WebProNews advocating for Blog and Ping strategies
An interesting article over at WebProNews today on the rise of the whole “Blog and Ping” theory where you basically create spam blogs to get your non-blog sites indexed on Google. Interesting in that it doesn’t just describe what the latest rort is, it actually advocates for it: to quote John Taylor…
“So, if you have a blogger.com account you can add content from other websites to the content of your blog and when you blog the content of your site the URL of the page you are blogging is automatically attached. That way, when Google’s spiders index your blogger.com pages, they see your website URL within the content. If that URL isn’t listed in the Google database, the spiders are almost certain to follow the link to index your site…Blogging and pinging is a really effective method to get your site spidered by the major search engines and, more importantly, getting those all important links.”
Basically, set up a spam blog, post junk to it, preferably stolen from another site, make sure your site is linked in the blog, and bingo: you get your site listed in Google.
I wonder how closely WebProNews is actually monitoring the content they are publishing? Maybe they should change their name to WebRortsNews? A note to other, reputable writers who are republished on this site: I’d be suggesting that if WebProNews allows this stuff to be published then you could become tarnished with this immoral brush. I’d be very careful.
It is not the first time that WebProNews has been advocating for this kind of crapware:
http://www.webpronews.com/news/ebusinessnews/wpn-45-20050708BlogPingServicesFreeAndPaid.html
http://www.webpronews.com/ebusiness/ebusinesstactics/wpn-8-20050728TheHybridBlogandPing.html
Scoble and Steve Rubel are writing for WebProNews. Maybe they should not.
I have enough pages of my own to make that spidering easy, so the thought of setting up a special blog just for that sounds silly to me. And if even I had not, I would know enough people who could ‘introduce’ me.
But I guess, some people need that. ;(
Wait, I’m not supposed to be copying everyon elses work, passing it off as my own and using it to make money and get links back to my sites? Crap. I’ve got to change my whole network of sites!
I noticed your post and read the article that we published at WebProNews. I understand your point but you made some logic leaps when you assume that the writer is advocating spammy junk blogs. Most blogs take excerpts of content in their posts (your own post does it!) … and that is all that the writer suggested in his article. Just because the writer explains how a blog can help get a site crawled quicker does not in itself mean he is advocating blogs that are not also interesting and useful.
Additionally, we publish many points of view at WebProNews. It does not in any way mean we “advocate” what any particular person writes.
Thanks,
Rich Ord
CEO, iEntry, Inc.
(iEntry is the parent company of WebProNews)
Personally I’m growing tired of having to sort through all the “spammy junk blogs” as I try to find *actual* keyword-specific content. It drives me nuts.
I wonder if it will last, if search engines will find a way to sift through the junk to get to the real deal. If so, are these spam&junk bloggers are going to ruin it for the rest of us? You know, those of us that spend a great deal of time developing ACTUAL content that’s useful to the reader, instead of just stuffing keywords all over the darned place.
These are the things I ponder.
And I agree with you that it’s slightly odd that WebProNews would take this particular point of view (“a really effective method …”) without recognizing that this practice is generally considered by reputable “Web Pros” to be a shady practice. It’s just not about creating good content, it’s about trying to trick the engines.
Right?
If you want to shut the spammy junk blogs down a good way to do it is to only allow the titles of your posts to be syndicated. Most of them will not syndicate just the titles, from my experience. You can also use an RSS aggregator that forces people to sign up, or visit your blog for the full entry. Most spammers want people to visit their website, not your blog. Personally, I think it would be nice if syndication services provided more options for content sharing. That would stop a lot of the spamming. As I said in another comments entry, a broker here in my own area was syndicating entire posts I had written to her blog without my permission. She has stopped using my posts as requested, though, thank goodness. If we all charged for syndication spamming wouldn’t be a problem. When will Feedster allow for that, I wonder.
Rich
I accept and respect that you publish different points of view, but would you post an article in support of comment spam for example based on the fact that 1% of all people using the automated software used by comment spammers do so in a legitimate fashion? The problem here is that 99.9% of people using the tools mentioned in this story do so in conjunction with content theft. Cutting and pasting quotes and providing links and commentary (as I have with this very post) is very different from automated content theft that is packaged with nearly every piece of “blog and ping” script I’ve managed to look at. It’s disappointing that an otherwise respectable source such as WebProNews would allow such items to be published.