One of the big problems facing the internet has been the enormous number of splogs. Google is increasingly trying to stop this. One of the main motivations has probably been its desire to clean up its adsense program. Basically, advertisers don’t like seeing their ads appear on “made for adsense sites”
Definition of a splog.
A splog is a blog / website that does not offer original content, it only copies content from other sites. Often splogs are specifically designed to gain revenue from the google adsense program. They are often bracketed with Made for Adsense sites – MFA.
In the past ,Google was quite poor in distinguishing between websites that offered unique content and websites that just duplicated from others. Often Google would (and it still does) give a higher search engine position to sites that only copied the article from another site.
Case Study Blogcritics
Blogcritics is one of the top review blogs. It has many members who submit reviews of products, films and books. The problem is that many of the members submit the article to both blogcritics and their own blog. Because of this blogcritics has been penalised in Google rankings for having a lot of duplicated content. They now insist that content has to be submitted to Blogcritics first, before being put on their site. However, even this means that it still has a lot of duplicated content. The site may struggle to get good google rankings in the future.
Ezines
A popular way to get links is through writing articles and submitting them to sites who allow a link back to your site at the end or in the middle. Ezines can be a good way to get one way inbound links. Furthermore, articles tend to get copied by other websites, giving you an even bigger range of links.
The problem is that many of these sites who duplicate your content are splogs. Therefore, these links will have no benefit. However, they shouldn’t do any harm. Also, I have seen articles copied by good quality websites. I feel that these links could be of some benefit.
However, I feel that Google will try and devalue the benefits of links from article sites. In a sense they are just very advanced link farms.
Ezines and duplication of Content
In the past, articles I submitted to ezines were often put on my websites. However, I think a better strategy is to write some articles for ezines and then use the rest to put on your blog. Avoiding duplication is highly advisable in the new “anti splog climate”
Does this mean all Duplication is Out?
Splogs are 100% duplication. If you have a site which has 10% of its articles duplicated: e.g. Articles from wikipedia, articles submitted to other sites, there should be no problem. However, it is hard to say what is the % where Google penalties are triggered. Also this % fluctuates. What worked in the past may suddenly attract a huge penalty from Google.
For example, my site Biography Online, has at least 50% original content. About 25% pages are from wikipedia, about 25% of articles were also put on ezine type websites. Suddenly out of the blue on 27th June, Google hit every page with a 950 penalty. This means the ranking of every search term fell by approximately 900 places (to the bottom) I’m pretty mad with google, because it is not a splog. There is a lot of unique articles that took a long time to write and now, the whole site has been heavily penalised. I’m not quite sure why this has happened, but it is a real cause for concern.
See also: Google and over optimisation penalties
5 comments ↓
How frustrating! Is there no way to appeal the Google penalty? Do they have an option for a human to read your site, in order to show that it isn’t a splog?
Thanks for concern, google don’t do reviews of sites. They prefer to tweak their algorithms. I don’t think it will last for ever. I know of other people who have had such a penalty removed, after a certain period of time.
Here’s a bright side: In the mean time (before they remove the penalty) you’ll become ranked #1 for “Google 950 Penalty”!! Talk about sweet revenge!
(I don’t mean to make light of this, just trying to cheer you up. I realize how aggravating and unfair this is.)
Thanks Juggling frogs, it’s frustrating but it’s not the end of the world. I have 5 main sites and I don’t expect it will last forever. However, it does show the benefits of not putting all your eggs in one basket so to speak of.
Splogs – now there’s a name for you! I’ve also recently noticed a whole bunch of “blogs” that virtually consist *only* of Google ads!
There’s not even duplicated content on them. I’m guessing their titles/names reflect popular search engine look up terms and that’s they expect to draw in their traffic, and, er, revenue.
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