What is your definition of a splog? For a site to be considered a splog does it have to steal entire articles, or just bits and pieces of them? These are all important questions when deciding whether or not to file a DMCA notice.
I think pretty much everyone (except sploggers, of course) will agree that blogs that are nothing but stolen articles are splogs. After all they go onto your site, steal your work, post it on a page with bunches of ads, and enjoy the rewards. Most likely they don’t even do any of the work either, since there are numerous RSS to Blog tools that sploggers use to automate the entire process.
Now those are the easy splogs to spot, but what about blogs that are nothing but quoted articles? Generally speaking they are breaking no laws, and there is a much less chance of them causing any damage. Their keyword to content ratio is so out of whack that I would be shocked if the Google Bot didn’t pick up on it.
With that said, are they really splogs?
I think one could argue that yes, they are. They don’t do any work, they still get free money, and they add little value to the Internet. But now things get complicated - think about Digg.com
Most posts on Digg use quotes from the article, and Digg gets advertising revenue. The Digg crew doesn’t manually go through and submit all of those things, it all happens “automatically”. So, couldn’t you argue that Digg is actually a splog?
But if you say Digg is a splog, wouldn’t that also mean Reddit and the other social networks are also splogs? What exactly is the difference between them and the real threats?
I think the difference is in what they offer to the Internet. Sploggers want to get as rich as possible with as little work as possible, thus their sites are often lame and provide worthless content to the Internet. Social media sites want to provide an actual service.
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September 5th, 2007 at 3:10 am
Wow!
Technical genius…could you help me?
I want to know how to do a tag cloud on my blog for the topics I cover.
Technically I am lacking! LOL!
September 5th, 2007 at 10:49 am
I haven’t done one, but I’ve heard good things about Ultimate Tag Warrior: http://lorelle.wordpress.com/2005/10/23/the-ultimate-tag-warrior-wordpress-plugin/
From what I can tell you’ll have to go through and add tags to every post.
The alternative is to use a plugin called Category Cloud ( http://www.mapelli.info/web20/category-cloud-15 ) which does the same thing but will generate a tag cloud based on your categories - that way you don’t have to modify every single post. It also seems much easier to add to your blog.
September 5th, 2007 at 10:50 am
Oops, I linked to an old version, here’s the new version of Category Cloud:
http://www.mapelli.info/web20/category-cloud-16
September 5th, 2007 at 7:04 pm
^ Ultimate Tag Warrior is going to be obsolete in 2 weeks when WordPress 2.3 get released which has native tagging.
As for splogs, as far as I know they’re spam blogs, automated blogs without much or any interference by a human, and created solely to generate revenue.
So while some may use Digg as such that doesn’t make Digg itself a splog, like it also doesn’t make WordPress.com a splog. They just offer a service, which unfortunately can and does get abused.
September 5th, 2007 at 8:15 pm
Indeed, it all has to do with what they offer and what the intent behind the service is.
I think one could go as far as arguing that even legit blogs, with 100% unique content, can still be considered a form of a splog if the reasoning behind it is to simply make money. I won’t name any names, but there are some a-list bloggers out there who seem more Interested in making money than they do with providing their readers with good content.