Splogs are blogs created for spamming, often with stolen content. They can be used to boost search engine rankings and are difficult to detect. Fighting splogs is challenging, but reporting them to hosts or dedicated websites can help.
A splog is a blog that was created for the purpose of spreading spam, typically containing no original content. Splogs are extremely frustrating for people in the blogging community because they clog up the already crowded internet and theft of content from legitimate blogs is a worrying issue in principle and also for people who use their blogs as a source of profit. Estimates in 2007 suggested that up to 20% of blogs listed on the Internet are actually splogs.
The term “splog” is a portmanteau of “spam” and “blog”. Splogs are as old as the blogging community, thanks to spam’s ability to fill nearly every niche imaginable. Since many companies offer free blogging services, starting a splog is incredibly easy and requires no cash outlay. Once a splog has been established, it can be used to attempt to boost a site in search engine rankings with the use of extended linking. It is common for a spammer to start hundreds of splogs, to make it appear that numerous websites link to a single spam site, in hopes of forcing it to rank higher in a search engine so that people click on it.
The content of a splog can take many forms. Many sploggers do what is known as “scraping,” which involves stealing content from other sites and republishing it. Many splogs exploit RSS feeds for scraping, as these feeds can be used to centrally organize content with the express purpose of stealing it. Scraping is illegal and can be difficult to detect, especially when sploggers do it cleverly by changing some aspects of the stolen text and removing all links to the original site. Some bloggers use tracking services to look for stolen content for this very reason.
In other cases, the content of a splog is complete nonsense. Typically, splogs aren’t meant to be seen; their purpose is to link to other sites in hopes of confusing search engines. Many splogs also generate trackbacks in an attempt to link to legitimate websites; bloggers typically try to prevent such junk trackbacks from ever appearing on their sites. A visit to a splog can reveal a fairly bland and often quite ugly site.
Fighting the splog problem is extremely difficult. Several websites are dedicated solely to reporting splogs and scraping, and these sites encourage users to report splogs to their hosts when they appear on hosted services. Many of these hosts have taken steps to make blogging more difficult, in hopes of eliminating splogs, and they typically respond to claims about spam blogs fairly quickly.
When a splog isn’t on a hosted service, it can still be reported to the company providing the server space if it contains scraped content, because scraping violates copyright laws. Reporting such sites can be difficult, as the splogger typically goes to great lengths to hide their identity and hide the identity of whatever Internet host is being used. If a blogger’s content is stolen and reposted to a splog and is on a hosted service, they can also get help from their host.
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