice for Claims of Intellectual Property Violations

Google - Digital Millennium Copyright Act: Infringement Notification

MSN - Procedure for making claims of copyright infringement

Blogger's new comment moderation feature

"...just introduced a frequently-asked for feature, comment moderation. By using this feature, you can approve or reject what would-be commenters are looking to post before it goes live on your blog... comment moderation will prevent unwanted comment spam if previous deterrants like word verification and rel="nofollow" have proven insufficient."

For those of you who don't understand what the last line is about: the CAPTCHA is a random character/word verification image that a human must type in to post his message, and the rel=nofollow is an extra link parameter you use to prevent indexing robots from spidering a link. The latter feature prevents the target page of the link in question from gaining any kind of advantage from the link in terms of search engine popularity. It's still a link though and someone could click on it...

Usually the spammy posts will have some kind of "almost relevant" sentence like "I really liked your blog, here's a link to mine..." or I really enjoy your site about _____ , I too have a site about ______..." or whatever other nonsense. Then a link to their site is added in the post. It's just a numbers game. The more they do it, the more likely someone is bound to click on the link (even from your inbox). The more visitors they get, the more money they'll make. It's just simple math. Even with horrible conversion, they'll still make money. But I suspect most spammers will opt to go another route if they see their revenue go down. The bummer is, for blogs that are still vulnerable to automated spam, software is cheap. Once a spammer decides to launch a spam-the-blogs campaign, the software will keep working without much input from the user until it is rendered useless. Then there's the cheap labor that's available overseas. You could hire someone in India or Pakistan for a few bucks a day to spam blogs and solve captchas all day long. That sucks!

When someone wants to post a comment on your blog, they'll login and publish their comment after solving the word verification. Then a nice message appears at the top of the comment window: "Your comment has been saved and will be visible after blog owner approval."

You then go to your Blog's control panel and click Moderate Comments. You can click Publish or Reject. You can even opt to moderate comments via email - that's a great feature. Just be sure to check the settings for all your Blogger blogs if you have more than one - the "Enable comment moderation?" option is set to NO by default.

I also tested the comment approval page to see if links show up in the comments you'll see listed on that page, and the answer is YES. Links do show up on that page. So you can click on them to see what the link is about prior to approving/publishing them. I'm not sure what happens beyond removing the comment when you click on the Reject button. I'm sure the Blogger team collects that information somewhere. If a poster gets a lot of his comments rejected, wouldn't it make sense to flag that account? I guess if Blogger really decides to come down hard on comment spammers this will be an invaluable tool. Again, just because someone decides to reject your comment does not mean it's spam. Maybe they just don't like what you have to say.

Having links live on the comment moderation does offer spammers a chance for them to have you click on their link though. So be careful. Unless you're really looking for Viagra or Online Poker...

OK, what's next on the agenda for Blogger's anti-spam squad?

How about a nice button that flags a comment as Junk or Spam? Unless the Reject button serves that purpose as well... You know, like in the Gmail's Report Spam button...

A link to the poster's profile page might help too, but more often than not, it's just bogus info anyway.

Keep it real.
-J

CAPTCHA and the fight against Blog spam

Blogger is getting things done to slow down and curb what's called splogs - spam blogs. The Flag button in the Blogger navbar is cool. But I'm not sure if it really helps a whole lot.

Does anyone (human or bot) look at this feedback at all? I've seen so many splogs on Blogspot.com that it seems like it's not really doing much. But then, it's probably too early to tell. And I wonder how many people click on the button anyway.

My guess is unless the sites in question are in blatant violation of Google or Blogger's terms of service, they may not opt to manually delete a site from their index or revoke their accounts. Maybe they're just keeping an eye on some of those sites to see what they'll do next. Study them like lab rats and then one day, WHAM! you lose!!! Some day that spammer could wake up to see all his sites banned, their Adsense account terminated as well as all of his other affiliate accounts... and the letter in the mail demanding restitution from all the fraudulent clicks he generated... now that would be nice.

One concern I have with the Flag button is people abusing it to try and ban their competition or just to get sites they just don't like in trouble. But I'm sure they're not that trigger happy.

Unfortunately, both the Flag button and the CAPTCHA (human solvable challenge - word verfication security) have been circumvented one way or another so far. It helps, but for those tenaceous spammers, it's just a small inconvenience. I'm sure Google and Blogger have something more up their sleeve.

It would be nice if Blogger had a spam report form like Google's. Here's a post that talks about what a Blogger did when he got "splogged."

More info on CAPTCHA from Blogger's blog.

Blogger on spam blogs.

Removing Content From Google

Not all spammy pages were created to junk up the web. If you have pages that should be removed from Google and don't want to risk getting penalized because of them, use this page to learn how to remove content from Google.

You'll be glad you did.

How To Snoop On Seach Engine Spammers

Here are a few things you can do to figure out how they do it and who they are.

Finding out who they are: see their contact information.
http://www.betterwhois.com/
A lot of times they'll use bogus or anonymous information. But you can always contact their ISP if needed. The ISP's information can usually be found by looking up the DNS domain names for that domain.

WayBack Machine: look at how their site has changed over time.
http://www.archive.org/

Use Google to find out about their site:
Type the command in brackets in the google search bar (without the brackets of course and replace domain.com with the site's domain name)
[site:domain.com] - this shows you how many pages are in Google's index for that site
[link:http://www.domain.com/] - this shows you who links to that site

Download Google's toolbar and install it with advanced features turned on. You'll have these features available from their toolbar - and more.
http://toolbar.google.com/

View source to see other things like hidden keywords and links.

There are other things you can do to figure out how they do this. And I'll post more about it later.

In the meanwhile use this form to report spam to Google:

http://www.google.com/contact/spamreport.html

Happy surfing.
-J

Why did I start Search Engine Spam Buster?

I'm really tired of getting poor results in searches. While Google, Yahoo, MSN, and other search engines spend a lot of resources on cleaning up their indexes, search engine spammers are very resourceful people that always think of new ways to screw things up for everyone else.

They're making money from ads like Google Adsense or Amazon's affiliate program. But at what cost? It's a fact that most people will be fooled into thinking that text ads like Adsense are just links... So they click the links and the site owners make money. As long as this works, they'll keep making search engine garbage to fool people.

What pisses me off is when they steal content from other sites and make junk pages that have absolutely no value whatsoever for the user seeing related information.

I've been the victim of such crimes where people would steal my content and use it to make SE spam - resulting in my own pages getting penalized for duplicate content.

It's a serious thing. Don't be a victim. Fight back!

Here's a link to Google's spam report page:

http://www.google.com/contact/spamreport.html

If you find a site that you believe is polluting the web with spam pages, please take action. Don't assume someone else will. Besides, the more people complain, the more likely the big guys will take action.

Words from Google: "...we encourage site managers to make their content straightforward and easily understood by users and search engines alike. Unfortunately, not all websites have users' best interests at heart. Trying to deceive (spam) our web crawler by means of hidden text, deceptive cloaking or doorway pages compromises the quality of our results and degrades the search experience for everyone. ... if your Google search returns a result that you suspect is spam, you please let us know ... We thoroughly investigate every report of deceptive practices and take appropriate action when we uncover genuine abuse..."

Cheers,
-Jeff