A spam blog, also known as an auto blog or the

neologism A neologism Greek νέο- ''néo''(="new") and λόγος /''lógos'' meaning "speech, utterance"] is a relatively recent or isolated term, word, or phrase that may be in the process of entering common use, but that has not been fully accepted int ...

splog, is a

blog A blog (a truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order ...

which the author uses to promote affiliated websites, to increase the search engine rankings of associated sites or to simply sell links/ads. The purpose of a splog can be to increase the

PageRank PageRank (PR) is an algorithm used by Google Search to rank web pages in their search engine results. It is named after both the term "web page" and co-founder Larry Page. PageRank is a way of measuring the importance of website pages. According ...

or backlink portfolio of affiliate websites, to artificially inflate paid ad impressions from visitors (see

made for AdSense A scraper site is a website that copies content from other websites using web scraping. The content is then mirrored with the goal of creating revenue, usually through advertising and sometimes by selling user data. Scraper sites come in various f ...

or MFA-blogs), and/or use the blog as a link outlet to sell links or get new sites indexed. Spam blogs are usually a type of

scraper site A scraper site is a website that copies content from other websites using web scraping. The content is then mirrored with the goal of creating revenue, usually through advertising and sometimes by selling user data. Scraper sites come in various f ...

, where content is often either

inauthentic text {{Unreferenced, date=July 2016 An inauthentic text is a computer-generated expository document meant to appear as genuine, but which is actually meaningless. Frequently they are created in order to be intermixed with genuine documents and thus man ...

or merely stolen (see ''

blog scraping {{unreferenced, date=May 2008 Blog scraping is the process of scanning through a large number of blogs, usually through the use of automated software, searching for and copying content. The software and the individuals who run the software are somet ...

'') from other websites. These blogs usually contain a high number of links to sites associated with the splog creator which are often disreputable or otherwise useless websites. This is used often in conjunction with other

spamming Spamming is the use of messaging systems to send multiple unsolicited messages (spam) to large numbers of recipients for the purpose of commercial advertising, for the purpose of non-commercial proselytizing, for any prohibited purpose (especial ...

techniques, including ''

sping Sping is short for "spam ping", and is related to pings from blogs using trackbacks, called trackback spam. Pings are messages sent from blog and publishing tools to a centralized network service (a ping server) providing notification of newly pub ...

s''.

History

The term splog was popularized around mid August 2005 when it was used publicly by

Mark Cuban Mark Cuban (born July 31, 1958) is an American billionaire entrepreneur, television personality, and media proprietor whose net worth is an estimated $4.8 billion, according to ''Forbes'', and ranked No. 177 on the 2020 ''Forbes'' 400 list ...

,Cuban's original post is archived her

It developed from multiple

linkblog A linklog is a type of blog which is meant to act as a linked list. Common practice is for the post titles to link directly to an external URLs, and the content of the post includes information to complement the associated URL. Linklogs existed ...

s that were trying to influence search indexes and others trying to Google bomb every word in the dictionary.

References

External links

Blogger: About Spam Blogs

SVMs for the Blogosphere: Blog Identification and Splog Detection

* ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...

'', 17 November 2005
"Cashing in on fake blogs"
{{DEFAULTSORT:Spam Blog Black hat search engine optimization Blogs Spamming

History

See also

References

External links