Spammers protect their content against "unfair" deletion, and provide uninterrupted service to their "customers", by publishing multiple blogs, in spam blog farms.
Owners of better designed spam blog farms minimise the risk to their blogs, by separating the hacking / porn / spam content (Payload), from the immediately visible Blogger blogs (Collector). Spammers use a tiered structure of blogs, in their blog farms. - Collector blogs.
- Distributor blogs.
- Payload blogs.
Only the Payload blogs contain easily identified hacking / porn / spam material - and only the Collector blogs are immediately visible to the abuse detection processes.
A tiered blog structure makes a more easily managed spam blog farm.
Collector blogs (lots of these) link to the Distributor blogs (many of these), which link to the Payload blogs (a few of these). This is good risk management, by the spammers, because it separates the visible content from the identifiable content.
In some cases, the Payload "blogs" might be non Google websites. Content hosts which have no objection to hacking / porn / spam content can host the Payload, with no risk.
Risk levels differ, according to content in each blog.
- Payloads (much risk, because of the detectable hacking / porn / spam content).
- Collectors (some risk, because of the detectable ads - plus invisible, automated links, to the Distributors).
- Distributors (little risk, only because of the invisible, automated links, to the Payloads).
As an example, one spam blog farm might be structured in geometrical progression.Collectors (25) --> Distributors (5) --> Payload (1).
See the triangular structure, and the redundancy?
If automated links were permitted, only the Gateway blogs would be need to be advertised, to Blogger blog readers. If any of the Collector and / or Distributor blogs are detected and removed, the spammer can simply activate more blogs - and the Payload blogs can remain undisturbed.
If any Payload blogs are detected and removed, the spammer simply adds more Payload blogs - then updates the links in the Distributor blogs, with the URLs of the new Payloads. This is good project and risk management.
To interfere with this activity, Blogger prohibits automated linkage of blogs to other blogs and to non Google websites. This forces the spammers to provide visible links between the blogs and websites - and requires them to imaginatively publish both "legitimate" Collectors and Distributors with interesting and unique content and links.
Up until last week, I would advise folks looking for traffic to their blogs that they should publish, publish, publish.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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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.
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.
