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My Spam Blog
I recently discovered that Google considers my blog nothing more than irrelevant, repetitive, and nonsensical text. I made the discovery as I was browsing to my blog to make a new post. Something was amiss… or should I say - my blog was missing.
My first thought was that I was hacked, or that my web host deleted some files by mistake. It wasn’t until I logged into Blogger that I discovered that Google took it upon themselves to disable my blog.
Apparently Google now has a “Spam Prevention Robot” (Spot), which crawls the web looking for spam blogs (splogs). For those of you who don’t know what a spam blog is just go to MSN and search for anything. If you see a Blogspot result, chances are it’s a splog.
I’m not sure what the Robot disliked about my blog… Did I use a forbidden keyword? Did I misspell too many words, or use incorrect grammar? Maybe somebody from a bad neighborhood linked to my site? I’ll probably never know.
I understand that Google’s spambot isn’t perfect and may produce a few false positives in an attempt to rid the web of a few splogs. But I don’t understand why they would allow Spot to automatically disable and delete blogs without 1 - contacting the blog owner, and 2 - verifying Spot’s findings.
I think this issue is indicative of an even bigger problem at Google - a failure to communicate. I’m not asking Google to call or e-mail me every time they update their index, but if they plan on disabling my blog some kind of notification would be nice.
In the meantime, I think I’m going to make time to convert my blog to WordPress. I’ve always had the intention of doing this anyway.
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My blog never got disabled like that but once I tried to make a post to my blog and got a message about SPAM. It wasn’t and there was a little form I filled out which Google would look at. They did and put my blog on the “white list”. So it’s good to go.
“Did I misspell too many words, or use incorrect grammar? Maybe somebody from a bad neighborhood linked to my site?”
Not sure about how many/if any misspellings you had but it’s something to watch out for. Some people will throw every misspelling a site like searchspell will spit out but that’s part of Google’s algo. If a search engines sees you have a bunch of misspellings on your page, Google knows it’s most likely a spam page. And a bad neighborhood linking to your site is not a problem, it’s if you link to a bad neighborhood.
Was your BLOG hosted with Google on BlogSpot or did you just use the Blogger tool to manage your content?
Curious if hosting the BLOG on your own server has any effect.
Michael
I created a blog as an experiment a few weeks ago on blogspot. In two days it was deemed a spam blog and shut down. I received an email about it, and all I had to do was click the link so they knew it wasn’t and they would review it again. A day or so later it was approved. Now, two weeks later, I get the same email about it being a spam blog and i have to click the link to let them know it’s not again. Not sure if I will or not, especially if it is going to happen every couple weeks.
The blog is hosted on my site. I use Blogger to manage the content/posts.
I liked Blogger for its simplicity, but I can’t risk having my blog turned off and on at Google’s will.
I’ve played with WordPress on my personal blog and have come to realize it’s just as easy to use as Blogger, and much more powerful.
Wow… I have to say, this is an unexpected level of moderation by Google. It strikes me that they’re seriously at odds with the affiliate marketing industry as a whole, on all fronts (organic, long tail PPC keywords, now blogging). I wonder if MSN and Yahoo may approach the industry differently down the road?
A unified Google conspiracy theory? I like it
I really think Google knows more about it’s advertisers, publishers, bloggers, and analytics users than they let on. I stopped using the toolbar and other “free” tools a few years ago to quell my Google paranoia.
Methinks Google has decided they can make money in affiliate marketing, so they are naturally clearing the competition out of their way.
They tried to make money on maps, cool satellite photo services, desktop tools, and so much more, but every few months you read an article that says something to the tune of “Google tries all these other things, but the only place they are making money is search, and they are making truckloads in search advertising.”
What do (smart) affiliates live to do? Diversify!! Why would Google be any different than someone sitting at home working on his laptop as an affiliate? That affiliate knows better than to put his entire business model with one merchant or one network or whatever. If he does, he is nervous! I think this time Google might have found something that will make them money and they know it, so they can now diversify. As happy as stockholders are with enormous profits, smart business people are always thinking about revenue diversification to avoid excessive exposure to any given industry or niche within that industry.
Tick Tock the Game is Locked…(almost anyway)
I have got to the end of my tether with Google.
It’s interesting - I’ve been around the web since 1994 and seen Yahoo go from cuddly to greedy and corporate and lose out to the new cuddly Google.
Now Google is upsetting everyone right, left and centre. Time for a new cuddly.
I think it is time for a move.
Keith Watson
The only thing about Wordpress (and I use it) is that you can’t put affiliate ads or Adsense on it.
Maybe Matt feels the same way about Google that some of the other people who commented on your post do.
This makes a great story especially considering how much you must spend on Google every month.
Janet
Janet, host your own Wordpress blog and you can do whatever you want with it. It’s pretty easy, and most hosts have it available for a scripted installation.