Splog

Splog is still polluting the blogosphere with thousands if not millions of blogs with no content: either the posts in these splogs are incomprehensible (it’s fake text) or they repeat content that already exists. Some experts say that one in five blogs is a splog! Talk about discrediting statistics on the blogosphere – when you consider there are over 160 million blogs worldwide, it makes you wonder what that figure would be without the splogs!

What is worse, splogs are — well, clogging up the blogosphere, taking up space intended for blogs on free blogging platforms like Bloggers. It’s even been known for thousands of splogs to be created with links to a particular website, just to boost its PR rating. Starting in 2005, in response to an appeal by Cuban, Google reacted by trying to delete all the splogs it detects. For a few years, there was even a special website, Splog reporter, where bloggers could name and shame the splogs, but Google now tracks them on its own. With mixed results, as for every splog eliminated, 5 more splogs appear. It’s just so easy to set up a blog, and of course it costs nothing. Splogs are now used not only as a referencing tool, but also as a means of discrediting a prominent person or an institution. You can create splogs to launch a Google bombing campaign against someone. If you Google the word "fraud" you might be directed to the website of a well-known politician, as Google bombers work by using splogs to make sure their victim is linked online to some negative term. Splog is also a technique used by the experts you go to if you want to clean up your online identity. To “erase” embarrassing comments about you, they use their splog base (thousands of them) to publish an avalanche of posts pointing to your blog, or another website that shows you in a favourable light. These will automatically go up to page 1 on Google and the adverse comments will go down to page 2 or even 3 on Google, or in other words disappear. It’s real David Copperfield-style sleight of hand. Some critics think Google is ineffective in tracking down splogs, and wonder whether it isn’t in the interests of the search engine to keep them. Each time you come across a splog, assuming you don’t want to read it, and click on Adsense to exit the website, the click takes you back to Google!

Some internet hardliners have suggested that Google should delete all blogs offering no added value in terms of content, but the blogosphere rejected this option as being totally contrary to the spirit of the web. Still, if your blog gets mistaken for splog, the message is clear, if somewhat undiplomatic: it’s rubbish!