RWT Webmaster Tools Blog

Articles Inappropriately Used as Splog Fodder

I have recently been experimenting with writing articles and submitting them to various online ezine’s (more on that at another time). One unintended consequence for both the writer and the ezine site, is the use of articles on splogs. While it is the hope of authors to get their articles picked up by legitimate webzine sites, unfortunately they are also being picked up by sploggers. What is a splog? A Spam Blog. Here is how I have seen it work:

• You write an article
• You submit it to an ezine site
• The article gets picked up by a splogger
• The splogger places the content of your article with author attribution and and hyperlinks intact on their splog.
• The splog is simply a weird conglomeration of articles over a wide range of topics
• The purpose of this splog is simply to attract various kinds of traffic
• Once at the site, all a user has to do is scroll using the scroll bar or click in the white space of the site and they are immediately redirected to a porn, pharmaceutical or casino site

Splogs appear on services where it is easy to create a blog. There are a ton of them on Blogger. While Blogger needs to get a handle on this sort of thing, let me speak frankly to sploggers for a minute.

Do something of value with your time on the web. Seriously, if all you can do to be ‘creative’ is use someone elses content to develop redirect pages to your casino site, please use your ‘creativity’ somewhere else. It actually takes a fair amount of work to do what you do, so why not use that energy towards more valuable means. I understand the desire to make a quick buck. We all wish we could. Why not make a buck and add value at the same time? It would make webspace a whole lot better if you did.

Ok I’m done.