Blogger, And Home / Small Business Blog Clusters

One topic of frustration, occasionally seen in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue, involves home based business blogs, that may be victims of their own success.

We are not spam - we are a network of blog owners, in select cities all over the country. I am tired of hearing the apologies, this needs to be resolved.

The blog owner is being quite polite, but insistent.

Blog clusters, whether developed by home / small business owners, or malicious spammers, create problems for all Blogger blog owners. Home / small business blogs are clearly not intentional spam - but their structure makes them easy to mistake for spam blog farms.

Blogger values the creation of blogs with original content. Replicating original content across multiple blogs however, violates the Blogger Spam policy.

Blogger Content: Spam provides a good definition of the Blogger Spam policy.

Spam: Spam takes several forms in Blogger, all of which can result in deletion of your account or blog. Some examples include creating blogs designed to drive traffic to your site or to move it up in search listings, posting comments on other people's blogs just to promote your site or product, and scraping existing content from other sources for the primary purpose of generating revenue or other personal gains.

The most recently observed home / small business blog cluster, which generated traffic in the Spam Review section of the forum, was a USA based coupon sharing club, that had expanded into other areas - such as dining, entertainment and local events.

We are MORE than a coupon group. Our network works with Disney, Nickelodeon, local restaurants, reviews and products and events locally.

Other blog clusters have involved an Australian blog franchise of electronic / tech products and services - and a California / Florida carpet / home cleaning business.

Home / small business blogs can be mistaken for spam blogs.

Each of these three examples appear to have started as home / small businesses, possibly with one blog - and grew exponentially, as franchises. And each of the examples present problems, with automated spam classification.

• Aggregation of blogs produces unfair advantage, over other small businesses using Blogger.
• Aggregation of blogs skews spam classification, by tweaking the heuristic spam filters.
• Aggregation of blogs makes detection of actual spam blog farms more difficult.

These three concerns produce side effects, in the Blogger spam mitigation program - and lead to periodic spurious spam classification of home / small business blog clusters.

As the size of the clusters increase, so does the chance of repeated classification.

• Blogger policy prevents whitelisting the blogs in the cluster.
• The more blogs in the cluster, the greater chance that one or more blogs will be classified, at any given time.
• The more blogs in the cluster, the longer it will take to review a blog, when classified.

Understand your role, in the spam classification / review process.

If you operate a home / small business, which involves blogs clustered on a geographic and / or product - service relationship - and your business is impeded by spurious spam classification, we'll work with you, and try to get your blogs reviewed.

Please, understand that your home / small business may be pushing the limits of the Blogger spam mitigation program. Try to minimise content which replicates through multiple blogs in the cluster - and content which is scraped from various commercial websites.

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Some owners / operators of home / small businesses, which use #Blogger as a backbone for their business, produce clusters of blogs, organised on a geographic / product / service basis. Rapid growth of the businesses may lead to blogs which share content too heavily - and may lead to repeated spurious spam classification.

Owners of the blogs should learn to expect occasional spam classification, and try to minimise blog features which lead to spam classification.

Change Per Post Comment Settings, One Post At A Time

Occasionally, we have a blog owner trying to enable commenting, on a blog - and being unsuccessful diagnosing commenting problems.

Checking the per blog comment settings, in the the dashboard menu under Settings - Posts and comments, there's no obvious problem. The problem, in some cases, is in the per post settings, in the Post Editor "Post settings - Options" wizard - but not all posts will have a problem.

The "Reader comments" setting, for any new post, is taken from the setting for the previously published post. If you publish a post today, with "Reader comments" selected as "Don't allow", the next post will also be set to "Don't allow" - unless you change the setting, before publishing. Similarly, if it's set to "Allow", the next post published will have it set to "Allow".

• Allow
• Don't allow

That's the choices, for each new post.

If the setting for any post is wrong, according to your policy, it's up to you to change the setting, for that post.

Since the per post setting overrides the per blog setting, any existing posts, with the setting "Don't allow", will not allow comments. To change this, you have to edit each post, one by one, and change the setting.

If the setting is "Allow", and you want to disable comments, you have to change the per post setting, one post at a time. Again, any new posts will then have the setting "Don't allow" - but any existing posts will have to be changed, one post at a time.





If you occasionally disable comments, check this setting before you publish a new post - and make sure that comments are enabled, when appropriate.



If you backdate a post, and publish it before any previously published posts, the setting for the previously published posts won't change. If this creates a range of posts, with inconsistent settings - some allowing comments, the others not allowing comments - you'll still have to change the setting as you wish, for each post, one by one.

If the setting for a post is currently "Allow", and a post has comments, you'll have 3 options for that post.

• Allow
• Don't allow, show existing
• Don't allow, hide existing

That's the choices, for each post with comments.

If you're in the habit of changing the comment setting for various posts, you'll want to check the setting, for each new post - and make sure that it's appropriate. Better that, then to have to change a whole bunch of posts, one by one, later.

Don't Try To Map The Boundaries Of Abusive Content

We continue to see signs of innovative publishing technique, in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken, about deleted / suspended Blogger accounts, and deleted blogs.

My Blogger account was just deleted! I have gotten a few DMCA complaints, in the past - but I always deleted the offending posts! Why were all of my blogs just deleted?

This blog owner does not understand that multiple offenses must be resolved, to avoid abuse classification - and eventual account deletion.

Young children are always testing the limits, to see what behaviour they can get away with, before penalties are imposed, by their parents.

Spammers, like children, like to test the limits.

Spammers like to test the limits, in Blogger. They will publish multiple blogs, simultaneously, each with different innovative content / technique (aka borderline spam) - then wait to see what blogs get deleted. This is also known as "mapping the boundaries".

Mapping the boundaries, in Blogger, can have unpleasant consequences. Like any parent, Blogger / Google has some patience - but their patience has limits.

Blogger / Google describe what the limits are based on - but not where they are.

Blogger / Google define the limits, in their Google: Terms Of Service, and Blogger: Blogger Content Policy references. Blogger blog owners are advised to stay well within the limits.

Like any legal policy, "terms are subject to change", without warning. And, they are subject to interpretation, by Blogger Policy Enforcement, and by Google Legal. If you repeatedly test the limits, expect to be treated appropriately.

Consequences, for exceeding the limits, may not be pleasant.

The consequences, for blog owners exceeding the limits, are gradual - but finite. The intermediate and long term effects may not be pleasant.

When the final limit is exceeded, and penalties are imposed, the blog owner may have to start over, with a new account and new blogs.

The best advice is to stay well within the stated limits.

Don't test the limits, if you want to publish a Blogger blog, with any real future. Publish good original content, that informs and interests your readers. And, publish regularly. That is how you get traffic, to your blog.

Problems With "Create a new blog", Caused By Limits

We've recently been seeing a number of reports, in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken, from blog owners having problems with the "Create a new blog" wizard.

When some of my students try to create a new blog, they get an error message

The page you requested is invalid.

These blog owners appear to be running up against new blog creation limits, possibly caused by Blogger prevention of abusive blog creation.

Blogger has apparently added new ways of preventing abusive blog creation, by use of new activity limits.

Blogger has a number of limits, which together guard against abusive new blog creation.

• A limit of 100 blogs created, in total, under one Blogger account.
• A limit of (unstated) blogs created daily, under one Blogger account.
• A limit of (unstated) blogs created daily, from one network address.
• A limit of (unstated) blogs created daily, from one logical network.

This is what you see, when attempting to create a blog, with a limit tripped.


A per account total limit.

We have long known about the limit of 100 blogs being created, under one Blogger account. This limit is easy enough to bypass. There is no limit against blogs owned under one account - so you can setup a second (third, ...) Blogger account, create additional blogs, and transfer control of the blogs created, to the account that's convenient for you to use.

A per account per day limit.

The recently added daily limit of blog creations, under one Blogger account, is thought to be rather low (under half a dozen blogs, daily). Here, too, it may be possible to create more blogs under another Blogger account, then transfer control of the blogs created. Or, just wait 24 - 48 hours (see below), and try again.

A per network limit.

We have been advised, in passing, that Blogger is now limiting total daily blog creation, by network address. This is currently seen to affect use of multiple computers connected to private LANs, where all computers share a single public network address. This policy appears to interfere with legitimate creation of multiple blogs, in high school and college classroom environments.

A per network range limit.

Besides the recently added limit against activity on one network address, it appears that there is a limit against activity in network address ranges, much as "suspicious" / "unusual" activity is aggregated in "403 Forbidden" lockouts - which are frequently a result of detected botnet new blog setup activity.

Network address range based limits may prevent both faculty and students from creating their blogs, using their own computers, on their own networks at home. Note that network address ranges can include computers significantly distant from each other. Your Internet service may include network "neighbours" in the next county, or province / state - or possibly, an adjoining country.

Confusion about when the new "day" may start.

We may also be seeing some confusion about the start / end of the "day", for limits. Since the time zone is not a part of the Blogger account profile (only each individual blog), it's likely that daily limits are reset for all Blogger activity, simultaneously.

Similar to the well known daily Stats reset, daily blog creation limits are probably reset worldwide, according to the GMT clock. For some Blogger account owners not in the GMT time zone (at least 23 / 24 of the world), some portion of (yesterday's) evening activity, and (today's) morning activity, may be counted in the same "day".

The display could be more relevant - but it is an improvement.

All of these limit issues, together leading to the error display in question, the base concern is that Blogger should consider displaying a more descriptive error message. Something like

We're sorry, you (and your neighbours) can not create so many blogs, today!

would be more user friendly than

The page you requested is invalid.

All that said, the "Invalid page" display is a slightly more focused solution, than simply issuing a "403 Forbidden", for all "suspicious" / "unusual" network activity. At least other people, who are not interested in creating a new blog, may continue to access Blogger.

DMCA Violations Must Be Appealed

Some blog owners don't understand the severity of DMCA violation citations.

We see occasional naivete, in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken

I got email

After reviewing your account, we noticed that you have violated the terms of service frequently: http://www.blogger.com/go/terms. And where we have sent you several warnings about these abuses and offered you information about our policy towards repeat infringers, we were forced to disable Blogger service provided to you. Thank you for your understanding.
- Blogger Team

Why can I not login to Blogger, now?

This blog owners, and too many others, do not understand about the severity of repeated DMCA / TOS violation, upon their Blogger / Google accounts.

Too many blog owners simply accept the occasional deletion of their posts, and continue publishing.

I deleted the problem posts, whenever warned. Why did I get the notice about "you have violated the terms of service frequently"?

They do not understand that simply deleting a post, when cited for DMCA violation, is the same as entering a "Guilty" - or maybe "Nolo Contendere" plea, in a court of law.

Problem posts, when repeated, make the blog owner look like an intentional, non repentant spammer, mapping out the boundaries of what is accepted.

If your blog is cited for DMCA violations, it's to your benefit to appeal the citation - and hope that you're found innocent.

Of course, if you're guilty of DMCA violations, you'll have no valid recourse, other than starting over - maybe with another Blogger account / blog, maybe with a blog or website hosted elsewhere. That's your choice.

If you remain in Blogger service, you will be expected to clean up your act.

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You Can't Take It With You

Recently in Blogger Help Forum: How Do I?, we've had direct contact with a few confirmed spammers.

These are people who have submitted to the noxious 4 step spam confirmation protocol, and who have been given the full benefit of the doubt.

When I come back with the unfortunate (to them) news

OK, all good things end some day.

Your blogs will, quite likely, not be unlocked. You might wish to review the Blogger and Google TOS.

http://www.blogger.com/terms.g

http://www.google.com/terms_of_service.html

the next post is frequently

OK, can Blogger unlock my blog so I can get the content, and move to another host?

or

Can I redirect my address to my new TypePad (WordPress, whateverspammyhostichose, ...) web site?

and the answer is

No, you cannot do that.

What you steal is not yours to keep, when you are caught.

Like ill gotten gains from robbing banks, you're not permitted to take your spoils of illegal act into your next life.

Content, search engine reputation, and traffic - all acquired while misusing Blogger and blogger resources - are not yours to keep, once you are confirmed as an abusive blog publisher. You stole all of those resources from genuine and honest blog owners. You are not permitted to keep any assets, illegally acquired.

If the police arrest you for fraud, and break up your game of "3 Card Monte" - and you're found guilty of whatever law prohibits your "game", you're probably going to spend a few nights in jail. When they let you go, they are not going to give you back your playing cards - or the money that you stole. If you want to get back in business, you'll need a fresh pack of cards - and probably, you need to start over, in a different city.

It's time to start over.

When the blog is deleted, the BlogSpot URL is locked, for life. If the blog was published to a custom domain, the domain URL is also locked, for life.

The BlogSpot and custom domain URLs won't be re usable, in Google. Ever.



Go away, please. You may, if you wish, start over - but the current life of yours is over. Maybe, find another source of income.

Just don't make the same mistakes, next time.

Justice Is For The Poor And The Weak - And Small

In the modern legal system, justice is (supposedly) available to all citizens - regardless of colour, crede, or financial status - equally. In the Blogger legal system, justice (as in porn / spam classification, or URL availability) is available to all bloggers - equally.

If your blog is unjustly accused of hosting hacking, porn, and / or spam content, or if your blog is unfairly placed behind a content warning, you (the blog owner) are responsible for getting the wrong righted.

Due diligence requires that the blog owner has to report any problem with any Blogger blog. Regardless of how many anxious readers your blog may serve, you the owner have to request a review, when the blog is unjustly classified, deleted or locked. And, you have to do so promptly.

Blogger must serve owners of small and unpopular blogs equally, with owners of large and popular ones. The blog readers are not part of the review process. The only question is

Does the blog host hacking, objectionable, porn, or spam content?

Please, no coyote attacks in Blogger Help Forum.

Waiting For The Tap On The Shoulder, Part 2

In my musings last month about spam blogs, and people victimised by spam blogs, I analogised the legendary college secret societies, and the impersonal and rude treatment of the unfortunates who did not get initiated.

eventually, those who don't get elected will open their eyes, remove the blindfold, and find herself / himself in a pitiful group of rejects, all waiting (hopelessly) for that tap. The tap that never comes.

Again, I'll note that I never got into either group.

I am not socially adept enough to even try out for such a group. Or maybe I simply had other priorities.

This month, we are seeing the unfortunates, gathered in Blogger Help Forum.

In college, there will always be those do-gooders who try to change peoples minds, and convince the secret society members to be more polite to the unfortunates. Maybe, they could have a party to thank them for trying.

These "unfortunates", this month, are spammers. They aren't worthy of our pity, or sympathy.

They are the reason why you had your blog locked, last week.

• If you had to wait, while your blog was offline and lost reader contact, and search engine reputation;
• If you had to endure another mention of the hated 4 step protocol (that you repeated 3 times);
• If your blog lost page rank because of duplicate content penalties;

these are the people that you should blame. Here, we will call these folks "turkeys".

Gobble, Gobble.