First Spam, the Spim, Now Splogs - What's Next?

Here's One More Thing to Hate: Splogs - Newsweek: International Editions - MSNBC.com

The article quoted here points out a problem that arose from the sudden popularity of the "blog and ping" strategy that grew up in 2005. In case you don't remember, "blog and ping" was the strategy that called for you to develop hundreds, if not thousands of blogs, post to them automatically with software, while linking to another site you wanted to promote, and then pinging the Blog Directories like crazy.

As with many things, Blog and Ping is a viable strategy that was taken to its extreme, and then ruined, by those who chose to abuse it. Like Instant Messenger "spim", and email spam, "splogs" are the junk blogs that are left behind by those who abused blog and ping.

I say that in the past tense, since the search engine experts have long since caught on, and de-indexed not only the splogs, but the semi-legitimate sites that they deep linked.

Word has it that thousands of splogs have been deleted from free services such as Blogger and similar services, and those that remain have been "de-indexed" by the search engines, meaning that they are effectively banned, and can no longer get placement in the Search Engine Results Pages.

It's up to all of us to act responsibly. Unfortunately, the more powerful the tool, the more likely people are to try to abuse it. And of course, the abuse eventually gets tracked down, and then we *all* lose, since what was once a good tool in the right hands has been rendered useless.

Keep it clean, and Happy Blogging!

John