Help Rid the Blogosphere of Bad Blogs…
Have you ever noticed how many bad blogs there are out there? There are the “splogs” (spam blogs) that are nothing more than sites that want you to visit so they can get advertising dollars. They don’t offer any content… at least not any that they didn’t steal from someone else.
You see these sites coming up in Google all the time. And it really chaps my hide when I click on a search result, expecting a bona fide site relating to my search… and it’s just one of these stupid advertising sites.
And then there are sites that are legitimate. They actually have people writing them, and the people have something to say. The problem is that they have bad content. Either no originality. Nothing you want to read. Or it’s clear that they’re generating content just for the sake of advertising dollars.
Puh-lease… I don’t need to see one more blog that is supposed to tell me how to make a jillion dollars with a blog. And I REALLY don’t want to see one more blog pimping a networking marketing or multi-level marketing or pyramid scheme or other bogus business opportunity.
How do we rid the blogosphere of this drek? We stop reading the sites. Quit visiting them and encouraging their efforts. Especially if they’ve got some of the most annoying stuff… the pop-ups, the peel-back ads, the browser hijacker. If enough consumers speak up by not reading these annoying and useless sites, they’ll start to die, one by one.
And do a big favor to sites that have great content. You know… sites like this one, or Timothy Sykes, or Sam Antar, or Gary Weiss, or Badger Blogger, or Joe Wikert, or Herb Greenberg, or re: The Auditors. Keep visiting them. Join in the discussion by leaving comments. Become engaged and send relevant links to friends and associates.
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Comments (9)
Tracy…
Right on! I’ve noticed that many of these sites simply copy and paste some pro company dribble that a PR Hack wrote. I can recognize one these with a single scan of the site. Sadly, people get conned into reading such dribble and may even fall for the bait.
For other original content sites, I immediately sense fraud when the writer obviously doesn’t have a grasp of the topic or product they are trying to promote. It is as if they entered a writing contest on a subject they have no experience and have done zero research.
I have seen sites that advertise that they pay average Joe literary challenged folk to write original copy promoting their product or service which could be a scam network marketing scheme or a miracle wrinkle paste..
I removed advertising from my blog completely since I felt it detracted from my message. Occasionally I give a thumbs up to another blog or product that I enjoy, like this site. Credibility is something easily lost if not guarded.
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Avoiding the splogs is a good idea, but it won’t stop the problem. I bet at least 80% of their traffic is from Google SEO which makes it hard to identify it as a splog until you click the link and enter popup hell. The real solution to the problem is for Google to allow users to create a way to personally blacklist a site. That way, if you don’t particularly care for search results from a splog, you could tell Google to never show you search results from a particular site, as long as you are logged in. After Google receives so many blacklist requests, they could review it themselves and put it on a global blacklist if it looks like its bogus. Once the actual Google users started flagging sites, it’d kill this problem pretty quick because it would remove the economic incentive to try and use a splog to get search traffic. Of course it would also kill Google’s earnings pretty quick too because they pick up more business than people realize from all the sploggers who are using adsense accounts to profit from their cut and paste jobs.
Or, in other words, bad blog comments can be a problem too.
On the other side of the issue, advertisers just need to stop advertising on splogs and other horrid sites. I know with my business “Google Partner Sites” just sucked up a ton of our clicks (and money) and we never got anything from them.
Davis – You bring up a good point. Google has little incentive to get rid of the splogs from search results. I’ve found Yahoo to have much higher quality search results, unfortunately, Yahoo is jacked up in other ways. (If you don’t believe me, take a topic about which you’re knowledgeable, and search for it on both Google and Yahoo. Tell me which has the better quality sites showing in the top 10.)
I guess I don’t see Google putting a stop to splog traffic any time soon. It would take a revolution by the advertisers, but even they might not complain because the splogs are still brining them traffic, and the cost may be worth it.
Michael – You just have to do it right… Read this article for step-by-step instructions…
http://www.walletpop.com/2007/12/20/create-your-own-multi-level-marking-company-in-ten-easy-steps/