the audit

All You Need to Know About Splogs

Wired takes a much-needed, critical look at the blogosphere and its nonsensical, computer-generated sites known as "splogs."
September 6, 2006

When reporters are asked to file perfunctory stories explaining the rapid expansion of the blogosphere, they often slip into a gee whiz state of mind more a propos to contemplating all those stars in the night sky. How many are there? Really? Wow!

Thus, it was a relief to read an article in the current issue of Wired, in which author Charles C. Mann takes a critical look at one of the fastest growing segments of the blogosphere — specifically, the nonsensical, computer-generated sites known as “splogs” (a.k.a. spam blogs).

The article in Wired is hardly the first piece to note the existence of splogs. But of the stories we’ve read, this one does the best job explaining how splogs work and the threat that the garbled, link-heavy sites pose to so-called Web 2.0, the utopian notion of an Internet built on data and information continually supplied and updated by users.

“Like email spam, splogs use the most wonderful features of networked communication — its flexibility, easy access, and low cost — in the service of sleazy get-rich-quick schemes,” writes Mann. “But whereas email spammers try to induce recipients to buy products, sploggers and other Web spammers make most of their money by getting viewers to click on ads that run adjacent to their non-sensical text. Web page owners — the spammer, in this case — get paid by the advertiser every time someone clicks on an ad.”

Mann goes on to describe how sploggers have created “complex networks of Web sites, entire online ecosystems of sleaze, twaddle, and gobbledygook.”

“The main goal is to lure unsuspecting blog readers and other Internet users to spam portals,” he adds. “Sportals, as they are known, are Web pages consisting almost entirely of pay-per-click links, all of which shunt netsurfers to legitimate commercial Web sites, collecting money along the way for the spammers.”

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How many splogs are out there?

Mann highlights a recent study by a researcher at the University of Maryland who found that 56 percent of active English-language blogs are actually spam. (Along the way Mann also references another study which found that more than 10 million of the 12.9 million profiles at one popular blog-hosting site were actually inactive. “The huge mass of dead blogs is one reason to maintain a healthy skepticism toward the frequently heard claims about the vast growth of the blogosphere,” writes Mann.)

So how concerned do we have to be about the vast growth of the splogosphere? Mann, for one, suggests that the rise of splogs threatens to undermine the already shaky balance between content and advertising on the Web.

“Because the ad money is effectively available only to Web sites that appear in the first page or two of search results, spammers devote enormous efforts to gaming Google, Yahoo, and their ilk,” writes Mann. “Search engines rank Web sites in large part by counting the number of other sites that link to them, assigning higher placement in results to sites popular enough to be referred to by many others. To mimic this popularity, spammers create bogus networks of interconnected sites called link farms.”

According to Mann, search engines such as Google are already considering different ways to stem the rising tide of splogs. But to date, nobody has figured out how to do so in an efficient manner. So the splogs continue to spread.

“People in the industry disagree about how to beat back spam, or whether it can even be done,” concludes Mann. “But there’s no dispute that if the blogosphere and the rest of Web 2.0 can’t find a way to stop the sleazeballs who are enveloping the Net in a haze of babble and cheesy marketing, then the best features of Web 2.0 will be turned off, and it will go the way of Usenet, which was driven to desuetude by spam.”

In the meantime, we’ll continue to look to Mann and Wired to cut through the haze of babble and cheesy marketing that characterizes so much of the media’s reporting on the blogosphere.

Felix Gillette writes about the media for The New York Observer.