By David A. Utter
Staff Writer
Article Date: 2005-12-23
One out of five newly-created blogs isn't a sports fan's ramblings, a teenager's angst journal, or a cab driver's work experiences, but just a vehicle for stealing content and displaying advertising.
Believe it or not, it only seems like every new blog that crops up is a spam blog. Instead, it's really just about one out of five, a report at AdWeek said.
Citing consumer intelligence firm Umbria Communications, the report said 2.7 million out of 20.3 million blogs are spam. The report called out Google and claimed their Blogger service has contributed to the problem:
The main culprit often fingered is Google, which has fed the splog problem through its Blogger tool, then made it profitable through AdSense.
Blogger's open API made it easier for computer programs to create splogs, (Umbria CEO Howard) Kaushansky said.
"We noticed a very strong correlation between the date Blogger opened [its application program interface] and when we saw spam starting to explode," he said.
Umbria sifted through results from three blog search engines in October: Technorati, BlogPulse, and IceRocket. An average of 44 out of the top 100 results for queries turned out to be spam, the report said.
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