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.

>> Top

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.

>> Top

Moles, Spies, Spammers, And Turkeys

In 1977, the late Charles Bronson - better known for his vigilante justice "Death Wish" movies - starred in a movie that capitalised on US paranoia about American - Soviet Russia relations. Set at the height of the Cold War era, the plot of Telefon featured 51 human time bombs - all ordinary Americans. Each had been hypnotised to perform as Soviet spies, when a specially coded telephone call was received, with each tasked to sabotage some specific portion of the American infrastructure.

None of the 51 human time bombs had any conscious awareness of their intended roles. Each thought of her or him self as an ordinary American, and lived that way - until a phone call from an evil renegade Soviet agent triggered their personal hypnotic suggestion.

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep, but I have promises to keep. And miles to go before I sleep, and miles to go before I sleep. Remember. Miles to go before I sleep.

In the action adventure genre of fiction (aka "spy movie"), these spies are also called moles.

This year, we have noted many ordinary bloggers, who have no conscious awareness of their roles, tasked to sabotage the Blogger infrastructure.

My Blog mentioned above got deleted and called SPAM. But I honestly didn't do any SPAM. I went through TOS but I really don't understand my blog was deleted. Please, I have put so much of my time & effort for this blog & now its a PR2. (This blog is gone).

and

I received this msg after restore the blog, how long I must wait to get reinstated. This is totally joke, the blog is about 3 years and have hundreds of post. (This blog is gone).

and

I have been writing almost daily for more than two years and am very surprised as to why my blog would all of a sudden be classified as spam. I really can't think of any reason except that there must be a flaw in the algorithm used for automatically detecting such. (This blog is gone).

Many bloggers, just out there trying to make a buck, have been hypnotised by Affiliate partnerships, Pay To Click and Pay To Surf schemes, Syndicated Content (pay to write), and similar "make money fast and easy" techniques. And now, they are out there, begging for Blogger to just unblock their blogs, so they can get back to work. Back to work - abusing the Blogger infrastructure, and damaging the efforts of genuine bloggers.

They are not spammers (in their own minds), just as the 51 human time bombs were not Soviet agents. But just as the human time bombs (some of them) successfully destroyed key portions of America, these spammers are destroying key portions of Blogger Spam Interdiction, and of the effectiveness of Internet based advertising.

By their volume, they make it hard for us to get genuine, personal blogs, unjustly accused of being spam, back online. And they are requesting individual attention from Blogger

Please, tell me why I am considered a spammer.

This requires further resources from Blogger Support, and Google Legal, who together must decide how much - and how little - to tell these bloggers about spam interdiction, and why they were confirmed as spammers.

These are the real life moles. Moles, recruited by the genuine big time spammers. I also call them turkeys, elsewhere in my discussions.

In the meantime, the genuine spammers are out there, continually republishing their splog farms, and damaging our efforts as genuine bloggers.

>> Top

You Can't Take It With You

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

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

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

OK, all good things end some day.

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

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

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

the next post is frequently

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

or

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

and the answer is

No, you cannot do that.

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

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

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

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

It's time to start over.

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

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



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

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

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.

>> Top

Gobble, Gobble

Today, in the USA, we celebrate the national holiday of "Thanksgiving". Many people call it "Turkey Day" because the traditional cooking for the holiday meal is centered around roast turkey. The words "gobble, gobble" have two meanings.

1. Turkeys are attributed as making that sound, such as the cat makes "meow", and the dog "bow wow".
2. Celebrants of the holiday eat a lot of food, also popularly expressed as "gobbling".

So, we have a "double entendre", that is, still, relevant.

It is perhaps fitting that I explain my use of the term "gobble gobble", on this day.

Blogger explains spam, and its unacceptable nature.
Blogger provides an objective description of spam, and why it is not accepted in BlogSpot.

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 contain material that's been scraped from other sites on the web, and may use 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 analogise spammers as turkeys, as an alternate explanation.
As an alternative, I wrote my analogy Waiting For The Tap, and referred to turkeys, who wait in vain, for said tap.

In some discussions, I use "Gobble, Gobble" as a reference.
The expression "Gobble, Gobble", when included in my answer to a forum question, will refer to this analogy. The spammer (aka the "Original Poster" in the question) may, at his convenience, read this post - and accept the fact that he is a turkey.

Coyotes, Hyenas, And Turkeys

The 1978 cinema classic "Animal House", which starred the late, great John Belushi as John Blutarsky, was a comedy about American 1960s college life. It was described by one reviewer as

the best college comedy ever made. Nothing has ever come close to comedic perfection, and never will again.

It focused on one fictional fraternity, Delta House, the rejects of the campus fraternity system at the college.

The members of Delta house included screaming nuisances (coyotes), troglodytes and trolls (hyenas), and hapless morons (turkeys). Many inhabitants of Delta House, many years later, can be found as bloggers, posting in Blogger Help Forum.

Coyotes are individuals who, unhappy with the way they are treated by Blogger, convince the general public (their reader population) to conduct a Distributed Denial Of Service attack against the forum. The owners of their namesake blog, The Daily Coyote, conducted a DDOS in April 2008, when it was locked as a suspected spam blog.

Hyenas are individuals who lack self esteem or social life and who post endless amounts of crap, drivel, or lame spam in the forum. Coyotes conduct a brief and very energetic attack, yet they cease the attack when dealt with, firmly. Hyenas, on the other hand, conduct a slow, chronic attack over many months. One hyena has posted under many names, and has been attacking the forum for several years.

Turkeys are spammers who refuse to believe that their splogs, detected and locked by Blogger, will never be restored to them. They hang around Blogger Help Forum, periodically posting

When will I get my blog back?

as if Blogger will ignore the fact that their blogs were righteously detected and locked.

Welcome to Animal House, 2009.

>> Top

Waiting For The Tap On The Shoulder, Part 2

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gobble, Gobble.

Maybe It's Time To Start Over

I've been advising folks about spam problems, and splog detection (both righteous and spurious), for several years.

Sometimes, the advice is about cleaning up the blog, and submitting it for review. Other times, it's about blogs unjustly accused of being spam. Occasionally, it's about a spam blog, that just can't be reviewed again, or maybe a old blog, that you just can't regain control.

If the Blogger region of the Blogosphere is to have any reputation, other than "spam haven", it's simply not possible to provide an infinity of chance for people to clean up their act.

this is what i got from email:

We'd like to inform you that we've received another complaint regarding your blog. Upon review of your account, we've noted that your blog has repeatedly violated Blogger's Terms of Service (http://www.blogger.com/terms.g). Given that we've provided you with several warnings of these violations and advised you of our policy towards repeat infringers, we've been forced to remove your blog.

Once forgiven, you still start over from the beginning.

We all believe in forgiveness, but having been forgiven, should you continue with the blog restored and simply cleaned up? Or maybe, isn't it better for everybody if you simply start over, with a new blog and new content?

And if you publish your blog, you want your blog to remain your blog. Just as we cannot give spammers an infinity of chances to pollute the Blogosphere with their blogs, neither can we give them the chance to steal already developed blogs, using brute force and an army of hijacked computers.

Everybody who wishes to publish a Blogger blog has to religiously maintain control of their Blogger accounts - both by not forgetting access tokens, and by not idly allowing unknown persons to seize control.

If you lose control of your Blogger account, don't demand that Blogger Support blindly tell you what you require, and possibly violate your right to anonymity.

Start a new blog - and don't repeat past mistakes.

Focus your energy on starting a new blog - and maybe connecting the new blog to the old blog. Don't waste your time (the helpers time, Blogger Support's time) trying to clean up what can't be cleaned up, or demand that Blogger help you to seize control of a blog which could be (to them) someone else's blog.

Start over, but with a clean blog - and try to avoid repeating your mistakes.

Learn to read - and heed - the warnings.

Next time, when you get the first notice about unacceptable content, heed the warning. And when you change ISPs (get a new job, graduate from school, whatever), and you get a new email address, update your Blogger account - while you can.

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.

My blog seems to be locked, but when I fill out the CAPTCHA, I get

Your 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.

1. Empty (just published).
2. Reserve (previously empty, republished with scraped content added).
3. Active (previously reserve, republished with payload added).
4. Detected (previously active, locked by the Blogger Spam Classification bot).
5. 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.

Waiting For The Tap On The Shoulder

I'll be honest here. I was a nerd in college (and I am one even now).

So this story is one that I've only seen in movies - neither I, nor my friends, got even this far.

College Secret Societies
Some of them have no name even. There are no published entrance rules - membership is by invitation only, and rules are communicated by word of mouth. And the initiation process starts like this:

• The prospective members are blindfolded, and led to a dark room.
• The prospective members are put into a circle, in silence.
• The prospective members wait, for what will happen, they are told nothing.
• Periodically, one prospect will feel a slight tap on the shoulder. In silence, he / she will be taken by the hand, and led into another room where they will join the elite.
• And eventually, those who don't get elected will open their eyes, remove the blindfold, and find herself / himself in a pitiful group of rejects, all waiting (hopelessly) for that tap. The tap that never comes.

Now maybe you should be advised that this article is a rehash of one that I wrote long ago, about a more pleasant and positive experience.

The subject of this narration is the spam detection problem of this week. So, here are my words of wisdom about this mess.

This problem is caused by criminals - spammers who are publishing thousands of spam blogs, daily.

They make dozens of clones of your blog, by scraping the content from your blog, pasting it into their blogs, and adding the spam content to just a few of their blogs, at any time. Blogger can't tell the difference between the spam blogs without active content, and your blog. So all of the blogs that look like your blog - including your blog itself - get locked.

If you are not a spammer, look at the next guy (also reporting the problem), because it's likely that he is one. And when you get concerned about how long it's taking Blogger to restore your blog, if your blog is not a splog, place some blame on the spammers, and the thousands of splogs that have to be locked, then reviewed, daily.

Anyway, the only thing that makes this even endurable is the thought of the spammers who have lost their blogs this week. Many of them are gathered in Blogger Help Forum, reporting their blog loss. Some of those gathered in BHF are not spammers - and that is what will give hope for everybody gathered there.

Now Blogger, being the "secret society" in this analogy, will restore a few blogs - the ones that were not splogs. But they will not be posting a big notice.

The following blogs were determined to be spuriously locked, have been restored, and we apologise to their owners.

and conversely

The following blogs were righteously detemined to be splogs, and will never be restored.

Nope.

Blogger will walk around silently, and tap the owners of the spuriously locked blogs on the shoulders. Those owners will wake up one morning, and their blogs will be back, operational.

The spammers will be the ones waiting, until they figure it out on their own, that they will never get the tap. They will wait all night, then slink home in silence.

BooHoo.

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.

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.

>> Top

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.

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.

AOL vs BlogSpot

We have multiple reports in Google Blogger Help that AOL is now filtering incoming email on "*.blogspot.com". If someone tries to send the URL of your blog (or their blog), in an email to an AOL customer, that email will be rejected, and the sender gets a return similar to

PERM_FAILURE: Gmail tried to deliver your message, but it was rejected by the recipient domain. The error that the other server returned was:
554 554-: (HVU:B1)http://postmaster.info.aol.com/errors/554hvub1.html
554 TRANSACTION FAILED.

This is apparently a natural result of the perceived BlogSpot spam blog problem. My suspicion is that AOL will suffer more than Google, by doing this. Blogger blog owners may be caught in the middle, unfortunately.

If your blog readership focuses upon AOL customers, you may do well to consider publishing your blog externally. Your BlogSpot URL won't go away - you'll just get a new, non-BlogSpot alias, that you can publicise in email. As in email, to AOL customers.

If you're an AOL customer, get a GMail account. GMail is free, and you should be able to have it extract your AOL email automatically, so you don't have to use the AOL interface.

>> Top

FTP Published Blogs Redirect BlogSpot URL Automatically?

Ever since Custom Domain publishing was provided by Blogger, one noticeable feature that differentiated custom domain from FTP publishing was the status of the original BlogSpot URL. With a blog published to a custom domain, the original BlogSpot URL was automatically redirected to the new custom domain; but this was not done for blogs published by FTP.

This was a major deficiency too.

• With the original BlogSpot URL unused, blog readers had to be informed in advance of the pending change.
• As soon as the blog was published and the BlogSpot URL became available, it was frequently snapped up by splog publishers.

This necessitated publishing of a stub blog, by the former owner, after the blog was published by FTP, informing all that the blog had been moved to another URL.

This deficiency appears to be ended. I was in the process of diagnosing a problem with an FTP published blog, where the owner reported

I can no longer reclaim the original subdomain, as was recommended.

I went to verify the condition of the BlogSpot URL, and observed a very interesting display.


This advice was rather annoying, with custom domain published blogs, but I think it's rather comforting right now.


This is a major improvement for FTP publishing, and it would appear that FTP publishing is intended to be a peer solution to custom domain publishing. From a business standpoint, and considering the problems inherent in publishing by FTP, I still wonder what's the long term plan.

>> Top