Boomerang

You finally find a few spare minutes to do that online research you’ve been putting off, and start entering search terms into the Google blog search engine. You review a few blog postings that provide some data but you don’t see anything special. All of a sudden, you stumble across a blog that looks as if it could be of real value. But little do you know it’s actually a fake blog being auto-generated by a machine.

Unfortunately, social media isn’t always social. There is a growing number of blogs being created each day that have nothing to do with transparent communications as we know it. Bogus blogs are being set up by unethical marketers who are using them to increase rankings in search engines and build Google juice for embedded links that point to other sites on the web. These spam blogs or “splogs” are popping up everywhere and are as counterfeit as the old “imposter” fragrances that littered discount retail shops and drug stores back in the 80’s.

Splogs work by searching real blogs with specific keywords and “scrape” or copy the genuine content for its own use. With as many as 7,000 splogs created each day, they are clogging search engine pipelines and causing confusion for everyone. While the problem is still quite rampant, some search vendors are doing what they can to eradicate splogs from search results. For example, Google has done a good job cleaning house and deleting splogs created on its Blogger platform. In fact, Google may be doing too good of a job, since it accidentally classified one of its own blogs as spam and deleted it earlier this year. However, the problem is still overwhelming for those of us who monitor blogs on a daily basis.

Splogs offer no value to readers who find them, and the worst part is most people can’t distinguish a splog from a real blog. The most frequently asked question I get from colleagues is “how can I assess the validity and credibility of a blog?” It’s a common pain point for PR and communication folks as they increasingly gauge online conversations that are tied to corporate reputation, brand recognition, products and services. Now not only do we have to analyze what’s being said, we have to determine if the author has enough credibility to believe what they’re saying, or if there’s even an author at the helm of the blog at all!

Here are some sure-fire tips to help you weed out splogs from real blogs next you smell an imposter.

1. Go to the source – You need to go directly to the blog to look for clues. You can’t make a true assessment by reading a blog post from your RSS reader.
2. Look for biographical information – Search the page for the “About Me” link to see if the blogger has disclosed personal information. While some bloggers prefer to remain anonymous, most will at least assume some kind of persona. The lack of a name or personal info is a dead giveaway. Sometimes the name of the blog alone can tip you off that it’s fake.
3. Personal experience or perspective – Many bloggers will point to news or other blog posts but will normally tell us why it was worthy of a post. If you don’t see any personal insights or commentary and it reads like a press release or news article, move on.
4. Examine the blogroll – Legitimate bloggers will go to the trouble of setting up a blogroll to show who they read and admire. Click on a few of the links to evaluate the bloggers on that list.