No, this is not about some new sci-fi movie. This is about a not-so-new phenomenon in the blogging world. The only thing "new" is that this phenom now has a new name.
Have you ever gotten a comment from someone that you've never heard of before and then, when you've tried to click on the link attached to the comment, instead of seeing a blog, you get advertisements (usually for porn)? If this has happened to you, then you have been the victim of a "splogger"!
I'm not making this up. A "splog" is a fake blog created solely to promote affiliated websites, with the intent of skewing search results and artificially boosting traffic. Some splogs are written like long-winded ads for the websites they promote; others have no original content, featuring either utter nonsense or content stolen from authentic websites.
Splogs include huge numbers of links to the websites in question to fool web crawlers (programs that search the web for sites to index). The sploggers associate popular search keywords with their pages so that the splog links turn up in blog search results and are sent out as search subscription notifications through email and RSS feeds.
Pretty crafty isn't it? But, they can be mildly annoying. It's next to impossible to trace their origin but they are all over the web. Splogs are really just spam but a more advanced spam. Here's what happened to me and tell me if this sounds familiar to you...
I wrote a post a few months ago and a couple of people commented, "Good Post, Keith". The comments beared a strange name that I had never seen before. This strange name called me by my name and said that I wrote a good post but, it failed to go into detail about the topic of my post (even my angry, right-wing anonymous poster goes into detail when commenting). I clicked on the link thinking that I had a new commentator (a new blog). The link took me to photos of naked women, phone numbers, sex toys, and advertisements of all types. This wasn't a blog... it was a website of advertisements.
Then, I got a comment that took up half-a-page and it was written in Asian symbols. I clicked on this and once again, I got huge photos of naked women, phone numbers for massage parlors, and "toy shop" numbers. After I finished laughing, I simply deleted it. (I really did. And no, I didn't copy down the phone numbers, if that's what you're thinking. It was a West Coast area code anyway!) I'm not sure if these sites are created by human beings or computers but, there is one thing I know for sure... splogs run the gamit of being annoying and amusing at the same time.
(A special shout out to my friend, "Blog Queen" over at "Inconsequential Logic" for hipping me to the new name for this sophisticated spam.)
Have you ever gotten a comment from someone that you've never heard of before and then, when you've tried to click on the link attached to the comment, instead of seeing a blog, you get advertisements (usually for porn)? If this has happened to you, then you have been the victim of a "splogger"!
I'm not making this up. A "splog" is a fake blog created solely to promote affiliated websites, with the intent of skewing search results and artificially boosting traffic. Some splogs are written like long-winded ads for the websites they promote; others have no original content, featuring either utter nonsense or content stolen from authentic websites.
Splogs include huge numbers of links to the websites in question to fool web crawlers (programs that search the web for sites to index). The sploggers associate popular search keywords with their pages so that the splog links turn up in blog search results and are sent out as search subscription notifications through email and RSS feeds.
Pretty crafty isn't it? But, they can be mildly annoying. It's next to impossible to trace their origin but they are all over the web. Splogs are really just spam but a more advanced spam. Here's what happened to me and tell me if this sounds familiar to you...
I wrote a post a few months ago and a couple of people commented, "Good Post, Keith". The comments beared a strange name that I had never seen before. This strange name called me by my name and said that I wrote a good post but, it failed to go into detail about the topic of my post (even my angry, right-wing anonymous poster goes into detail when commenting). I clicked on the link thinking that I had a new commentator (a new blog). The link took me to photos of naked women, phone numbers, sex toys, and advertisements of all types. This wasn't a blog... it was a website of advertisements.
Then, I got a comment that took up half-a-page and it was written in Asian symbols. I clicked on this and once again, I got huge photos of naked women, phone numbers for massage parlors, and "toy shop" numbers. After I finished laughing, I simply deleted it. (I really did. And no, I didn't copy down the phone numbers, if that's what you're thinking. It was a West Coast area code anyway!) I'm not sure if these sites are created by human beings or computers but, there is one thing I know for sure... splogs run the gamit of being annoying and amusing at the same time.
(A special shout out to my friend, "Blog Queen" over at "Inconsequential Logic" for hipping me to the new name for this sophisticated spam.)
4 comments:
i've seen these a couple of times. they are very annoying. i didn't know that there was a name for them
Keith, we've been hit by this kind of splogging for a while now and as a result, our technology manager has blocked several sites. I've seen things that I could only imagine when I followed some links on other blogs. But knowledge is power. Now that we know, we can avoid these kinds of misuses of technology. I'm sure parents want to protect children from these kinds of invasions, and some things I don't need to see.
Great post!! From a real admirer
Didn't know they had a name.
I just got one a few weeks ago on a old post. The comment was very long. I didn't bother clicking on the name.
yeah, i usually get those on old posts. I can usually tell when someone has read or hasn't read what I wrote and avoid those.
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