So, as a disclaimer, I don’t actually know if that Spanish translation is accurate for “Sploggers are getting trickier”, because I used Google’s Translation service at translate.google.com to illustrate a point.
In my ongoing fascination with sploggers, I’ve found out that there’s a new kind of “autoblogging” software that has been sending out trackbacks. But I presume you know the usual kind of thing I’m talking about: the offenders are blogs that end in .info, scrape your posts and then reproduce the first few paragraphs that end with an ellipsis and “you should read more over here”, or “<insert author name> has the details”, or some such dreck.
Well, in examining the latest splogging garbage to cross my desk, I have found that some new autoblogging software is doing something pretty sneaky to get past *your* defenses.
I know that when I look back at such blogs to verify that they’re in fact auto-generated (to create adsense income), so that I can add their IP and domain to my blacklist, I usually check “by hand” to see that they’ve scraped a post.
Well, much to my surprise I found that there were some *very* interesting posts that were “tracking back” to the BlogHerald that had very familiar posts — but not quite identical or literal ripoffs of our content.
But it was really close.
And then I had another look at things sideways and realized that the grammar was bad. Really bad. Almost comically so. Almost as if someone had run it through a translator *twice*. Once out of English, and again into English. Or maybe *four* times, even, as I can’t quite replicate it.
Consider the following passage:
In the time I’ve been blogging personally in the new media side of the blogosphere, there have been some unwritten rules that I’ve taken notice of that some bloggers seem to follow religiously.
And then consider the mimicked one:
In the instance I’ve been blogging personally in the newborn media lateral of the blogosphere, there hit been whatever spoken rules that I’ve condemned attending of that whatever bloggers seem to study religiously.
… yes, “WTF” indeed.
Now, in a cursory Google check for autoblogging software that double translates, I’ve found nothing yet; but certainly auto-translating software *does* exist for sploggers to plug into their autoblogging software, with the intention of grabbing more time with Google, as differently translated auto-scraped content will translate into more unique content, which translates into more pages, which translates, perhaps into more income.
The other possibility is an auto-synonomizer piece of software which already exists, as something which automatically substitutes synonyms for given words in scraped content. One kind is advertised over here , costs $45, and was released near the end of October.
Since I can’t actually find software to doubly-translate scraped text it may be that its synonymizer software that’s doing it, although the grammar doesn’t quite fit.
Have you noticed this kind of trackback spam? If you have, leave a message and let’s have a vote: synonymized or translated?
