The Rise of Spam Blogs

Given the broad reach of this blog, I hope this item gets a wide audience, despite the fact that, for techies, it's inside-baseball and pretty obvious.

A spam blog is a page created with blog software that is designed to attract traffic to a related page created by a spammer or other crook.

I recently got a taste of this while writing for another blog.

The topic was Amy Tuck. Ms. Tuck is the Lt. Governor of Mississippi. She has decided not to run for re-election. She is, in terms of this topic, a completely innocent bystander – as is any other newsmaker.

I wanted to get a taste of what the blogosphere was thinking about Ms. Tuck's decision, who might replace her and what she might do next, when I came upon the following via Blogsearch:

• A tummy tuck “blog” aimed at grabbing top ratings for those searching to get thin fast.

• A “relationships” “blog” with links to a variety of news articles and no coherence at all, probably aimed at roping-in people looking for love or to get out of it

• Another Tummy Tuck site, this one filled with Google ads. This is a form of AdSense fraud, because these ads do the advertiser no good.

• A medical malpractice scam site. Notice all the other unrelated garbage linked in along with this.
• A debt consolidation scam site. Same deal as with the medical scam.
• An auto insurance Adsense scam
• ,A site doing I have no idea what. (Maybe it's scammer practice.)
• A site with used car ads, aimed at Neshoba, Mississippi

All these are on the first three pages of Amy Tuck links. My guess is I can do the same thing with nearly anyone else whose name is in the public eye (although it's probably easier if their name has multiple meanings, as the name Tuck does).

Dealing with these thieves, scam artists, and bullshitters is a growing problem. It's polluting RSS, it's polluting our ability to use the Web, it's costing Web advertisers money, and it's costing Google credibility.

Now, anyone got a solution?