Wary Of MyBlogLog?
Last week, I mentioned something about my indoctrination into the MyBlogLog phenomenon and how the service - because of their established social network - could become one of the more popular blogger tools available, if they decide to leverage blog search like Bloglines or Technorati (MBL does have a search function, but if a blog is not included in their “index,” it isn’t included in the search results).
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However, it’s not all milk and cookies over at the blogger tool because of a growing concern over spam activity. Over at SoloSEO, Michael Jensen (who’s quickly becoming a MBL watchdog) has written a couple of posts about the increase in spam activity at MyBlogLog; something that can be expected when a service offers anything resembling site promotion features.
Before Jensen’s report, I would like to follow-up on a blog post I saw linking to Friday’s initial MBL discussion. Over at the Martine’s Discoveries blog, the author issued a post discussing some of her worries about MyBlogLog. Martine indicated she was worried MBLers use the service unfairly, indicated those who know how to game search engines would use MyBlogLog’s promotional aspect to manipulate search engines.
I’m not sure if WebProBlog was the focus of Martine’s post, but because mine was the post being linked to, the implication is there. Perhaps her worries focus on the fact I use a South Park avatar instead of one of my WebProNews author images. However, I do offer both this blog and our popular WebProWorld forum as communities for those that are interested in joining.
I’m certainly not trying to hide my identity and when I created my avatar; I did so thinking those that joined either of the available communities would enjoy a caricature of me because most would already be aware of who I was - not that I’m incredibly popular, I just figured those wanting to join my network already knew me… kind of like Chris Hooley’s approach (that and I really like South Park).
So while it’s true I signed up for MyBlogLog to better promote WebProBlog, I’m certainly not trying to do so anonymously or in a way that’s spammy. If I were, I wouldn’t have made my work email available to my contacts or those in the WebPro community… but I digress.
As for the SoloSEO post, Jensen reveals another method MyBlogLog can be used for promotional spam purposes - by placing links in messages to other MBL members. As of this writing, links in these member messages do not include the “nofollow” attribute, making the MyBlogLog comment feature a prime candidate for link spammers (something one such enterprising disc-jockey has already taken advantage of).
However, if you are planning a link spam campaign using the MyBlogLog comments, you’d better hurry. Jensen also revealed the MBL developers are planning to include the “nofollow” attribute, which will render these attempts as useless. Of course, that probably won’t stop those DJs avidly looking for party attendees…
Update: As you can see from this post’s comments section, Michael has informed me the developers at MyBlogLog have already added the “nofollow” attribute to all MBL comments.
Just an update, Scott Rafer at MyBlogLog said they fixed it early this morning just a few hours after my post. Great speed on their part, good job MBL.
thanks for the update michael.
Oh! My!!! Sorry I didn’t see that you answered my post. No, I wasn’t referring to you in particular, I find that your information are always very interesting and accurate and I read your blog quite often. This was not the first time that I referred to one of your posts.
Being quite new at this game and not being a player at all (I mean, I don’t like underhanded things)I always find it soooo interesting to see the multiple ways people find to get to a certain goal without seeing that in fact, the way they are achieving it is going to backfire on them in the end.
Actually, I love it, it doesn’t really “worry me” but I like thinks to be clear. Thanks for your always interesting stories.
[…] Mybloglog.com (MBL) remains an effective media for promoting your blog/website. Although concerns raise over the increase of spamming, no doubt the use of MBL is still effective. As we already know that MBL is prone to spam, as anybody can write on the comments section. I’ve read that MBL plans to apply a nofollow attribute on links, but none of that seen until now. […]