Invasion of the splogs

TechBlog reported Spammers have increased their usage of so-called spam blogs or "splogs" -- blogs set up, usually on free services, merely to draw the attention of search engines.

By spamming comments and trackbacks on other blogs, and by flooding blog-specfic search engines with I've-got-a-new-post pings, they end up getting high rankings on such services as Technorati and IceRocket. They'll also show up in some general search results, such as on Google.

In the last few days, the problem has exploded, with many spammers using the free Blogspot, a.k.a Blogger -- owned by Google -- to set up their splogs. Search engines can't just block all Blogspot sites, because there are many valuable, legitimate blogs there.

Chris Pirillo has a suggestion:

Suggestion, Google? As bold as this might sound, you should institute an authentication system - a captcha of sorts - for every single post that gets sent through your Blogger service. This means that there's no more easy rides for the idiots out there who are killing your baby and the blogosphere. The user logs in, enters their post, then has to jump through a captcha hoop - much like commenters have to do on Blogger.com these days. It's a simple suggestion, and one that you really, really, really, REALLY oughta consider. You were willing to go the ref="nofollow" route, why stop there?

In the interim, Google needs to go on a search-and-destroy mission, nuking these splogs by hand if necessary.

TechSmores reports Is Google unaware of this problem? Probably not, according to a later post by Pirillo:

Chris Pirillo -- An hour ago, I received a message from a Google staffer by the name of Cédric:

Just wanted to let you know I brought up your post internally. We'll be doing something about it shortly. Sorry for the trouble it caused you and thanks for bringing it up!

So we will need to wait and see how Google can fix this.

Comment and trackback spam is a big problem, and I am happy to see that Blogger is working on it. One thing they probably should do is make certain who is setting up a BlogSpot blog, and if they start sending comment or trackback spam, delete their blog and any other blogs they have set up.