How can you report and complain about Blogger spam blogs on Blogspot? There are hundreds of spam blogs (also called Splogs) in the blogosphere, mostly created on free blogging platform Blogger.
Typical Blogspot spam features
Its Free! No ID needed! Many people set up a free Blogger Blogspot blog as there is no identity proof required, no whois information from registered domain names or Webhosting tracked. Blogger provides ad-free unlimited free Webhosting on blogspot.com subdomains with no bandwidth restrictions and free image hosting.
Then they copy lots of good high paying keyword-rich popular content from several different websites and blogs. And do not credit or even mention the source. Finally, they put up Google Adsense contextual advertising to earn money quickly.
Usually, there is no feedback form or email to reply to contact them. Even if there is an email link or contact form – don’t expect a reply back. Comments are either disabled or moderated and your comment explaining them to remove your copyrighted content never appears live.
The Blogger navbar will usually be hidden so that you cannot click the “Flag” or More button to report the blog. So how do you report a Blogger Blog for Violation of TOS?
Since most bloggers do not link back to such spam blogs – Multiple spam blogs link to each other to get backlinks and increase page rank and are search engine optimized in such a way that their URLs will turn up higher in SERPs than the original content source. Its so easy to do negative SEO this way!
Report Abuse for Blogger / Blogspot Blogs
Every Blogger or Blogspot blog has the option to report abuse. There is a Blogger navbar on top of all blogger blogs unless they have hidden it purposefully. But since most spam Blogspot blogs are auto-generated in bulk to promote spam, there are high chance the bar will still be there.
But you might find that many splogs hide the blogger navbar. As per Blogger terms of service, only FTP Publishers can hide the navbar. When the navbar is hidden, there exists a Greasemonkey script that will restore the flag icon back into the blogger blog, and then you can flag it.
Report Abuse Directly to Blogger – Blogger has created a dedicated page where you can report a spam blog. You will need to be logged in and you can detail reasons why you think this is a spam blog, which Blogger policy it violates, and why it needs to be removed.
Previously, there was a “Flag?” button that notified Blogger staff about potentially questionable content, and they can “unlist” such blogs, which means they won’t be promoted on Blogger.com but will still be available on the web. For more serious cases such as spam blogs or sites engaging in illegal activity, they might remove content and deleting accounts when necessary.
Report Abuse to Google Adsense
There are high chances that such blogs are earning advertising revenue from Google Adsense pay per click program that earns money quickly. You can also report to other affiliate programs they are running onsite like Taboola, commission junction, etc.
- Click on the “Ads by Google” link. It takes you to a page where you can give feedback about ads. Click the link “Send Google your thoughts on the ads you just saw” and a form drops down. In the subject, select “report a violation”. Add an email (optional) if you want a reply back.
- Email Google Adsense and report a policy violation. Subject the email as ‘AdSense Policy Violation’, describe in detail the problem and send this email to adsense-abuse@google.com
Report Abuse and Complain to Feedburner
Feedburner powers the RSS feeds of thousands of blogs and many Blogspot blogs run feed ads for income. Feedburner provides an option to contact them to report feed content republishing. Works if someone else has burned a FeedBurner feed of your content, or there is a website displaying content from your feed without your consent.
Report Abuse to Search Engines
Reporting terms violation to popular search engines like Google, Yahoo, and MSN. These search engines can remove such sites from their index and such sites will turn up zero results which defeats the purpose of these splogs.
- Contact Google – Report a Spam Result if you believe that another site is abusing Google’s quality webmaster guidelines. They thoroughly investigate every report of deceptive practices and take appropriate action when genuine abuse is found.
- Contact Yahoo Search – If you believe that your work has been copied in a way that constitutes copyright infringement, or that your intellectual property rights have been otherwise violated, tell Yahoo.
- Splogspot is a service that maintains a database of spam blogs. It mainly derives data from the blacklist that the Pingoat pinging tool generates. Pingoat has automated software that can detect spam blogs. SplogSpot also accepts manual splog submissions, which are first reviewed and then added to the database. Submit a splog to splogspot.
Another useful related resource is What Do You Do When Someone Steals Your Content
Update: On a related note, if you’ve come across a blog on WordPress.com you believe is spam or spammy – report it here.