Showing posts with label Not Spam. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Not Spam. Show all posts

Tuesday, January 13, 2015

Don't Backup Your Blogs, By Duplicating Them

THis month, we have several reports in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue from owners who make backup blogs.
Why was my blog deleted, by Blogger, as spam?
Some blog owners innocently create multiple blogs, to back up their main blog.

Unfortunately, having multiple blogs with the same content may make the blogs look like a spam blog farm - and Blogger detects and deletes spam blog farms.

I've been advising blog owners, for years, that Blogger blogs need informative, interesting, and unique content, to survive as Blogger blogs.

Scraped blogs - whether you scrape your own, or another person's - are a bad idea.

The general focus on "unique" is intended to discourage scraping. Blogger Help: Spam, phishing, or malware on Blogger discusses spam blogs.
Spam blogs cause various problems, beyond simply wasting a few seconds of your time when you happen to come across one. They can clog up search engines, making it difficult to find real content on the subjects that interest you. They may scrape content from other sites on the web, using other people's writing to make it look as though they have useful information of their own. And if an automated system is creating spam posts at an extremely high rate, it can impact the speed and quality of the service for other, legitimate users.
In the past, Blogger has been focusing on blog owners who steal the work of other blog owners, ie, "scraping" - or who copy by permission, ie, "syndication".

Blogger Content policy defines scraping more explicitly.

Examining Blogger Content Policy, we see the problem expressed more vividly.
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.
Having backup blogs can look like "blogs designed to drive traffic to your site or to move it up in search listings". This is a technique, used by spammers. Why bother to write content? Just use some of the clones, as clones - both to backup each other, and to boost search engine results.

Duplication of content, online, hastens classification as spam.

Backing up a Blogger blog actually duplicates Bloggers efforts. Blogger / Google stores content - ie, your blog - in a cloud of servers, worldwide. If any one server goes out of service, the others are there, to provide immediate backup. You will, likely, never even notice if any one Blogger server goes down.

Alternately, a blog owner might backup a blog because of the spammer publicised unfair blog deletion policy. Here, the blog owner is playing into the spammers hands. If backup blogs were permitted, spammers could publish their spam blog farms with impunity.

Here, what the blog owner wants to plan for by having duplicates, unfair deletion, actually hastens the unfair deletion. This will happen, even if you make the "backup" blog private.

Classification of duplicate content, as abuse, isn't spurious.

If you think about it, a blog classified as spam, because of multiple clones, isn't actually spuriously deleted. If your blog gets a spurious classification, as a possible spam host, you have to appeal the classification. Creating a new blog, with identical content, just makes you look like a non repentant spammer - and increases your vulnerability.

If you want to retain comments and posts, export to an offline file. Just don't spread duplicate content across the Internet.

Sunday, December 21, 2014

Why Do You Publish A Blogger Blog?

One of the more intriguing questions, that we see in Blogger Help Forum: Learn More About Blogger, involves the Blogger / WordPress dichotomy.
Should I migrate my blog to WordPress, where they provide SEO optimized themes, and various plugins?
My answer to that question starts with the suggestion, that the blog owner should ask himself
Why do I publish a blog?
This question has many possible answers - but I will focus on two possibilities.

To me, the choice of Blogger vs WordPress starts with asking why the blog is being published.

Blogger blogs are personal websites - and provide the best results when published with informative, interesting, and unique content. People read Blogger blogs, because they are written by people, who have something to say - and the readers provide the SEO activity.

WordPress offers a cornucopia of SEO enhancements, from clever themes, to plugins - and support groups that encourage the novice owner to develop a blog with little to no content or planning.

At the risk of stating the obvious, I'll suggest that, if you wish to publish a blog with little to no original content, you should move the blog to WordPress - and make use of their SEO optimized themes, and various plugins. Leave Blogger blogs to people who actually have something to say.

But, that suggestion has a downside.

One day, Google will take the next step beyond Panda, and further emphasise content over clever marketing schemes, and traffic enhancement techniques. As that happens, people who build blogs and websites based on themes and plugins will find their blogs and websites getting less traffic from actual people.

As actual people tire of reading cleverly marketed blogs with no content or focus, the owners of these blogs will turn to more innovative techniques for getting traffic. Hopefully, the WordPress Support forums will be more sympathetic to the novice spammers who ask
Why was my blog deleted by WordPress?
or
Why does my blog not appear at the top of the search list?

Blogger blog owners can organise their blogs, dynamically - based on how they want to present the content, and how their readers can choose to read the content.

Help Blogger to encourage the spammers to move to WordPress - and the people who have something to say can continue publishing Blogger blogs.

Tuesday, November 25, 2014

Static Blogs, And Spam Classification

Blogger blogs are starting to become a regular website publishing platform - not just a blogging platform.

Long ago, a Blogger blog was just an online journal, with posts, and text. Then, Blogger added labels, later static pages - and then the ability to replace the home / main page, with dynamic or static content of your choice. Recently, the original limitation of 20 static pages / blog was relaxed (we are not yet certain that the limit has been eliminated completely, however).

Now, you can practically publish a static website, without even having posts, using a Blogger platform. But, is this a good idea, with Blogger "One button" Publishing?

We have people asking various questions, in Blogger Help Forum: Learn More About Blogger, about making a static website.
How do I remove posts from my main page?
and
How do I publish a blog, without posts?
And alternately, in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue, we see different questions.
Why can't I get AdSense for my blog?
or
Why did Blogger delete my blog?
or maybe
Why can't I find my blog listed, in Google Search?
And all of these questions may well be just different views, of the same problem.

What you can do, and what you should do, with a Blogger blog, may be two different things.

Other Google services may affect success of your Blogger blog.

A Blogger blog may be subject to standards enforced by different Google services.

  • AdSense.
  • Blogger.
  • Google Search / Webmasters.

What you do with your blog, that may be permitted (or tolerated) in one service, may cause problems with another service.

Too many people start a Blogger blog, and only focus on making money. When they don't have a plan for writing content, they try other, more innovative techniques - and there is where many spam blogs start.

AdSense, the Google ad host service, may be less tolerant of innovative techniques, than Blogger. They have conservative standards for blog content, and for behaviour by blog readers. If you include AdSense ads in a Blogger blog, you may find your blog subject to penalties for excessive / self clicking and low quality content, that exceed Blogger standards.

Even without AdSense being involved, a Blogger blog may be subject to search engine penalties for infrequently updated or non unique content. Low quality content, resulting in poor search results, will leave the blog lacking traffic. If the blog uses a third party ad hosting service, which is more tolerant than AdSense about clicking and content, the ads still won't make a lot of money without traffic.

Don't use your Blogger blog as a gateway to a non Google website.

A static blog, that is designed to generate traffic for a non Blogger / Google website, may be a problem, too. Gateway blogs are a popular technique for many spammers. Blogger actively forbids both gateway blogs, and automated posting. This includes feeds from other websites, when used as post content.

You can combine your Blogger blog with a non Google website - but publish the blog as a blog.

It may be possible to have blog posts visible in a section of the blog - and combine the blog, with a non Google website. Even so, the "blog" portion of the blog will still need regularly published, unique content. This is a requirement, whether you are publishing a Blogger blog - or moving your blog to other hosting.

What you can do - and what you should do - will always differ.

The bottom line is what you can do, with a Blogger blog - and what will lead to a successful blog - may be two different things. You're allowed to do anything, that does not violate TOS - but if you want good results, you need to use common sense.

Saturday, November 22, 2014

Spam Blog False Positive Classifications Do Exist

No matter what Blogger does with improving the spam classification process, they will always generate some false positive classifications.

The more that they improve the classification process overall, the more obscure the false positive classifications will be. Some false positives will require intense investigation of the blogs, to identify the relationships between the blogs involved - and to prove, to Blogger Policy Review staff, that a false positive classification is present.

Some time ago, in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue, I had occasion to deal with a blog owner who was a currency trader, by profession. This person had published a cluster of blogs, where he discussed legitimate issues involved in currency trading.

Currency trading is an essential part of exchange of merchandise, between different countries (the export / import business) - and the Blogger spam classification process had deleted his blogs, as suspected spam hosts.

For you to understand the situation that I'm recounting, you need to understand one principle of currency trading.

When someone sells US Dollars ("usd") and buys Great Britain Pounds ("gbp"), to help a client in the USA import merchandise from the UK, there has to be a second trader, buying US Dollars and selling Great Britain Pounds. The first trader is doing a "usdgbp" trade, and the second, a "gbpusd" trade.

The blog cluster, that was setup by the trader, discussed issues about trades between Great Britain Pounds, Japanese Yen ("jpy"), and US Dollars. The trade combinations possible, with just 3 currencies, would be
  1. GBPJPY
  2. GBPUSD
  3. JPYGBP
  4. JPYUSD
  5. USDGBP
  6. USDJPY
Most traders handle dozens of currencies, in various trades. A staff of a dozen traders would handle all of the world currencies - with some trades involving 2 traders working together, on either end of the trade.

The trader in question had published a cluster of 6 blogs - all using the same base blog name (we will call it "Currency Trading"), which gave him 6 blogs - with legitimate names.
  1. Currency-Trading-GBPJPY.blogspot.com
  2. Currency-Trading-GBPUSD.blogspot.com
  3. Currency-Trading-JPYGBP.blogspot.com
  4. Currency-Trading-JPYUSD.blogspot.com
  5. Currency-Trading-USDGBP.blogspot.com
  6. Currency-Trading-USDJPY.blogspot.com

Each blog discussed specific - and very trade sensitive - issues about trades between the specific currency pairs. Each blog provided relevant and unique discussions about the issues.

Thanks to splog detection, a false positive detection - based on legitimate splog classification technique - had, nonetheless, left this blog owner with 6 deleted blogs.

Thanks to one of my previous IT responsibilities, as tech support for a bank currency trading desk network, I recognised the naming convention used by the 6 blogs, and the reason for the 6 blogs - and was able to convince Blogger Policy Review staff about the problem.

Some blogs are part of legitimate blog clusters, which use well defined naming conventions. Others have names that are coincidentally similar to other blogs, owned by different people.

In either case, the reasons for the naming similarities are where we start, in identifying any spuriously deleted blogs - and in describing the reasons for the spurious deletions. Blogger Policy Review staff have to be made aware of the legitimate reason for a naming similarity, and any other details, so they can make an informed decision.

Knowledge about obscure relationships, such as the naming convention for currency trading blogs, are not part of every Blogger helper or staff persons background. Sometimes, the blog owner has to provide details, objectively and patiently, to help convince Blogger Policy Review to restore the blogs involved.

Unfortunately, not all blog owners are patient enough, to be interviewed, to some degree of success. Also unfortunately, some self stated blog owners are actually hackers or spammers, misusing Blogger Help Forums resources.

Some owners of legitimate blogs claim that their being subjected to an interview shows suspicion placed on them, rather than an attempt to identify the problem - and successfully prove, to Blogger Policy Review staff, that a false positive spam classification is present.

The complicated and devious relationships, involved in some spam review request investigations, make a Tom Clancy novel seem like a 5 minute segment of the 6:00 news.

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Wednesday, November 5, 2014

A Deleted Blog Can Only Be Recovered By The Owner

Deleted blog recovery requests come in many forms.
I can't access my blog!
or
My dashboard is empty!!
or
Somebody deleted my blog!!!

A successful deleted blog recovery starts from the dashboard button or link, to "Restore" or "Review" the blog. When the blog was deleted by the owner less than 90 days ago, and the owner is able to login to the right account, the "Restore" button will bring the blog back, as the owner watches.

If the blog was deleted by Blogger / Google, and the owner is able to login to the right account, the "Review" button starts the recovery process. If use of the "Review" button brings no results - or if there is no "Restore" / "Review" button at all, things get interesting.

If a deleted blog leaves behind a dashboard "Review" button, the review process can be started.

There are two purposes for the dashboard "Restore" / "Review" buttons.
The "Review" button provides 2 functions.
  1. Provides a way for the owner to start the automated review of a deleted blog.
  2. Provides verification that the person reporting the deleted blog is the legal owner of the blog - and enables the manual review to be started, if the automated review is unsuccessful.

If there is no "Review" button, neither the automated or the manual review can be started.
  • The person reporting the deleted blog is not the owner.
  • The person reporting the deleted blog is unable to login to Blogger, using the right Blogger account.
  • The blog was not deleted, for a reason which requires a manual review.


A dashboard screen print helps the helpers start the recovery process.
Anybody needing assistance, beyond advice how to use the "Restore" / "Review" button, is expected to provide a screen print, showing either
  • A "locked account" error display.
  • A dashboard "review request submitted" display.
  • An empty dashboard, with the familiar "You are not yet an author ..." caption.

If the person reporting the deleted blog is able to provide a screen print, showing the familiar "locked Blogger account" error display - with the "contact us" link at the end, a manual review of the blog is not useful. The owner is then expected to click on "contact us", and request account review.

The automated spam review is the first step to restoring cloned blogs.
If the dashboard has the "Review" button, the owner can request automated review. Having supplied a screen print showing the "automated review request submitted" display, then waited the required 1 - 2 business days for the automated review to be conducted, the owner can, at her / his option, request manual review.

Without dashboard verification, triage can't continue.
If neither screen print can be supplied, there is no benefit to requesting manual review.
  • The person reporting the deleted blog is not the legal owner.
  • The blog does not need spam review.
In either case, Blogger Policy Review will reject the review request, and the "owner" will be no closer to having the blog recovered.

The review process must be initiated by a blog owner.
If the person reporting the deleted blog is not the legal owner, she / he must either contact the legal owner for action, or use the correct Blogger account - and request an automated review, from that account. A manual spam review cannot be requested, from a Blogger account that is not the legal owner of the deleted blog.

If the blog does not need abuse / spam review, it will be a waste of everybody's time to request a manual abuse / spam review.

The abuse / spam review request starts with the owner, able to login to the proper Blogger account. The owner then provides a screen print, documenting legal ownership of the blog, and the need for a manual review. Without the screen print documenting ownership and need for review, an abuse / spam review will not be requested.

Thursday, October 23, 2014

A Blogger Blog Needs Informative And Unique Content

Too many blog owners have been listening to spammers, who tell them lies, and encourage dodgy publishing practice.
You can make lots of money - just start a blog, scrape content from other blogs and websites, and add ads!
This is wrong, for many reasons.

Blogger gives us the basic definition of what is not allowed, in Blogger Help: Spam, phishing, or malware on Blogger.

Spam blogs cause various problems, beyond simply wasting a few seconds of your time when you happen to come across one. They can clog up search engines, making it difficult to find real content on the subjects that interest you. They may scrape content from other sites on the web, using other people's writing to make it look as though they have useful information of their own. And if an automated system is creating spam posts at an extremely high rate, it can impact the speed and quality of the service for other, legitimate users.

I summarise this definition, by advising you to publish blogs that are informative, interesting, and unique.

Until you have lots of friends, and regular readers, who read your blog - and return later, to read some more - you will need traffic, from the search engines.

AdSense requires original content.

AdSense explicitly forbids copied content, on blogs that will show paid ads.

Fact: We don’t allow sites with auto-generated or otherwise unoriginal content to participate in the AdSense program. This is to ensure that our users are benefiting from a unique online experience and that our advertisers are partnering with useful and relevant sites.

To get search traffic, your blog needs unique content.

You don't get traffic from the search engines, without unique content, that causes your blog to be listed, in good position, in a Search Engine Results Page - aka SERP. And, you don't get return reader traffic, without informative or interesting content.

The recently deployed (March 2017) Google search engine update, colloquially named "Fred", targets low value content blogs and web sites. Many blog owners have observed an abrupt loss of search rank - and of search originated traffic - in their ad driven blogs.

Nobody is going to search for details - because they don't know the details.

Blogs which contain only lists of details, such as "Answers from Professor X's exams", "Best truck driving schools in Southern India", or "Free Proxy Servers", will not contain indexable material.

  • They won't contain key phrases or words, that people might use, when searching for blogs to read.
  • Their content won't be unique.

Since people don't know the answers to the exams, they won't be typing the key phrases or words, that lead to your blog - if your blog contains "Answers from Professor X's exams". And even if you spend a week, copying the names and addresses of each truck driving school, what you copy won't be unique.

If your blog contains only details, it will appear lower in the SERPs.

If your blog only contains lists of details, copied from various blogs and websites, your blog will have a lower SERP position than the sources of your content. Your blog will be vulnerable to spam classification - and will later fail review.

Websites which contain only "Answers from Professor X's exams", "Best truck driving schools in Southern India", or "Free Proxy Servers" may be allowed outside Blogger. Since Blogger is a personal website platform, you should try to write about things which you, personally, are familiar with - and host your lists, and other scraped content, outside Blogger.

Tuesday, October 21, 2014

The Daily Post Limit Is Not Likely To Be Raised

We see signs of optimism, occasionally, in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue.
How do I convince Blogger to let me publish more than 50 posts / day, in my blog?
Blogger Support has repeatedly declined to make any change to the daily post limit.

"50 posts / day" is a soft limit - and is thought to include pages (static pages), and posts (dynamic pages), aggregated.

You are allowed to publish any quantity, daily.

You are actually allowed to publish any volume of pages and posts, that suits you. If you exceed the daily limit, which is thought to be near 50 pages and posts / day, you will simply have to solve a CAPTCHA, for each page / post over the daily limit.

It's possible that the limit is aggregated for all computers in the neighbourhood, similar to blog creation.

Can you actually write a new page / post every 1/2 hour, all day?

50 posts in 24 hours is roughly 1 page / post every 30 minutes. If you, arbitrarily, allow 4 hours / day to eat, sleep, and do everything else, that's 1 page / post every 24 minutes. Can you really write 1 page / post every 24 minutes, for 20 hours? Day after day?

Can you actually write a page / post every 1/2 hour, with acceptable content?

Blogger is a personal web site publishing platform. You're supposed to publish a Blogger blog with informative, interesting, and unique content. Can you really publish as much as 50 pages / posts each day, and stay within the limits of acceptable content?

Publish quality posts, in reasonable quantity.

Let Blogger have a chance to keep the level of spam down, in their content space. Publish good content, in limited quantity. Don't ask for Blogger to make it easier for spammers to operate.

Thursday, September 25, 2014

Confusion From Email Spam Detection, And Non GMail Email

We're seeing a few reports in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken about problems with email, sent by Blogger, when the destination is a non GMail email system.

Some email systems verify the sending email address, against IP address. With these systems, email which originates from a Blogger account that's based on a non GMail email address, and comes from a Blogger / Google IP address, is going to present a problem, to the account owners.

If your Blogger account (your readers Blogger account) is based on a non GMail email address - and your blog provides any of various "notification" / "subscription" services, this can be a problem.

You're going to have email "bounced" by some (non GMail) email clients. This will be a similar problem, if a reader sends you email - or Blogger relays you email based on your reader request, as in comment notification or contact form entries.

Note that "bounced" email may not be treated as spam. Some "bounced" email never gets as far as a spam filter - it may simply be rejected. You will look, in vain, in "Bulk", "Inbox", and "Spam" folders.

Blogger originated email, to certain email clients, will be bounced, because Blogger sends the notification / subscription email with your Blogger account (your readers account) mentioned, as the sender.

With Blogger comment moderation / notification email coming from a non GMail based Blogger account, and sent from a Google IP address, an email client such as AOL, HotMail, or Yahoo, which verifies email address against IP address, is going to reject the incoming email message. This is because "Sender Policy Framework", which AOL, HotMail, Yahoo, and other email systems use, detects the originating address as "spoofed".

Spoofing is a common technique used by spammers, in hiding their email identity. Most email based spam is spoofed - so email systems, which use DKIM or SPF filters to identify spam, will bounce any messages which do not verify properly - when IP address and originating email address are compared.

The problem may also involve comment subscription email. This may result in bounce messages being sent to the person attempting to publish a comment. This causes more confusion.

The solution, to the problem with moderation / notification email, is simple - but unlikely to satisfy many Blogger account owners. You will have to use a GMail email address, for comment moderation or notification. Until Blogger Engineering figure a better way to send the moderation / notification email, email clients such as AOL, HotMail, and Yahoo will have this problem.

If the blog owner changes ownership of a blog, from a non GMail based Blogger account to a GMail based account, and neglects to change the comment moderation / notification email address, the bounce messages will likely continue. What might happen with comment subscription email is yet to be determined.

This problem, as discussed above, affects the comment moderation process. While annoying to some blog owners (as noted, those using non GMail based Blogger accounts / email addresses), the problem is not all that severe. Affected blog owners can use the Blogger dashboard Comments wizard, to moderate comments. Also, blog owners, who moderate comments after they are published, may not even notice this problem.

This problem may also affect membership invitations to private / team blogs This will be a more severe issue, in that this problem will affect all blogs with owners using non GMail email addresses, and with prospective blog members on large non GMail email systems - because there will be no dashboard based wizard - and no possibility of moderation after publishing.

The involvement of Google Apps based (non "gmail.com" Google email) Blogger accounts, and Blogger originated email, is yet to be studied. Also please note that Blogger account email addresses, and comment moderation / notification email addresses, do not have to be the same - and this may cause still more confusion.

Thursday, April 5, 2012

How To Not Get Content For Your Blog

One of the oddest displays of naivete we see, from some blog owners, asking in Blogger Help Forum: How Do I?, would be
How do I let anybody post to my blog?
These owners have no idea how popular they would be, with spammers, were this to happen.

If you have a blog, and you want to let up to 99 of your closest friends publish their thoughts to your blog, you can setup a team blog, and have fun. Beyond that limit, you cannot - nor should you - go.

Occasionally, in Blogger Help Forum: How Do I? we see the anguish
Where did the spam, on my blog, come from?
These queries come from people whose blogs have been successfully attacked, by hackers or spammers, and who now see content which they do not appreciate, being posted in their blog.

Leaving blog open to public authorship will make your blog spammer friendly.

If you were to voluntarily let anybody post in your blog, without requiring that anybody hack to gain control surreptitiously, your blog will become very popular with spammers.

After spammers saturate your blog content, your genuine friends will find elsewhere to post - and your remaining friends will be spammers. And your new friends (spammers) will tell their friends (more spammers), about a blog which accepts ads (posts) from everybody.

Your blog will be late classified as a spam host.

Shortly after this happens, your blog will be - righteously - classified as a spam host, and taken offline. And if you cannot show any non spam content, it will likely stay offline.
We're sorry, but your blog cannot be restored. It was recently confirmed as spam. Blogger suggests that you read the TOS.

You are responsible for content distributed by your "guest authors".

Another thing to consider, as the owner of a "host" blog, where "guests" post contributed material, is that you will be responsible for the content posted by your guests - whether you let the world post - or designated members.
  • If you allow guest posts in your blog, you, as the blog owner, are responsible for the content of those posts.
  • If your "guest" posts the same material elsewhere (as in his own blog, or a third person's blog), and search engines index both blogs, both blogs may receive "duplicated content" penalties.
  • Nobody benefits, from duplicated content.

Unfortunately, you have to develop your blog content, yourself. Don't expect the public to provide your content for you - and plan to keep your blog online for long.

Saturday, February 4, 2012

How To Avoid Getting Your Blog Locked, As A Suspected Spam Host

This is a question that some blog owners ask in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken.

This will generally be after they have just been through the Blogger spam review process. Some of those asking the question are spammers, blatantly asking what they can get away with. Others are regular blog owners, unwittingly hit by "friendly fire", as Blogger just tries to keep the level of spam down, in the Blogosphere.

One of the challenges involves identifying the genuine cries for help - and ignoring the hackers and spammers, who are trying to make trouble for everybody.

The simplest answer, to the obvious question, would be the best for everybody - if only everybody would follow.
Don't spam.
Spammers can't follow that advice, as it would doom them to a lifetime of asking
Do you want fries with your burger?
or
Do you want whipped cream on your "large" coffee?
We know, already, that Blogger cannot whitelist your blog - but there are some common sense ways to reduce the risk of spam classification.

Blogs can be confused for spam, unfortunately.

There are several ways that your blog may look like a spam blog. Many blogs, such as those reported in the forums, will have one of these problems.
  1. Use spammy content or techniques.
  2. Have little to no content - look like a latent spam blog ("Empty").
  3. Have content, that's been scraped into a spam blog - look like an activated spam blog ("Reserve" or "Active").

There are ways to avoid the above possibilities.
  1. Don't use spammy content or techniques.
  2. Publish content (relevant to the subject of the blog), regularly. Don't look like an Empty spam blog.
  3. Publish unique content (relevant to the subject of the blog), regularly. Provide unique material, that has not yet been scraped. Don't look like a Reserve or Active spam blog.

Fuzzy spam classification uses several benchmarks.

The Blogger fuzzy spam classification process looks for various artifacts, in your blog.
  1. Content that discusses or promotes spammy techniques - or content or traffic obtained using spammy techniques.
  2. Malicious or spammy accessories.
  3. Links to other, known malicious or spammy blogs or web sites.

Instead of the simple advice "Don't spam", I'll expand upon that a bit.
  1. Avoid spammy practices.
  2. Publish, and Publicise, properly. Don't advertise, recklessly.
  3. Accept reality.
The reality is that spam will always be with us - since spammers want more of a future than selling burgers or coffee.

You can't control the spammers - your blog, if it is publicly accessible, is subject to scraping by any spammer, at any time. Considering that reality, the best advice is that you Publish, regularly - and make your content relevant and unique.

More unique content == less chance of spurious classification.

The more unique and properly targeted material that a blog contains, that's not been scraped or syndicated, the less that it will look like a spam blog. And the less that a blog looks like a spam blog, the less chance that blog has of being spuriously classified as a spam blog.

Having read this, you now need to get back to work on your blog. If your blog becomes deleted or locked, as a suspected malware / porn / spam host, get the blog reviewed.

If the blog gets reviewed, but cannot be restored, you may be allowed to start over - but you will be expected to clean up your act.

Sunday, January 1, 2012

The Many Faces Of Spam Classification - And Varying Consequences

Many blog owners and readers are completely unaware of the many ways our AdSense, Blogger, GMail, and Google accounts, our blogs, and our forum activity, are subject to spam classification - and the various consequences that we may suffer, when we trip a spam classification threshold. Questions in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken are seen daily.
Why was my forum account locked?
and
Why do my comments go straight to the Spam tab, on my friend's blog?
and
Why am I seeing ominous messages about "suspicious activity" on my account, when I sign into Blogger or GMail?
These are but 3 examples of the questions, that we deal with, almost constantly.

Spam classification, by Blogger / Google is a collaborative, fuzzy, and ubiquitous process, which affects all aspects of our use of Blogger and Google services. Each different Google service may produce input into the spam classification process - and each service may be differently affected, when we are (righteously, or spuriously) classified as a potential spammer, by another service.

Some services may use automated classification or detection - and others may use user contributed abuse reports. When user contributed reports are used, collaboration - either by multiple users, or automated or manual verification by Google staff - is involved. A single, accidental click on a "Report Abuse" link will not cause a problem.

Some automated classification processes, on the other hand, may result in false positive detection. We are repeatedly advised that Blogger cannot whitelist your blog. The volume of spam content in Blogger requires immediate locking of all suspected spam blogs, with spuriously classified blogs being unlocked after review.

There are a few common sense ways that we may reduce the chances of many blogs being classified as suspected spam hosts.

Here are 3 services, which we use in publishing and viewing, and asking for help about publishing and viewing, various Blogger blogs.

Causes of spam detection
  • Blogger account / blog
  • Forum account
  • GMail account
    • Brute force login attempts, using hijacked computers, supposedly controlled by Net based neighbours.
    • Repeated login retries, by the account owner, which can look like brute force login attempts.

Consequences of spam detection

Other Google services will have other causes and consequences, too - and the combinations of the various causes and consequences are almost infinite. The Blogger Help Forums - and the various other Google Support forums - will remain in business for a very, very long time.

Thursday, December 29, 2011

Mail-To-Blogger, And Problems From Mobile Blog Posting Volumes

Mobile blogging is becoming more and more popular - and it's creating an interesting challenge. Many blog owners, freed from the daily use of the home computer, are publishing multiple smaller posts, throughout the day - instead of a few larger posts, at the end of the day. Also, they are using mobile computers, and emailing or messaging the posts using Mail-To-Blogger, rather than composing the posts using the GUI Post Editor.

Lately, we're seeing more and more problem reports,in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken.
Why are my posts not publishing?
Many of the people reporting problems are mobile bloggers, not understanding about the unavoidable limitations.

Mobile blogging, when used this way, presents two challenges.
  1. The daily posting volume frequently exceeds anti-spam detection limits.
  2. Use of a mobile computer, without the Blogger GUI Post Editor, prevents use of the anti-spam CAPTCHA, when necessitated by the posting volume.

The convenience of the mobile computer / smartphone motivates many blog owners to publish multiple small posts, throughout the day. The posting volume frequently makes a mobile blog owner look like a spammer, and the Blogger anti-spam mitigation becomes involved.

When exceeding daily post limits, and using Post Editor, the Blogger anti-spam mitigation will simply require solving of a CAPTCHA. This prevents spammers from flooding their blogs with multiple, spammy posts, by requiring all posts exceeding the daily limit to be published only after the CAPTCHA is solved. When the posts are submitted using Mail-To-Blogger, there is no opportunity to solve a CAPTCHA - and Mail-To-Blogger either saves those posts as Drafts, or simply drops them.

Generally, the missing posts can be found in the "Edit Posts" list (Classic Blogger GUI) or the "Posts" list (New Blogger GUI), in Draft status. The blog owner, at end of the day, simply must use a full featured computer, access the GUI wizard, and Publish all Draft posts.

If you are seeing this problem with your blog, do not consider the number "50", and the time span "24 hours", to be absolute standards. Depending upon where in the world you are located, the "24 hour" period may reset at some time which is not consistent with your personal 24 hour schedule. In some cases, 2 consecutive days, with less than 50 posts each day, may look like 1 day, to the anti-spam mitigation process.

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Friday, November 18, 2011

Blogs Cannot Be Whitelisted Against Spam Classification

Periodically, in Blogger Help Forum: How Do I?, we see the naive request.
Please, take a minute and let me know how safe my blog is.
Here, the blog owner wants to know whether it's possible that his blog might be classified as a spam host, in the near future.

This is a request that, no matter how genuine a blog, and a blog owner, may appear now, cannot be fulfilled with any degree of accuracy and authority.

Whitelisting blogs against spam classification is a service that simply cannot be provided, when requested.

A single blog, viewed now, cannot provide an adequate view of the blog population, and of the immediate threat.

  • Many spam farms can only be detected as groups of blogs, where individual blogs may appear quite benign and genuine.
  • Many blogs, apparently benign and genuine right now, may have a spammy payload applied later.
  • Many spammers would appreciate immediate evaluation of their blogs, so they can more easily determine where the boundaries may lie.
  • Many spammers would enjoy the ability to argue, later, how they may have been mislead by inaccurate advice - with the possibility of forcing a reversal of their confirmed status.

Spam classification can only be conducted by the automated classification process - which is deceptively accurate and effective - in spite of arguments provided by confirmed spammers.

As a blog owner, you need to concentrate on providing informative, interesting, and unique content to your readers. And be selective how and where you advertise the blog, considering carefully what content may not be appreciated by everybody.

Focus on developing your blog - and don't waste time asking for services that cannot be provided. And use some common sense techniques, to reduce the risk of spam classification.

Monday, May 3, 2010

Ambiguity In Spam Detection

Occasionally, some bloggers report confusion over whether their blogs have been tagged as splogs, after receiving some odd email.
Your blog at http://myblog.blogspot.com/ has been reviewed and confirmed as in violation of our Terms of Service for: NONE. In accordance to these terms, we've removed the blog and the URL is no longer accessible.
The blog does not appear to be locked, nor does it's online status change. All that's seen is the ominous email notice.

The response from Blogger Support is slightly encouraging.
we have a bug in our system that has been sending those email inadvertently

So if you get this email, apparently you can ignore it. Your blog should remain online, and accessible as before. Check your dashboard - you should have administrative access, and no need to worry.

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Thursday, April 1, 2010

Spam Review Escalation Depends Upon Action By The Blog Owner

During the past couple of weeks, we have noted a significant increase in the volume of
Unlock my blog, it is not spam!
problem reports, with a large proportion being judged false positives after review. Unfortunately, the false positives can only be identified after the blog owners report
I submitted the review request, and the appeal, and I waited the required 2 business days. Now what?
and we have seen a few of those this week. We have also seen a few more odd reports
The 2 business days ended several days ago! I am tired of waiting for you to do something about this! Why haven't you done something about this?
and here, we have to point out that you (or the blog owner) are the key player in the next step - that is, requesting the escalation to Blogger.

If we reply to you
Since Blogger gets 2 business days to process restores requested and appealed, we'll give them until Friday to act directly from your requests. If they have not acted by then (which seems to be the case in maybe 50% of the time), please reply here, and we'll take the next step.
that means that you have to take action, to continue this process, when necessary.

We have no way to watch your blog, and see that it was or was not restored during the 2 business days. You are the one who watches the clock for 2 business days, and reports that the time is up. If we don't hear back from you, we can only consider 3 possibilities.
  1. The Asker was a spammer, and has now gone elsewhere.
  2. The Asker's blog was restored, and he is now busy working on his blog.
  3. The Asker's blog was not restored, and he awaits further action.
We can only action the first 2 possibilities. The third is on your dime.

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Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Three Strikes, And You're Out

In the American game of baseball, each player while performing in the offensive role has three chances to swing the bat and hit the ball. If he does not connect with the ball in any way, on the third chance, he is "out" and goes to the bench.

As a blogger, and when your blog is detected as hosting possible spam content, you have three strikes, too.
  1. An automated spam classification process, performed by a Blogger bot, inspects your blog, possibly with a few other blogs, and locks or deletes your blog.
  2. A manual review process, performed by people, inspects your blog again, and objectively asks whether or not it is actually hosting spam. This is done after you complete the sometimes hated 4 step review process.
  3. A second manual review process, performed by people, inspects your blog for a third time, and carefully asks whether the first two processes were correct. This is done after the review process, and is generally referred to as "escalation". This is the final recourse which you have, when you wish to continue publishing this blog.


If any one of the three steps concludes that your blog is not hosting spam, you get on base and may have a chance to, sometime later, score a point ("run") for your team. If none of the three steps finds your blog innocent of hosting spam, you get to go sit on the bench, because you are "out".

In baseball, the difference between the pitch made with one strike against the batter, and two strikes against the batter, is significant. With one strike against him, the batter can somewhat afford to be selective, and wait for a pitch that he likes; with two strikes, the batter almost has to swing, at any decent looking pitch. The batter is at a disadvantage, with the second strike pitch - because the third strike represents his last chance to accomplish something.

In spam reviews, it's to your benefit to submit the "second strike" review request, from the dashboard link. The review submitted from the dashboard link is done sooner, and it's more permissive. The review submitted from the forum request is much more carefully done, and is more restrictive. Most blog owners want their blogs reviewed and restored, as soon as possible.

All players must abide by the decision of the umpires. If the umpires rule that you're out, then you are out. Go play in another league, if you wish, or wait for your turn to possibly bat again, later (if the game does not end before that time). While you wait, read the Blogger Content Policy, the Blogger TOS, and the Google TOS.

It's that simple. Three strikes, and you're out.

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