Death, Taxes and . . . SPAM!

Just a few words on blogs and spam.

Just like email, blogs can get spammed.

There are two general ways that spam on blogs works.

1. they put ads directly on your blog (to sell viagra for instance) or
   
2. they create a "splog" or spamblog with ads for un-tech-savy visitors to click on.

The first one is fairly easy to recognize. The comments usually have lots of links, are off-topic or pointless ("great post!"), or downright shameless in what they are trying to promote.

Splogs are more tricky. The way they work is by linking to your blog. This creates a "pingback" (a comment on the blog that tells people another blog linked here), which in turn links to their blog where they hope people will click on ads and make the owner money.

Having people link to your blog is often flattering (particularly when someone has something interesting to add to your discussion) and it's the way you can increase your "authority" ranking in a service like Technorati. Splogs play to this need, so you will want to use some of those website evaluation skills to figure out if your pingback is legit or if it's a splog. Here are some ways to tell if a blog is a splog:

• There are lots of advertisements, and nothing much else of value.
• All of the posts appear to do nothing but link to other blogs.
• The posts contain lots of gibberish.
• There is no "about this blog" page, or the page does not have a whole lot of information about the author of the blog.
  

AVOIDING SPAM

In the end, -- avoiding spam on your blog is pretty easy. Here are some Dos and Don'ts.

• DO set up your blog so that you get to moderate your comments before they go up.
  
• In Wordpress, you do this by clicking "Options," then "Discussion" from your dashboard.
  
• In Blogger, it's "Settings" then "Comments."

• DO mark any spam you moderate as "spam." This will help your service eliminate the spam from the system.
  
• DONT allow anonymous comments. Spammers tend to be anonymous.
  
• DONT leave a blog unattended for long periods of time. If you are done with a blog, delete it. "Ghosttown" blogs are prime for spam.
• DO use the built in spam filters from your blog company. Wordpress uses Akismet spam blocking, which I really like.
  
• DONT click any ads or links on a spam blog.
• DO report any splogs to your service. Most bloggings services do not allow spam blogs to exist on their servers.
• DO let a blogger know when you have encountered a spam comment or pingback on their blog. They will thank you for it.