For a long time, the natural way for finding multiple, random blogs was "Next Blog" surfing.
After a while, spammers found out about this, and "Next\\\\Porn Blog" surfing became the norm. A couple months ago, Blogger developed a new "Next Blog" link which has turned out to be safer - and boring.
Fortunately, "Next Blog" surfing isn't the only way to see what's out there in the Blogosphere.
We have a number of alternative strategies, which give you various choices to focus or randomise your surfing.
Blogger Profile Surfing
This is easy to focus, and it's symmetrical. While you are finding out about other folks, they are also finding out about you.
You fill out your Blogger profile with key words describing your interests. Your key words, separated by commas, become links to search for other profiles with identical key words.
You link from your profile, to SERP lists of other profiles, and to other blogs. The options, which focus your surfing here, are based on the keywords which you add to your profile, then which profile you examine from the SERP list, and finally which blog you select from a given profile.
Following Surfing
Following Surfing, like Blogger Profile Surfing, involves your profile. The Following profile, though, links blogs and profiles asymmetrically, and provides focused and random surfing alike.
You link from anyone's blog, to random and miscellaneous personal icons of the Followers, to profiles of the Followers, and to other blogs. The options, which focus your surfing here, start with which Follower icon to select, then what blog linked to the profile of the Follower selected.
Google Blog Search
Like Blogger Profile Surfing, this is easy to focus. While the latter is symmetrical (as you are able to surf other profiles, others are able to surf yours), this option allows you some anonymity.
This gives you the ability to specify a number of interesting criteria to narrow down your interests, then randomly accesses multiple blogs in a search based upon your criteria. One frequently requested "Next Blog" feature has long been language selection, and that is one key selection for Google Blog Search.
You link from the blog search options "command line" interface, to a Google SERP list - and to the blogs of interest.
Google+
Google+ is an interactive search process, where you contribute as you benefit. With Google+, you get recommendations of blogs and web sites, based upon what you recommend to other people.
When you share what interests you - and as your universe of friends expands - your friends will share, with you, what interests them. If your friends are interested by what you share, then some of what they share will interest you.
As your universe of friends expands, you'll have more friends who are interested in what interests you. As your friends are interested in what you share, they will share what you share, with their friends - and their friends will become your friends.
As your universe of friends expands further, you'll have more friends with other interests. As you explore your friends interests, some of what interests them (now) may interest you (later).
Google+ is much more dynamic than any literal "search engine", because it is constantly expanding. Google+ lets you surf, based on your friends recommendations - and as your universe of friends expands, so will your universe of interests.
Next Blog Surfing
No longer accessing blogs that are recently published, and supposedly engineered now to access only other blogs of similar subject to the current blog displayed, the "Next Blog" link will still access random blogs. It just uses additional filters, with language and subject identified so far.
You link from any blog, to other blogs, one at a time. There are no options here - you take what you are offered, or continue surfing.
Each strategy has its advantages, so try them all and decide for yourself which one suits your needs.
Showing posts with label Next Blog. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Next Blog. Show all posts
Sunday, January 10, 2010
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
The New "Next Blog" Link - What Next?
Up until last week, I would advise folks looking for traffic to their blogs that they should publish, publish, publish.
This gives us two concerns, which we did not have earlier.
Instead of the "Next Blog" link bringing you random visitors, you may get more focused visitors.
Having found other blogs through any of the above techniques, you can attract traffic to your blog by becoming a Follower of blogs that interest you. You can find other blogs by surfing from those blogs, and other people who surf those blogs may, similarly, find your blog.
None of the above techniques will attract traffic based upon posting activity, though. Whether you post daily, or yearly, you'll be just as likely to attract traffic. And you'll be more likely to surf to other blogs with subject similar to your blog. And this brings us to the final (and possibly primary) result of the new "Next Blog" link.
Spam blogs, published by the thousands, will receive significantly less traffic, and our blogs will receive, relatively, more traffic.
This will reduce the benefit of spammers who post splog farms, since 1,000 splogs today will probably attract as much traffic as 1 splog last week, and updating a splog once / year will likely attract as much traffic as once / day. This should contribute to decreased visibility and presence of the hundreds of thousand member splog farms, so common these days.
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Besides friends and family, your initial readers will come through the "Next Blog" link, randomly. You get more "Next Blog" traffic from posting more, less from posting less. And, you'll need this initial traffic.Last week, with the new "Next Blog" link, all of that changed. Now, people hitting "Next Blog" get another blog, but with 2 major differences from the possibility last week.
- The "next blog" linked to will be chosen for similar content / subject, and same language, as the blog being displayed currently.
- The "next blog" linked to will not be chosen relevant to updating activity. You're just as likely to get a blog published to 5 years ago, as 5 minutes ago.
This gives us two concerns, which we did not have earlier.
- Finding other blogs of random subject and recent updates won't be as simple as hitting the "Next Blog" link.
- Getting initial traffic to your blog won't be as simple as merely "publish, publish, publish".
Instead of the "Next Blog" link bringing you random visitors, you may get more focused visitors.
- Blogger Profile surfing. You create your Blogger profile, and indicate your various interests. You can find other people like you, when you click on your various interests. People like you will find your profile, and others like yours, when they surf from their profile.
- Google Blog Search. Once your blog has value to the search engines, people searching for subject related content will find your blog.
- Next Blog surfing. People will still find your blog using "Next Blog", they will simply start from a blog similar to yours, not one of random content.
Having found other blogs through any of the above techniques, you can attract traffic to your blog by becoming a Follower of blogs that interest you. You can find other blogs by surfing from those blogs, and other people who surf those blogs may, similarly, find your blog.
None of the above techniques will attract traffic based upon posting activity, though. Whether you post daily, or yearly, you'll be just as likely to attract traffic. And you'll be more likely to surf to other blogs with subject similar to your blog. And this brings us to the final (and possibly primary) result of the new "Next Blog" link.
Spam blogs, published by the thousands, will receive significantly less traffic, and our blogs will receive, relatively, more traffic.
- Unless you start from a blog dedicated to hacking, porn, or spam, "Next Blog" will be less likely to bring you to a blog with hacking, porn, or spam.
- Publishing a blog 100 times / day will bring a spammer as much random traffic as publishing once / week, or once / year.
This will reduce the benefit of spammers who post splog farms, since 1,000 splogs today will probably attract as much traffic as 1 splog last week, and updating a splog once / year will likely attract as much traffic as once / day. This should contribute to decreased visibility and presence of the hundreds of thousand member splog farms, so common these days.
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Friday, November 13, 2009
The New "Next Blog" Link - What Now?
Long ago, I observed that getting readers for your blog started with publishing posts. Thanks to the "Next Blog" link in the navbar, as you published posts, you'd get readers who randomly surfed to your blog. As you got more readers from random access, some readers would become return readers, which would encourage you to publish more. Which would bring you more readers. And so on.
That was a great strategy on Bloggers part, for a Blogosphere with
Unfortunately, the spammers of the Internet figured that was the perfect way to get readers to their splogs, too. And BlogSpot splog farms were born.
This week, we have The New "Next Blog" link. For any blog with any given subject matter, a reader hitting "Next Blog" gets another blog in the same language, and with the same subject matter.
As noted by several readers of this blog, there's one thing missing now.
"Next Blog" now makes no attempt to look for blogs with recent posts. Any blog, whether published 5 minutes ago or 5 years ago, is eligible by language and by subject matter.
Along with removing incentive for spammers to publish thousands of splogs / day, this removes incentive for us to publish. A blog published 5 years ago will continue to receive random visitors, as long as there are other blogs like it.
This makes "Next Blog" uniformly random. The more blogs that there are like yours, the lesser the chance that any one of you (your blog, or a competitor's blog) will be chosen by the link, when anybody surfs a competitor's blog. Balancing that out, though, the more blogs that there are like yours, the greater the chance that there are people surfing blogs like yours, which increases your chance that your blog will be chosen by somebody hitting "Next Blog".
I'm not a mathemetician, but instinctively I suspect that this gives each blog in the Blogosphere an equal chance, with each other blog in the Blogosphere, of receiving a "Next Blog" inclick, at any time.
That being the case, how do we get readers for our blogs? We'll explore that question, in my Next Post, The New "Next Blog" Link - What Next?.
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That was a great strategy on Bloggers part, for a Blogosphere with
- Relatively few blogs.
- No spammers.
Unfortunately, the spammers of the Internet figured that was the perfect way to get readers to their splogs, too. And BlogSpot splog farms were born.
This week, we have The New "Next Blog" link. For any blog with any given subject matter, a reader hitting "Next Blog" gets another blog in the same language, and with the same subject matter.
As noted by several readers of this blog, there's one thing missing now.
"Next Blog" now makes no attempt to look for blogs with recent posts. Any blog, whether published 5 minutes ago or 5 years ago, is eligible by language and by subject matter.
Along with removing incentive for spammers to publish thousands of splogs / day, this removes incentive for us to publish. A blog published 5 years ago will continue to receive random visitors, as long as there are other blogs like it.
This makes "Next Blog" uniformly random. The more blogs that there are like yours, the lesser the chance that any one of you (your blog, or a competitor's blog) will be chosen by the link, when anybody surfs a competitor's blog. Balancing that out, though, the more blogs that there are like yours, the greater the chance that there are people surfing blogs like yours, which increases your chance that your blog will be chosen by somebody hitting "Next Blog".
I'm not a mathemetician, but instinctively I suspect that this gives each blog in the Blogosphere an equal chance, with each other blog in the Blogosphere, of receiving a "Next Blog" inclick, at any time.
That being the case, how do we get readers for our blogs? We'll explore that question, in my Next Post, The New "Next Blog" Link - What Next?.
>> Top
Thursday, November 12, 2009
It's Here - The New "Next Blog" Link
Just a couple days ago, I observed that the "Next Blog" link in the navbar was being redesigned. So, it's here. Click on "Next Blog" from above. Now, you'll get other blogs in English, and for this blog, other techie blogs.
No more hacking, porn, or spam blogs, from clicking "Next Blog" - unless the blog that you're currently viewing contains hacking, porn, or spam. Which means no more hacking, porn, or spam from this blog, from clicking "Next Blog" - period.
The end of hacking, porn, and spam in the NextBlogosphere. Bravo, Blogger.
Maybe you'll see a third difference. Now, any randomly accessed other blog may, or may not be, recently updated. This won't please everybody, unfortunately.
So next, we'll have to look for alternative strategies for publicising your blog. We used to start with publish, publish, publish. That's still a good goal - you want to write content that's interesting, and relevant, if that's what your readers like. But that won't get you readers, even random ones, now. No more random traffic to our blogs, from increased posting activity.
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No more hacking, porn, or spam blogs, from clicking "Next Blog" - unless the blog that you're currently viewing contains hacking, porn, or spam. Which means no more hacking, porn, or spam from this blog, from clicking "Next Blog" - period.
The end of hacking, porn, and spam in the NextBlogosphere. Bravo, Blogger.
Maybe you'll see a third difference. Now, any randomly accessed other blog may, or may not be, recently updated. This won't please everybody, unfortunately.
Before it would often bring me to sites I had no interest in or were not in english, but at least it brought me to recently updated sites. Now when I do it I often get stuck finding a ton of sites all on a single topic, and many of them haven't been updated in months/years.You can't please everybody. You can have exciting, or you can have safe. I don't think that you can have both.
So next, we'll have to look for alternative strategies for publicising your blog. We used to start with publish, publish, publish. That's still a good goal - you want to write content that's interesting, and relevant, if that's what your readers like. But that won't get you readers, even random ones, now. No more random traffic to our blogs, from increased posting activity.
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Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Coming Soon - The New "Next Blog" Link
I've been writing about the navbar, and the "Next Blog" link, for some time - about its random nature, about its dangers, and recently about its design changes. Soon, we are promised a major functionality change in "Next Blog". Blogger Buzz: Coming up Next... suggests that soon, the link will let us surf to blogs with both language and subject affinity to our blogs.
This is a great idea, and one that's been long overdue. This has been coming, since well before January 2008.
But like all great ideas, one should consider the details.
It will be interesting to see what a blog with a totally unique language / subject pair will link to. Also, how granular will the subject association be? For that matter, how will blog subject be determined? What of blogs with multiple subjects - or of course some blogs with no subject, simply ramblings?
And will this allow folks to intentionally (or un intentionally) surf to porn or spam, if they are currently viewing porn or spam? Will it be possible that the bad guys could build blogs that would have the right content, to intercept a blog viewer surfing non porn / spam, so they end up surfing through a ghetto of porn / spam blogs?
For that matter, maybe porn / spam wouldn't be the only types of hijackings. How about someone surfing blogs about automotive design being hijacked into a blog about the ozone layer (hopefully, you understand the connection there). Worse yet, into automotive insurance issues.
Take 10 minutes, see how many subject hijackings you could imagine. Soft spam / propaganda hijacks, nothing blatant. Still, opportunities a plenty, for abuse.
Ten minutes after this change hits the Blogosphere, the bad guys will have a hijack in design. Bet on it. As people start to trust the new "Next Blog" link, it'll be like wolves in the sheep pen, with no shepherds in sight.
Like many Blogger ideas, this one may deserve skeptical optimism.
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This is a great idea, and one that's been long overdue. This has been coming, since well before January 2008.
But like all great ideas, one should consider the details.
It will be interesting to see what a blog with a totally unique language / subject pair will link to. Also, how granular will the subject association be? For that matter, how will blog subject be determined? What of blogs with multiple subjects - or of course some blogs with no subject, simply ramblings?
And will this allow folks to intentionally (or un intentionally) surf to porn or spam, if they are currently viewing porn or spam? Will it be possible that the bad guys could build blogs that would have the right content, to intercept a blog viewer surfing non porn / spam, so they end up surfing through a ghetto of porn / spam blogs?
For that matter, maybe porn / spam wouldn't be the only types of hijackings. How about someone surfing blogs about automotive design being hijacked into a blog about the ozone layer (hopefully, you understand the connection there). Worse yet, into automotive insurance issues.
Take 10 minutes, see how many subject hijackings you could imagine. Soft spam / propaganda hijacks, nothing blatant. Still, opportunities a plenty, for abuse.
Ten minutes after this change hits the Blogosphere, the bad guys will have a hijack in design. Bet on it. As people start to trust the new "Next Blog" link, it'll be like wolves in the sheep pen, with no shepherds in sight.
Like many Blogger ideas, this one may deserve skeptical optimism.
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Coming up Next...
by Helen Kang, Software Engineer, Blogger
Some of you must have wondered what the Next Blog link on the NavBar does, and clicked on the link once or twice. Next Blog used to take you to a random blog, written by a random blogger. Your fellow blogger could have been writing her blog in a language that you don't know how to read. Or you might be someone who likes to read about food and restaurants in Germany, but your randomly chosen next blog could have been focused on sports, and written in Tagalog.
We've made the Next Blog link more useful, by taking you to a blog that you might like. The new and improved Next Blog link will now take you to a blog with similar content, in a language that you understand. If you are reading a Spanish blog about food, the Next Blog link will likely take you to another blog about food. In Spanish!
You might discover a cool blogger who has hobbies similar to yours, has similar taste in electronic gadgets, likes sports that you're into, or has similar curiosities and interests. We will finish rolling out the new and improved Next Blog link over the next week and hope that you will enjoy discovering blogs that are likely to interest you.
This has been a fun, collaborative effort on the Blogger team and we've enjoyed the support we received from other Google teams. We really hope you enjoy the new, more relevant Next Blog as much as we do.
Some of you must have wondered what the Next Blog link on the NavBar does, and clicked on the link once or twice. Next Blog used to take you to a random blog, written by a random blogger. Your fellow blogger could have been writing her blog in a language that you don't know how to read. Or you might be someone who likes to read about food and restaurants in Germany, but your randomly chosen next blog could have been focused on sports, and written in Tagalog.
We've made the Next Blog link more useful, by taking you to a blog that you might like. The new and improved Next Blog link will now take you to a blog with similar content, in a language that you understand. If you are reading a Spanish blog about food, the Next Blog link will likely take you to another blog about food. In Spanish!
You might discover a cool blogger who has hobbies similar to yours, has similar taste in electronic gadgets, likes sports that you're into, or has similar curiosities and interests. We will finish rolling out the new and improved Next Blog link over the next week and hope that you will enjoy discovering blogs that are likely to interest you.
This has been a fun, collaborative effort on the Blogger team and we've enjoyed the support we received from other Google teams. We really hope you enjoy the new, more relevant Next Blog as much as we do.
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
The Attack Of The Clones
One noticeable spam problem became visible in late 2009, thanks to yet another Blogger error.
This error left a lot of bloggers (some legitimate and others actually spammers) reporting both confusion and indignation.
The confusion was seen, in two (seemingly) separate topics of indignation.
and
Both of these reports, echoed by dozens of bloggers and spammers, show two sides of the same story.
The first report was typically about blogs that were righteously locked - yet a mistake caused the message
The second report exemplifies the despair and frustration felt by thousands of honest people who simply want to publish to their blogs. And there are dozens of similar, and dissimilar reports.
Spammers publish new blogs, constantly, using botnets.
Spammers, in order to publish one or two active splogs (blogs containing actual hacking, porn, and / or spam content), use the power of the Internet. Each splog publisher ("splogger"), who may have at his control thousands of hijacked computers, publishes thousands of blogs each day.
A spammer starts with empty blogs, which do not appear spammy.
A splogger starts by simply publishing empty blogs, in a constant, all day activity. You may see the empty blogs some time, if you go "Next Blog" surfing. They have a title, an archives gadget in the sidebar, and maybe one or two posts with random garbage. And a Profile gadget, with a link to the "owner", each "owner" with 10 blogs.
He then adds random content, scraped from the web - maybe, from your blog.
The splogger next takes one legitimate blog - in this case, your blog. He scrapes content from your blog, takes a dozen or so of his empty blogs, adds your content to each, and republishes each blog. Now, there are a dozen clones of your blog, plus your original, in BlogSpot.
He then adds spammy content, to a few of his blogs.
Next, the splogger takes a couple of his recently created clones, adds the payload - hacking, porn, and / or spam content, or possibly, links to other blogs or websites containing the payload - and republishes his now active splogs.
Each time, he just uses a couple blogs (cloned from your blog), and keeps the others as reserve. He has dozens of other splogs with active content out there too, using content scraped from other legitimate blogs. The clones of your blog, joining the clones of other blogs, are now active members of his splog farm.
As Blogger deletes discovered spammy blogs, the spammer uses more like yours.
As the splogs with active content are detected and removed by Blogger, the splogger simply activates other reserves, placing payload into each, in turn. By the time all of the reserves, that are clones of your blog, are used up, the well designed spam blog farm will have clones of still more legitimate blogs, ready to be activated.
A spam blog has a distinctive life cycle.
Considering this process, we see the 5 Stage life cycle, of each blog in the splog farm.
The plan here is that each splog will pass through each stage in the life cycle, in proper sequence. Since the splogger publishes thousands of splogs daily, if Blogger were to simply lock then delete the active splogs, the splogger simply activates the reserve splogs, as needed. This is good project management, by the sploggers.
Blogger shortens the life cycle, using fuzzy blog identification.
Blogger aims to shorten the splog life cycle. When the anti-spam bot detects an active splog, they search their database of suspected splogs, find similar blogs with no active content (the reserves), and lock the reserves too.
Unfortunately, when Blogger locks the reserve splogs, they are also going to lock your blog. Fuzzy spam detection techniques can't tell the difference between your blog, and the clones, because there is no difference.
If a spammer clones your blog, your blog will look just like a spam blog.
A successful clone is a non distinguisable replica of the original blog. Your blog looks like one of the reserve splogs. This leaves you, and bloggers like you, reporting
If the spam blogs went untouched, the search engines would index your blog.
When you look at this differently, though, you see that Blogger is actually helping you. Were your blog, and the clones, to remain in BlogSpot undisturbed, the search engines would see the clones, and levy a huge duplicated content penalty on all aliases of the content - including your original blog.
If you are able to declare your blog as legitimate to Blogger, Blogger can later delete the sploggy clones - and the search engines will, hopefully, continue to index your blog, as legitimate and unique content.
In 2012, Blogger took the Next Step, and made "Next Blog" a less productive launching ground for splog farms. With blog owners carelessly deleting and renaming their blogs, however, the blog clone farm continues as a useful model for spam distribution.
This error left a lot of bloggers (some legitimate and others actually spammers) reporting both confusion and indignation.
The confusion was seen, in two (seemingly) separate topics of indignation.
My blog seems to be locked, but when I fill out the CAPTCHA, I getYour blog is not locked, and does not need review.What do I do, now?
and
My blog is not spam! Honestly, how could Blogger legitimately call my blog spam?
Both of these reports, echoed by dozens of bloggers and spammers, show two sides of the same story.
The first report was typically about blogs that were righteously locked - yet a mistake caused the message
Your blog is not locked, and does not need review.
The second report exemplifies the despair and frustration felt by thousands of honest people who simply want to publish to their blogs. And there are dozens of similar, and dissimilar reports.
Note: This isn't fiction - I'm not stealing content from the Tom Clancy "Net Force" novels. This is real.
Spammers publish new blogs, constantly, using botnets.
Spammers, in order to publish one or two active splogs (blogs containing actual hacking, porn, and / or spam content), use the power of the Internet. Each splog publisher ("splogger"), who may have at his control thousands of hijacked computers, publishes thousands of blogs each day.
A spammer starts with empty blogs, which do not appear spammy.
A splogger starts by simply publishing empty blogs, in a constant, all day activity. You may see the empty blogs some time, if you go "Next Blog" surfing. They have a title, an archives gadget in the sidebar, and maybe one or two posts with random garbage. And a Profile gadget, with a link to the "owner", each "owner" with 10 blogs.
He then adds random content, scraped from the web - maybe, from your blog.
The splogger next takes one legitimate blog - in this case, your blog. He scrapes content from your blog, takes a dozen or so of his empty blogs, adds your content to each, and republishes each blog. Now, there are a dozen clones of your blog, plus your original, in BlogSpot.
He then adds spammy content, to a few of his blogs.
Next, the splogger takes a couple of his recently created clones, adds the payload - hacking, porn, and / or spam content, or possibly, links to other blogs or websites containing the payload - and republishes his now active splogs.
Each time, he just uses a couple blogs (cloned from your blog), and keeps the others as reserve. He has dozens of other splogs with active content out there too, using content scraped from other legitimate blogs. The clones of your blog, joining the clones of other blogs, are now active members of his splog farm.
As Blogger deletes discovered spammy blogs, the spammer uses more like yours.
As the splogs with active content are detected and removed by Blogger, the splogger simply activates other reserves, placing payload into each, in turn. By the time all of the reserves, that are clones of your blog, are used up, the well designed spam blog farm will have clones of still more legitimate blogs, ready to be activated.
A spam blog has a distinctive life cycle.
Considering this process, we see the 5 Stage life cycle, of each blog in the splog farm.
- Empty (just published).
- Reserve (previously empty, republished with scraped content added).
- Active (previously reserve, republished with payload added).
- Detected (previously active, locked by the Blogger Spam Classification bot).
- Deleted.
The plan here is that each splog will pass through each stage in the life cycle, in proper sequence. Since the splogger publishes thousands of splogs daily, if Blogger were to simply lock then delete the active splogs, the splogger simply activates the reserve splogs, as needed. This is good project management, by the sploggers.
Blogger shortens the life cycle, using fuzzy blog identification.
Blogger aims to shorten the splog life cycle. When the anti-spam bot detects an active splog, they search their database of suspected splogs, find similar blogs with no active content (the reserves), and lock the reserves too.
Unfortunately, when Blogger locks the reserve splogs, they are also going to lock your blog. Fuzzy spam detection techniques can't tell the difference between your blog, and the clones, because there is no difference.
If a spammer clones your blog, your blog will look just like a spam blog.
A successful clone is a non distinguisable replica of the original blog. Your blog looks like one of the reserve splogs. This leaves you, and bloggers like you, reporting
My blog is not spam! Honestly, how could Blogger legitimately call my blog spam?
If the spam blogs went untouched, the search engines would index your blog.
When you look at this differently, though, you see that Blogger is actually helping you. Were your blog, and the clones, to remain in BlogSpot undisturbed, the search engines would see the clones, and levy a huge duplicated content penalty on all aliases of the content - including your original blog.
If you are able to declare your blog as legitimate to Blogger, Blogger can later delete the sploggy clones - and the search engines will, hopefully, continue to index your blog, as legitimate and unique content.
In 2012, Blogger took the Next Step, and made "Next Blog" a less productive launching ground for splog farms. With blog owners carelessly deleting and renaming their blogs, however, the blog clone farm continues as a useful model for spam distribution.
Saturday, July 19, 2008
Less Traffic To Our Blogs?
I've been advising bloggers about an essential and sensitive subject - getting more traffic to their blogs - for years. Such a simple activity - post accurate, relevant, and useful articles - and advertise responsibly - the search engines will see you - and the readers will come. But there's a problem here, similar to the chicken and the egg paradox.
Where did the first chicken come from, anyway?
With Blogger, there is a way around the paradox - the "Next Blog" link, driven by the "Recently Updated Blogs" list. When you post to your blog, your blog goes onto the "Recently Updated Blogs" list. People using the "Next Blog" link access the RUB list, and there they are reading your blog. The more that you post, the more readers you get from "Next Blog".
But, there's a limitation here. Recently, Blogger started making the "Next Blog" link more "family friendly". This effort, prompted by thousands of complaints from people tired of seeing material not suitable for minors - or in some cases - for anybody - was welcomed by many bloggers. Many malicious or unsuitable blogs, detected as spam blogs - simply disappeared from visibility.
But this effort has side effects, not welcomed by all bloggers. The Google spam blog detection is fuzzy, and it's prone to both false negative detection and false positive detection. The former means that not all spam blogs will be detected, and the latter means that not all blogs detected will be spam. This is similar to known problems with automated locking and / or deletion of spam blogs, and with TOS actions against accounts used for setting up and maintaining such blogs.
In my opinion, locking out spam blogs, from "Next Blog" links or from the Recently Updated Blog list, can be tuned to produce false positives, and eliminate false negatives. Locking and / or deletion of blogs, on the other hand, must be much more carefully balanced, as too many false positive detections will lead to too many complaints from owners of blogs falsely locked or deleted. Check the normal forum activity, in GBH: Login Issues and GBH: Publishing Trouble, if you don't understand this problem.
Exclusion of a non spam blog from "Next Blog" links or from the Recently Updated Blog list will be much easier to get away with, even with egregious false positive detection, simply because many blog owners don't know or care about "Next Blog" and the Recently Updated Blog list, nor is it easy to measure "Next Blog" activity. With that in mind, Blogger will likely tune their scanning with the goal of eliminating false negatives - excluding all malicious blogs from "Next Blog" and the Recently Updated Blog list - and there will be many more false positives.
So enjoy the cleaner and more useful "Next Blog" link, but note that there may be a price.
>> Top
If more search engine visibility depends upon more readers, and more readers depends upon better search engine visibility, how do you start the process?
Where did the first chicken come from, anyway?
With Blogger, there is a way around the paradox - the "Next Blog" link, driven by the "Recently Updated Blogs" list. When you post to your blog, your blog goes onto the "Recently Updated Blogs" list. People using the "Next Blog" link access the RUB list, and there they are reading your blog. The more that you post, the more readers you get from "Next Blog".
But, there's a limitation here. Recently, Blogger started making the "Next Blog" link more "family friendly". This effort, prompted by thousands of complaints from people tired of seeing material not suitable for minors - or in some cases - for anybody - was welcomed by many bloggers. Many malicious or unsuitable blogs, detected as spam blogs - simply disappeared from visibility.
But this effort has side effects, not welcomed by all bloggers. The Google spam blog detection is fuzzy, and it's prone to both false negative detection and false positive detection. The former means that not all spam blogs will be detected, and the latter means that not all blogs detected will be spam. This is similar to known problems with automated locking and / or deletion of spam blogs, and with TOS actions against accounts used for setting up and maintaining such blogs.
In my opinion, locking out spam blogs, from "Next Blog" links or from the Recently Updated Blog list, can be tuned to produce false positives, and eliminate false negatives. Locking and / or deletion of blogs, on the other hand, must be much more carefully balanced, as too many false positive detections will lead to too many complaints from owners of blogs falsely locked or deleted. Check the normal forum activity, in GBH: Login Issues and GBH: Publishing Trouble, if you don't understand this problem.
Exclusion of a non spam blog from "Next Blog" links or from the Recently Updated Blog list will be much easier to get away with, even with egregious false positive detection, simply because many blog owners don't know or care about "Next Blog" and the Recently Updated Blog list, nor is it easy to measure "Next Blog" activity. With that in mind, Blogger will likely tune their scanning with the goal of eliminating false negatives - excluding all malicious blogs from "Next Blog" and the Recently Updated Blog list - and there will be many more false positives.
So enjoy the cleaner and more useful "Next Blog" link, but note that there may be a price.
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Thursday, May 15, 2008
Blogs And The Content Warning
For many years, using "Next Blog" for surfing through the Blogosphere has been a dodgy activity.
No matter when you surfed, you were sure to find something pretty nasty, and frequently hazardous to the health of your computer (and maybe to you).
In January 2008, that changed. Blogger started scanning blogs for undesirable content, and blocked many nasty blogs from being targeted by "Next Blog" surfing. Besides using automated blog scanning, they also provided a voluntary classification of our blogs.
Not all potential readers will be encouraged, when seeing a content warning.
If someone genuinely wants to host possibly offensive content, he can do that - inaccessible from "Next Blog" or casual surfing, and behind a warning page.
In some cases, this is a voluntary classification, accessible from Settings - Other - "Adult Content". In other cases, this warning is applied to your blog by a faceless bot, similar to the much hated anti-spam bots.
The "Content Warning" screen, that your readers are now faced with, every time they surf to your blog, has its downsides.
The warning does not block the spiders - though it does limit indexed content.
One of the problems of the "Content Warning" screen is that the search engine spiders, when they index the blog, pick up the text of the warning, rather than the blog name and description.
When you look at the search hits that include such a blog, that's what you will see. That won't be good for your reader confidence, unless they expect to see objectionable content, anyway.
Even though a blog is behind a "Content Warning", though, it is still being indexed.
You can use Search Console to understand this better. If there is any problem with indexing the web site (blog), a GWT / SC report will help you sort that.
The warning also interferes with crawling redirected blogs.
Another interstitial warning comes with redirected blogs, published to either a custom domain (sometimes), or to an external server by FTP (frequently).
The Content Warning interstitial advice also appears to interfere with private blog access. If you have a restricted access blog, you may want to avoid involvement with the interstitial warning, voluntary or involuntary.
And recently, we've noted that it degrades the quality of information from visitor meters.
One popular feature of better visitor meters is the ability to see what web page your visitors are coming from (the "referer"). When the interstitial warning page is displayed ahead of the blog, it is shown as the referer page, and you lose the ability to tell what actual web site your visitors really come from.
All that aside, remember one detail - just because a blog is indexed, in the search engine of your choice, does not guarantee it good visibility, in a search hit list. A search hit list indexes web pages in order of popularity.
If your blog covers a popular topic, through no fault of yours, other more popular web sites may appear in the list above yours. If the description of your blog, in the search hit list, shows simply the interstitial text, you may not get as many new readers, as you would hope for.
That warning doesn't tell people anything useful about your blog. Less readers = less reputation with the search engines - and less readers still.
So, if you have a Content Warning in your blog, you may lose search engine reputation, and you may not see your newer posts listed in the search hit lists as promptly. But check Google Webmaster Tools, to see if there's actual indexing problems. Chances are - there's not.
No matter when you surfed, you were sure to find something pretty nasty, and frequently hazardous to the health of your computer (and maybe to you).
In January 2008, that changed. Blogger started scanning blogs for undesirable content, and blocked many nasty blogs from being targeted by "Next Blog" surfing. Besides using automated blog scanning, they also provided a voluntary classification of our blogs.
Not all potential readers will be encouraged, when seeing a content warning.
If someone genuinely wants to host possibly offensive content, he can do that - inaccessible from "Next Blog" or casual surfing, and behind a warning page.
In some cases, this is a voluntary classification, accessible from Settings - Other - "Adult Content". In other cases, this warning is applied to your blog by a faceless bot, similar to the much hated anti-spam bots.
The "Content Warning" screen, that your readers are now faced with, every time they surf to your blog, has its downsides.
The warning does not block the spiders - though it does limit indexed content.
One of the problems of the "Content Warning" screen is that the search engine spiders, when they index the blog, pick up the text of the warning, rather than the blog name and description.
When you look at the search hits that include such a blog, that's what you will see. That won't be good for your reader confidence, unless they expect to see objectionable content, anyway.
Even though a blog is behind a "Content Warning", though, it is still being indexed.
You can use Search Console to understand this better. If there is any problem with indexing the web site (blog), a GWT / SC report will help you sort that.
The warning also interferes with crawling redirected blogs.
Another interstitial warning comes with redirected blogs, published to either a custom domain (sometimes), or to an external server by FTP (frequently).
The Content Warning interstitial advice also appears to interfere with private blog access. If you have a restricted access blog, you may want to avoid involvement with the interstitial warning, voluntary or involuntary.
And recently, we've noted that it degrades the quality of information from visitor meters.
One popular feature of better visitor meters is the ability to see what web page your visitors are coming from (the "referer"). When the interstitial warning page is displayed ahead of the blog, it is shown as the referer page, and you lose the ability to tell what actual web site your visitors really come from.
All that aside, remember one detail - just because a blog is indexed, in the search engine of your choice, does not guarantee it good visibility, in a search hit list. A search hit list indexes web pages in order of popularity.
If your blog covers a popular topic, through no fault of yours, other more popular web sites may appear in the list above yours. If the description of your blog, in the search hit list, shows simply the interstitial text, you may not get as many new readers, as you would hope for.
Content Warning Some readers may find the content of this blog objectionable. In general, Google does not review nor do we endorse the content of this or any blog.
That warning doesn't tell people anything useful about your blog. Less readers = less reputation with the search engines - and less readers still.
So, if you have a Content Warning in your blog, you may lose search engine reputation, and you may not see your newer posts listed in the search hit lists as promptly. But check Google Webmaster Tools, to see if there's actual indexing problems. Chances are - there's not.
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