From the nasty business of spammers comes a higher level of spamming: that of forming a splog. Splog is often confused with other forms of spamming, but it is set apart in a way that the spammer associated with it is considerably more sophisticated, daring and intrusive enough to infiltrate many blogging systems for revenue.



Splog is not what others confuse to be comment spam in blogs. Rather, a splog is actually coined from the terms spam and blog, pertaining to those blogs that are generated merely for profit of the spammer.

A typical splog contains text copied from other blogs, usually done in incoherent fashion. Innate in every splog are links to various websites with no particular use. The same goal for creating comment spam exists. It aims to generate traffic for the said links and make them rank high in Google search results for particular keywords. It is tailored specifically to cater to the pre-determined algorithm that search engines use that determine which websites rank higher over others.

Annoying as it is, there is about a splog in every five or six free blogging software accounts, on estimate. Most prone to splog abuse are blog hosting sites which are supported by the search engine, such as Blogspot for Google—still mainly due to the fact that Google actually provides special ranking hits for blogspot account users as compared to other websites. Apparently, splog makers know which are the most often-visited online haunts and they try their very best to infiltrate those systems, aiming to not just increase by means of volume, but by hitting various exposures in a single click.

A splog steals the limelight of popular links by means of using and copying titles and words. Any famous blog can be stolen of its rights if a splog maker decides to make a blog with the same title to generate the much-needed traffic. Online surfers looking for the real thing will find themselves dismayed at arriving in websites that are not at all related to what they were looking for to begin with. This is especially frustrating for those who are sincerely looking for authentic and usable information.

As of now, a splog is quite difficult to trace, given the freedom and leeway given for every potential blog user (or abuser). The best way to diminish the existence of splog in the blogosphere will most likely have to be by means of reporting splog viewings to different websites tailored to police suspicious websites and block them off the search results.

At this point in time, search engines find it more difficult to eliminate splogs as compared to other spamming techniques. While comment spam can be filtered, an entire spam account is much more difficult to block in a system, especially if the blogging software provider is well-acclaimed and receives so many account creations to manage in a single day. A splog can also be transmitted via RSS feeds.

An ounce of prevention is definitely better than a pound of cure as far as splog proliferation is concerned. It would be best to sign up for a blog host that knows about the proliferation of splog and has security measures or moderation techniques that address the whole splog problem.