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Google Reacts to Splogs
labnol writes "Recently, Mark Cuban of Icerocket made the accusation that Blogger is by far the worst offender when it comes to Spam Blogs. Now Google Blogger is introducing Word Verification for user comments to prevent comment spam and another feature called Flag As Objectionable where users can report blogs with questionable content. Google appears to be listening."
No, this is not about reducing spam in the comments on blogs. This is about reducing the number of blogs whose authors post only spam. The number of such blogs is enormous -- most counts put it between half and 2/3.
Distorted google rankings (and accordingly worsened search results), that's why. -- Paul
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Off the above link "We've just introduced the option to require word verification for comments. This option (off by default) gives bloggers a tool to prevent the automatic creation of comments by nefarious ne'er-do-wells (e.g. spammers). Features like comment captcha and flag as objectionable are not complete solutions to the problem of spam. But they are additional tools that can help address it." I may just be missing something but what is word verification about then if not to stop spammer (bots) from leaving unwanted comments?
If you use the 'next blog' randomizing feature on blogs you'll see that roughly one out of five 'blogs' are nothing but link farms, worm repositories and bullshit like that.
And this has been going on for quite a while. We all know that Google has a fondness for indexing Blogger content rather quickly, and so do the spammers. It's about time the company did something about it.
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There's a way to keep people from using Mark as Objectionable to censor political opinions. You have to be logged in to mark, and the blog keeps track of who it is making the mark. Whoever owns the blog can go over the marks, remove any inappropriate ones and, if somebody's abusing the privilege, eject them. Of course, there has to be a way to keep them from simply signing up again, such as checking for a banned email address. Yes, I know how easy it is to create throw-away addresses, but it might slow them down a little.
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No, this is not about reducing spam in the comments on blogs. This is about reducing the number of blogs whose authors post only spam.
Sheesh, I know it's de rigeur here to not read the article, but at least read the freakin' summary.
Now Google Blogger is introducing Word Verification for user comments to prevent comment spam
What part of that don't you understand?
And I say it's about time too. I have a (very unpopular, sporadically updated) blog on Blogger/Blogspot - linked above - and every single time I post an update I get at least 3 or 4 nearly instantenous spam comments. I have to check the next day and go through and delete them manually as it is now.
Of course, the really annoying thing is these are the only comments I ever get! But I guess that's to be expected with a blog that's updated approximately once every three months...
I can't really see a good reason to why Google has that new word verification feature off by default
Probably something to do with laws requiring companies to make their products accessible to people whose disabilities prevent them from seeing images. (Read More...) Turning on accessibility (that is, turning off word verification) by default means that liability for inaccessible blogs lies with the blog administrator, not with Google.
Blogger has addressed the "Flag" abuse issue. From their own internal "Blogger Buzz" blog (http://buzz.blogger.com/), it says: "From a technical standpoint, we are able to detect when multiple votes come from the same source. We prevent against ballot box stuffing. But most importantly, we're not automatically removing content based on the flags. We're using the feedback from Blog*Spot readers to help assess what the community has noted as potentially objectionable. In the cases where objectionable content has been identified, the most common action is for the support team to 'delist' the blog. This simply means that the blog is not promoted in areas of blogger.com like Recently Updated - but it's still viewable on the web. The content is not blocked or removed in anyway when the blog is delisted."
So for those who are concerned that their "enemies" might use the "Flag" feature to attack their blogs, relax!
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No. It won't
Blog spam will never dieCheers Koz