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Spam in blogs (also known as blog spam, comment spam, or social spam) is a form of spamdexing which utilizes internet sites that allow content to be publicly posted, in order to artificially inflate their website ranking by linking back (also referred to as backlinking) to their web pages. Backlinking helps search algorithms determine the popularity of a web page, which plays a major role for search engines like Google and Microsoft Bing to decide a web page ranking on a certain search query. This helps the spammer's website to list ahead of other sites for certain searches, which helps them to increase the number of visitors to their website.

It may be done by posting random comments on other blog websites (usually by an automated process), or by copying other websites' content and using it on free-to-use publishing services like Blogger and WordPress or publicly accessible wikis, digital guest books, and internet forums.

Note that blog spam also has another meaning, specifically when a blog author creates posts without adding any informational or educational value solely for publishing them on other websites

History

This type of spam originally appeared in internet guestbooks, where spammers repeatedly filled a guestbook with links to their sites and irrelevant comments, to increase their search engine rankings. If an actual comment is given, it is often just "cool page", "nice website", or keywords of the spammed link.

In 2003, spammers began to take advantage of the open nature of comments in the blogging software like Movable Type by repeatedly placing comments on various blog posts that provided nothing more than a link to the spammer's commercial web site. Jay Allen created a free plugin, called MT-BlackList,^[1] for the Movable Type weblog tool (versions prior to 3.2) that attempted to alleviate this problem. Many blogging packages now have methods of preventing or reducing the effect of blog spam built in due to its prevalence, although spammers too have developed tools to circumvent them. Many spammers use special blog spamming tools like trackback submitter^[2] to bypass comment spam protection on popular blogging systems like Movable Type, WordPress, and others.

Application-specific implementations

Particularly popular software products such as Movable Type and MediaWiki have developed or included anti-spam measures, as spammers focus more on targeting those platforms due to their prevalence on the Internet. Whitelists and blacklists that prevent certain IPs from posting, or that prevent people from posting content that matches certain filters, are common defences although most software tends to use a combination of the variety of different techniques documented below.

The goal in every potential solution is to allow legitimate users to continue posting their comments (and often even add links to their comments, as that is considered by some to be a valuable aspect of any comments section, when the links are relevant or related to the article or content) whilst preventing all spam links or irrelevant comments from being viewable to the site's owner and visitors.

References

^ "MT-Blacklist - A Movable Type Anti-spam Plugin". Jayallen.org. Retrieved 2012-01-09.
^ 4.1kreads (2006-09-26). "Beware of Trackback Submitter : Wordpress Blog Spam". Search Engine Journal. Retrieved 2021-09-29.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)

External links

Project Honeypot Directory of Content Spammers
Gilad Mishne, David Carmel and Ronny Lempel: Blocking Blog Spam with Language Model Disagreement, PDF. From the First International Workshop on Adversarial Information Retrieval (AIRWeb'05) Chiba, Japan, 2005.

[1] "MT-Blacklist - A Movable Type Anti-spam Plugin". Jayallen.org. Retrieved 2012-01-09.

[2] 4.1kreads (2006-09-26). "Beware of Trackback Submitter : Wordpress Blog Spam". Search Engine Journal. Retrieved 2021-09-29.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)

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+{{Short description|Form of spamdexing}}
 {{For|blogs that are built only for spamming|spam blog}}
 {{tone|date=September 2014}}
-'''Spam in blogs''' (also called simply '''blog spam''', '''comment spam''', or '''social spam''') is a form of [[spamdexing]]. (Note that ''blogspam'' also has another meaning, namely the post of a blogger who creates posts that have no added value to them in order to submit them to other sites.) It is done by posting (usually automatically) random comments, copying material from elsewhere that is not original, or promoting commercial services to [[weblog|blogs]], [[wiki]]s, [[guestbook]]s, or other publicly accessible online [[discussion board]]s.  Any web application that accepts and displays [[hyperlinks]] submitted by visitors may be a target.
+'''Spam in blogs''' (also known as '''blog spam''', '''comment spam''', or '''social spam''') is a form of [[spamdexing]] which utilizes internet sites that allow content to be publicly posted, in order to artificially inflate their website [[ranking]] by [[Hyperlink|linking]] back (also referred to as [[backlink|backlinking]]) to their [[web page]]s. Backlinking helps [[search algorithm]]s determine the popularity of a web page, which plays a major role for [[search engine]]s like [[Google]] and [[Microsoft Bing]] to decide a web page ranking on a certain search query. This helps the spammer's website to list ahead of other sites for certain searches, which helps them to increase the number of visitors to their website.
+It may be done by posting random comments on other blog websites (usually by an automated process), or by copying other websites' content and using it on free-to-use publishing services like [[Blogger (service)|Blogger]] and [[WordPress.com|WordPress]] or publicly accessible [[wiki]]s, digital [[Guestbook|guest books]], and [[internet forum]]s.
-Adding links that point to the spammer's web site artificially increases the site's search engine ranking on those where the popularity of the URL contributes to its implied value, an example algorithm would be the [[PageRank#Description|PageRank]] algorithm as used by [[Google Search]]. An increased ranking often results in the spammer's commercial site being listed ahead of other sites for certain searches, increasing the number of potential visitors and paying customers.
+Note that ''blog spam'' also has another meaning, specifically when a blog author creates posts without adding any informational or educational value solely for publishing them on other [[website]]s
-==History==
-This type of spam originally appeared in Internet [[guestbook]]s, where spammers repeatedly filled a guestbook with links to their own site and with no relevant comment, to increase search engine rankings.  If an actual comment is given it is often just "cool page", "nice website", or keywords of the spammed link.
+==History==
-In 2003, spammers began to take advantage of the open nature of comments in the [[weblog|blogging]] software like [[Movable Type]] by repeatedly placing comments to various blog posts that provided nothing more than a link to the spammer's commercial web site. Jay Allen created a free plugin, called MT-BlackList,<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.jayallen.org/projects/mt-blacklist/|title=MT-Blacklist - A Movable Type Anti-spam Plugin |publisher=Jayallen.org |date= |accessdate=2012-01-09}}</ref> for the Movable Type weblog tool (versions prior to 3.2) that attempted to alleviate this problem. Many blogging packages now have methods of preventing or reducing the effect of blog spam built in due to its prevalence, although spammers too have developed tools to circumvent them. Many spammers use special blog spamming tools like [[trackback submitter]] to bypass comment spam protection on popular blogging systems like Movable Type, Wordpress, and others.
+This type of spam originally appeared in internet [[guestbook]]s, where spammers repeatedly filled a guestbook with links to their sites and irrelevant comments, to increase their search engine rankings. If an actual comment is given, it is often just "cool page", "nice website", or keywords of the spammed link.
+In 2003, spammers began to take advantage of the open nature of comments in the [[weblog|blogging]] software like [[Movable Type]] by repeatedly placing comments on various blog posts that provided nothing more than a link to the spammer's commercial web site. Jay Allen created a free plugin, called MT-BlackList,<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.jayallen.org/projects/mt-blacklist/|title=MT-Blacklist - A Movable Type Anti-spam Plugin |publisher=Jayallen.org |access-date=2012-01-09}}</ref> for the Movable Type weblog tool (versions prior to 3.2) that attempted to alleviate this problem. Many blogging packages now have methods of preventing or reducing the effect of blog spam built in due to its prevalence, although spammers too have developed tools to circumvent them. Many spammers use special blog spamming tools like trackback submitter<ref>{{Cite web|last=4.1kreads|date=2006-09-26|title=Beware of Trackback Submitter : Wordpress Blog Spam|url=https://www.searchenginejournal.com/beware-of-trackback-submitter-wordpress-blog-spam/3829/|access-date=2021-09-29|website=Search Engine Journal|language=en}}</ref> to bypass comment spam protection on popular blogging systems like Movable Type, WordPress, and others.
-Other phrases typically used in the comment content can be stolen comments from other websites, "nice article", something about their imaginary friends, plagiarised parts from books, unfinished sentences, nonsense words (usually to defeat a minimum comment length restriction) or the same link repeated.
 ==Application-specific implementations==
-Particularly popular software products such as [[Movable Type]] and [[MediaWiki]] have developed or included anti-spam measures, as spammers focus more attention on targeting those platforms due to their prevalence on the Internet. Whitelists and blacklists that prevent certain IPs from posting, or that prevent people from posting content that matches certain filters, are common defences although most software tends to use a combination of the variety of different techniques documented below.
+Particularly popular software products such as [[Movable Type]] and [[MediaWiki]] have developed or included anti-spam measures, as spammers focus more on targeting those platforms due to their prevalence on the Internet. Whitelists and blacklists that prevent certain IPs from posting, or that prevent people from posting content that matches certain filters, are common defences although most software tends to use a combination of the variety of different techniques documented below.
-The goal in every potential solution is to allow legitimate users to continue to comment (and often even add links to their comments, as that is considered by some to be a valuable aspect of any comments section when the links are relevant or related to the article or content) whilst preventing all link spam or irrelevant comments from ever being viewable to the site's owner and visitors.
+The goal in every potential solution is to allow legitimate users to continue posting their comments (and often even add links to their comments, as that is considered by some to be a valuable aspect of any comments section, when the links are relevant or related to the article or content) whilst preventing all spam links or irrelevant comments from being viewable to the site's owner and visitors.
 ==See also==
+* {{annotated link|Social spam}}
-* [[Adversarial information retrieval]]
-* [[Social spam]]
 ==References==