Stuff I do want – Stuff I don’t want…

Had a bit of a surprise the other day when another blog I write for occasionally got temporarily ‘blocked’ by Google for suspect spam activity. The owner was notified by email and asked to re-submit the blog and get it un-blocked (since Google decided that if a human was reading the notification email, then the blog in question wasn’t spammy in the first place).

Here’s Google’s take on what it considers a spam blog –

“The ease of creating and updating webpages with Blogger has made it particularly prone to a form of behavior known as link spamming. Blogs engaged in this behavior are called spam blogs, and can be recognized by their irrelevant, repetitive, or nonsensical text, along with a large number of links, usually all pointing to a single site.”

So Google doesn’t like posts that all point to a single site. Take each Blog post individually and it’s natural (for a company) to link back to their website. Collectively, all those posts might show a trend to link to one site, but a blog shouldn’t be about comparing all the posts should it? Individual readers will search and follow a link to a particular story. If you’ve written more on a similar vein, then even better for the visitor surely/

This led to an interesting debate in our office over how a blog could be classed as spam. Surely, spam is unsolicited like an email?

Many companies (Fabulous Photo Gifts included) blog daily about their products, news or latest offers etc. It’s a very accessible way of letting your customers and potential customers know what you’re up to.

In our case, it’s also a platform to post off-topic articles of general interest – an indulgence if you like.

One point of view was that Blogs don’t make it clear enough they’re trying to sell you something. If you watch TV, there’s a clear break between the programme you were watching and the adverts you’d rather not. I argued that because visitors have to find a blog for themselves i.e by searching for a topic that the blog in question talks about, it can’t be labeled as ’spam’ like an unsolicited email.

The word here being ‘unsolicited’.

Granted, there are some blogs that you arrive at that have just the one article, a load of links and nothing else. These are quite likely link building attempts by seo companies or individuals and don’t really further the human visitors experience (in my opinion) and Google would be quite right in discounting these or omitting them from search results.

If you’re pretending to be one thing but quite obviously your another, then yes, that too could be classed as a ’spam like activity’.

What’s your take on this? Have you had a Blog blocked for being suspected of being spam? Do you agree with the ‘un-solicited’ angle being enough to determine what is spam? And should ‘company blogs’ be able to link back to their parent website un-hindered from each individual blog post? It’s a bit like using Letter-headed paper every time you write a letter to someone. It’s only reminding them who you are, where you can be found and how you can be contacted after all.

Fabulous Photo Gifts