75% of Google's Blogspot Blogs are Spam

On a recurring theme of Internet spam, a study discussed in WebmasterWorld indicates that three out of four blogs -- or 75% -- are spam.

According to the study (PDF link):

...14 of the top-15 doorway domains have a spam percentage higher than 74%; that is, 3 out of 4 unique URLs on these domains (that appeared in our search results) were detected as spam. To demonstrate the need for scrutinizing these sites, we scanned the top-1000 results from two queries – “site:blogspot.com phentermine” and “site:hometown.aol.com ringtone” – and identified more than half of the URLs as spam easily.

Here is a chart from the study showing the "top doorway domains and their spam percentages (among the search results in our data)":

The reason for this is the suspicion that the popular blogging service is free. One WebmasterWorld member states:

The trouble is, there's no algorithm that can automatically factor in the price of a service. It's free to set up a blog on Blogger, so it can be abused more easily. If these spammers actually had to pay for a new domain name every time they set up a splog, they wouldn't bother.

Other findings of this research showed the spam percentages for Top-Level Domains (TLDs):

68% of .info TLDs are spam
53% of .biz TLDs are spam
12% of .net TLDs are spam
11% of .org TLDs are spam
4.1% of .com TLDs are spam

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

posted Tamar Weinberg in Spam at March 20, 2007 9:43 AM Comments (7)

Comments

It would be interesting to see how long the typical blog lives at Blogger/Blogspot. I often find links in search results to blogs that have been removed for TOS abuse.

Posted by Michael Martinez at March 20, 2007 12:02

It will be interesting to see if Google takes any action to address the spamming in their own "backyard." Certainly it lowers the credibility of the overall Blogger community, which is unfortunate for those who are seeking to make valuable contributions through this tool. I have considered adding a blog to my company website... this doesn't endear me to Blogger.

Posted by eye9 Design at March 20, 2007 14:48

I see em all of the time, blogspot blogs with ripped content and adsense, Wordpress isn't as bad because you can't put adsense in em, you still get a few Wordpress splogs though.

Posted by David Eaves at March 20, 2007 20:04

I agree with the webmaster world statement and as long as these blog services are free we are all susceptible to splogs and links that are TOS Abuse! Google have to address the issue other wise no one will want to use there Blog platforms any more especially when there are already better ones out there like Terapad where you don’t have to have Google Ad sense on your site and their community page is clear, spam advertising free and more importantly accurate

Posted by Will at March 24, 2007 07:49

I'm just getting around to clarifying on this one. Here's a quick take:

The MSN study took phrases likely to return spam (e.g. cheap loans) and did searches on blogspot, then saw how many of those were spam. [site:blogspot.com] is very different from [site:blogspot.com cheap loans]. :)

A more accurate headline would be "For spammy queries performed on blogspot, 75% of the resulting search results are spammy."

This is a pretty good explanation: http://www.goldtoe.net/2007/03/dumb-spam.html

Posted by Matt Cutts at April 27, 2007 22:56

Do you mean the entire blog is developed to be spam? Or do you mean that blog comments on other peoples websites are spam? I have issues with competitors posting negative things about my business...usually the same posters on different blogs and forums.

Posted by No Name at April 29, 2007 11:47

This is a shame if accurate, blogs were a new an innovative thing not too long ago and it appears, like many other things on the Internet, it has been abused.

Posted by Graham Z at March 17, 2008 08:53

75% of Google's Blogspot Blogs are Spam

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