Google Automatic Sandbox For Free Blog Services Likely
July 30th, 2007 by Court75% of Google’s Blogspot blogs are spam. This sad fact, according to a study by Microsoft Research throws into question whether it’s wise to be using Blogspot at all. According to Matt Mullenweg, who is one of the developers of Pingomatic, 80% of the spammish pings they get at Pingomatic are from Blogspot blogs.
Spammers use Blogspot and other free services because obviously they don’t have to pay to setup their splogs (spam-blogs). One person uses the service to create a few thousand splogs (sometimes as many as 500,000) and they’re in business. Unfortunately, in my opinion they make it harder for honest bloggers to gain the trust of the search engines while using free hosted blogs.
What We Can Learn From This
If you’re using a free hosted blog, I would seriously consider moving it. If that just isn’t in the cards right now, make sure that you keep working on building links because that is what will help you to earn the trust of Google and other search engines. Don’t post content that other sites have written because it is quite likely that you are on a shorter leash than sites that have their own domain name. Make sure that all of your content is 100% unique and don’t get too frustrated if traffic is hard to come by in the beginning.
I don’t think it’s likely that Google is penalizing every Blogspot blog out there - I think it’s more likely that they have made the sandbox trigger more sensitive to compensate for the spam problems. In other words, they won’t rank you until you have a certain level of authority.
Based on my experience with Blogspot blogs I can say that it is harder to gain the trust of the search engines while using them. However, once you do they’ll rank as well as any other type of site.
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July 30th, 2007 at 3:30 pm
Blogger has been considered the spammers platform for some time now. I think that’s one reason why wordpress.com doesn’t allow adsense ads on their free blogs, it got rid of a lot of the ’splogs’ that they used to have. Honestly, if Google makes a move like this I wouldn’t find it surprising at all.
But on the other hand, I don’t think any of these blogs rank that well anyway!
July 31st, 2007 at 1:12 pm
So true Dan. That was a wise move by wordpress.com. A lot of people complained about it, but it definitely keeps the spammers away.
July 30th, 2007 at 7:53 pm
The curse of the subdomain continues to haunt me!
It’s high time self hosted blog with own domain name.
July 31st, 2007 at 1:13 pm
I think you’ll be glad once you do it betshopboy! You will at least own your ‘real estate’ at that point!
July 31st, 2007 at 9:17 am
Hosting a blog on Blogger has its pros too. Apart from it being free, there are also PR benefits.
The Blogger homepage features the entries of new blogs, and the users’ profiles are interlinked by their interests, favorite movies, etc. Many bloggers have noticed that it is easier to get a higher PR on Blogger.
July 31st, 2007 at 1:15 pm
A link on the Blogger home page could definitely help if the timing was right! If it was a permanent link I might move to blogspot.
July 31st, 2007 at 11:13 am
Any serious blogger should take the time to get their own domain name anyway. If you’re hoping to make a solid living off your blog then maybe a free service isn’t the best option.
Anyone who has a blogspot domain should start a new blog and redirect. It will reduce visitors in the short run but will be much better in the long run.
July 31st, 2007 at 1:16 pm
I agree Lewis. I couldn’t sleep at night if I didn’t own this site!
I have a lot easier time treating my blog as a business because I own the real estate it appears on.
July 31st, 2007 at 3:33 pm
My blog has made enough money on Blogspot that I had planned to prepay (for a year) a server/domain package this week. My PayPal debit card got lost in the mail though, so I’m stuck a little longer…
How do the ’sponsored posts’ sites handle you switching? If those are a large part of my income, should I maintain both blogs until the one I ‘own’ can stand on it’s own? Or, since I’m already in their systems, does the ‘new’ blog automatically get accepted?
That’s the only thing that has me worried. Porting all my old stuff over and redirecting traffic will be a breeze (weekend project). I’d just rather not lose the income opps (especially if I do well on the PR update). My idea was write my reviews, then plagiarize myself and rewrite on the other if I had to for the three month approval/PR cycle.
I’m confused. Help
August 1st, 2007 at 11:26 am
They won’t like it Jeremy. PayPerPost will make you wait for three months.
I would recommend maintaining both blogs for three months and then redirecting the traffic and links from the old one to the new one. This will make the most logical sense from a monetization standpoint.
It might be worth keeping the old one up just to have two sites to do sponsored reviews with!
Now is the perfect time to start a new site. There will probably be a PR update this month. You’ll miss that one, but it will give you about 4 months to work on PR for the new site.
August 1st, 2007 at 12:30 pm
Thank you! I was kind of afraid of that, but I’ll manage… Good idea about keeping both running, I’ll need to consider that.
August 1st, 2007 at 9:34 am
Spammers will always be around no matter what happens, I hope they don’t stop doing the free blogger services just because of the spammers.
August 2nd, 2007 at 10:13 pm
slow