October 19, 2005 — (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — A recent surge in the creation of fake blogs using Google’s (google.com) free Blogger (blogger.com) service has pushed one blog index to stop indexing posts from the service, according to a report by research and analysis firm Netcraft (netcraft.com).
According to Web log index Technorati (technorati.com), 39,000 fake blogs were created in the past week by automated “spam blog” creation tools and designed to promote the Google page rank of other pages. A large portion of those sites were reportedly created through Blogger.
The spam blogs typically include nonsensical or stolen content with a high number of links to the site the creator wants to promote among search algorithms. Google’s algorithm is known to consider external links as a key indicator of a site’s popularity.
Some of the posts are keyword-optimized. Reports say that many of Google’s blogs feature posts that are littered with the names of prominent bloggers, another tactic designed to increase popularity in search rankings.
The volume of spam blogs has raised the ire of critics and blog search engine IceRocket (icerocket.com) went so far as to stop indexing posts from Blogger. One of its investors, outspoken NBA owner Mark Cuban, wrote this week in his own personal blog (blogmaverick.com) that the measure is temporary but warned Google should ameliorate the situation or face a permanent ban.
David Sifry, chief executive of Technorati, said in reports that the ban was unnecessary.
Google responded to criticism on Monday by posting a list of 13,000 blog sub-domains that it had deleted.
About theWHIR.com
Since 2000, The Web Host Industry Review has made a name for itself as the foremost authority of the Web hosting industry providing reliable, insightful and comprehensive news, interviews and resources to the hosting community. TheWHIR is an iNET Interactive property. For more information on iNET Interactive, visit http://www.inetinteractive.com
No related posts.
