No, these are not the graphic visualizations of sound effects commonly seen in action-superhero-type comic books, much like when Superman gives a-beating to Lex Luthor and his cohorts.
SPLOG or BLAM are now one of the most interesting topics to date in the discussions and debates arena within the world of spam or anti-spam, and in the global blogosphere.
Along with the said rise of interest are also words and phrases coming out such as “comment spam” or “spam blog” or “blog spam”. These have been “out there” since late 2005 but it is only now or recently when they are really coming out in the mainstream.
So what are they actually?…
Actually, they can be classified into two “fairly new” and rising implementations of SPAM nowadays and in the days to come. To put most of us on the same page, I’ve listed down the basic descriptions below, as well as the main problems caused and some defense mechanisms currently in place in the industry:
1) SPlog or blAM are weblog sites designed to host spam and promote affiliate websites. These “blog sites” usually have nonsensical or “trash” data, or don’t contain any real content at all. At times they even include contents stolen or “scraped” from other weblogs and legitimate sites. However, they do contain links, ads and/or banners to the aforementioned advertised affiliated websites.
Problems caused by SPLOGs include but are not limited to:
- Waste of valuable disk space and bandwidth
- Pollution search engine results
- Damage of networking communities
Defense mechanisms that are currently out there:
- SPLOG Reporting Services. Splog Reporteris an example.
- Maintain a large database of splogs and subject this list to public awareness
- Blocking of web server IP addresses that splog URLs resolve to. Trend’s IWSS product family line can contribute to this cause.
2) On the other hand, SPLOG is different from what is called “spam in blogs”or comment spam. Spam in blogs is inclusion or posting of comments, links or ads in clean, legitimate and real blog sites, wikis, forums and discussion boards found in the Internet. Spammers take advantage of these public mediums where they can leave their spam comments or links – any web application therefore that accepts and displays hyperlinks submitted by visitors may be a target.
Problems caused by comment spams include but are not limited to:
- Waste of valuable content space
- Increasing numbers of web application targets
- Increasing page rankingsfor the spammer’s web site in the search engine Google. This would then also increase the number of potential visitors and paying customers to that said site.
Defense mechanisms that are currently out there:
- Blocking by keyword
- rel=nofollow. More info can be found here
- Captcha
- Redirects
- Switching of comments. (But this would hinder the blog or the website’s growth of valuable information sharing.)
As a final note (for this write-up that is), we should take note of the Cuban’s “call to arms”against SPLOGs and Comment Spams:
[snip]
“The intellectual property that is available in the blogosphere is an amazing source of ideas, facts and imagination. Now is the time to do something before the splog overwhelms it and make it difficult to discover new and exciting blogs.”
[snip]
Dive into these related links listed below and get to know more of these topics: (No, this is not an example of a comment spam).
First public usage of SPLOG and A call to arms
Captcha: a word-verification system
Spam Blocker CrawlerSplog on the rise!
SPAM + BLOG = SPLOG
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