Scott Johnson, CTO at Feedster, has written a commentary for Media Post about splogs (spam blogs) and what the industry must do to combat them. The commentary is titled, The Newest Front in the Online Wars: Splogs.
A splog is a spam blog–that is, a fake blog that is created for the sole purpose of getting a high search engine “page rank” to reap profits through ad clicks, or to drive customers to an otherwise obscure e-commerce site… To give you an idea of the magnitude of the problem, in the United Kingdom there is a company with over 15,000 spam blogs at last count. There were well over 10,000 spam blogs on BlogSpot alone related to the Triple Crown horse races. Of course, each time a visitor clicks on a paid search term, the advertiser pays for it and the “splogger” gets a revenue share… Blog search companies must maintain an aggressive stance on blog spam, and continue to hone their tools and techniques.