June 30, 2008

Cutts Talks Spam While Obama Supporters Flag Blogspot Blogs

Matt Cutts is addressing the ever-present topic of spam again, only this time it's on the Official Google Blog. Cutts wrote about coming across spam links in the search results. He says this doesn't happen nearly as often as it used to, thanks to Google's anti-spam metrics.

One of those metrics is data from search logs. Many have worried what Google does with the data collects, and Cutts assures that data such as IP and cookie information is used to help improve the search results.

"The IP and cookie information is important for helping us apply this method only to searches that are from legitimate users as opposed to those that were generated by bots and other false searches. For example, if a bot sends the same queries to Google over and over again, those queries should really be discarded before we measure how much spam our users see. All of this--log data, IP addresses, and cookie information--makes your search results cleaner and more relevant."

But Cutts is also aware that the war against spam continues on:

"If you think webspam is a solved problem, think again. Last year Google faced a rash of webspam on Chinese domains in our index. Some spammers were purchasing large amounts of cheap .cn domains and stuffing them with misspellings and porn phrases. Savvy users may remember reading a few blogs about it, but most regular users never even noticed. The reason that a typical searcher didn't notice the odd results is that Google identified the .cn spam and responded with a fast-tracked engineering project to counteract that type of spam attack. Without our logs data to help identify the speed and scope of the problem, many more Google users might have been affected by this attack."

Another unsolved webspam problem - that was not addressed by Cutts - is letting humans in on the reporting of spam. Over at Blogspot, supporters of Presidential candidate Barack Obama have reportedly been flagging anti-obama blogs as "spam." As a result, several of the blogs, including ones created by Hilary Clinton supporters, have been frozen.

Of course, this problem is experienced in the 'paid links debate' as well. Google accepts anonymous reports about paid links, which is an easy way for competitors to attempt to flag each other out of the results.

What do you think of Cutts comments? Do they reduce your fears about Google's data collection? Should Google let third parties flag sites? Let us know in the comments.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 9:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

August 9, 2007

Implications of Google Custom Search Blog Deletion

Boy this is frightening. Yesterday Google Blogoscoped reported about the Google Custom Search blog being hacked. After this was discovered, Google sent an update to Philipp Lenssen (who runs Google Blogoscoped) that said the following:

Whoops! We accidentally classified ourselves as spam, and our ever-perceptive Blogger settings caught us. The Custom Search Blog has since been restored, and we’re taking steps to ensure this doesn’t happen with other Google blogs in the future. Other Blogger users can make sure this doesn’t happen to them by reporting any problems to the Blogger support team via the Blogger Help Center at http://www.blogger.com/problem.g. We can then investigate.

It's frightening because it shows you how fragile Spam detection algorithms are. How could this happen that the blog was accidentally flagged as spam? The people working on this blog work at Google! I am willing to stipulate that they were not deliberately trying to game Blogger in any fashion, or for that matter the Google search engine.

As someone that focuses a lot of energy on building web site traffic by organic means, and as a blogger, I have to admit that I am very concerned about this. It's a real eye opener. Like many of you, I have read the various forums out there filled with people complaining about how they have been mistreated by Google's search engine.

They complain about how they have a great site, and have been banned from the index, or hit by some algorithmic penalty. I have also helped such sites emerge from such penalties, and get a fresh new lease on life. I always feel bad for these people because it's a crummy feeling to hvae your investment get flushed down the toilet.

However, nearly all the time when I get the chance to look more closely at the situation there appear to be reasons why the problem could be happening. Up until now, I had hoped that it was possible to have a gold standard approach that was immune to the risk of such things. I guess I was wrong. If Blogger can flag a product of Google as spam, then there are few places that are truly safe.

I would really like to see a statement from Google as to why the Google Custom Search blog was classified as spam in the first place. If I hear anything I will update this post with that info.

Posted by Eric Enge at 10:38 AM | Permalink

December 22, 2006

Google Upgrades Blogger With Privacy Features & More

Now you can restrict reader access to your blog, with new privacy settings to allow you to create a 'subscriber list' of sorts to any blog hosted at Blogspot. The default settings for Blogger allow anyone to read your posts, but the new "Blog Readers" tab allows bloggers to only allow readers they choose (via email address). Also included in the Blogger feature update is the ability to "label" posts, which is essentially "tagging" or categorizing posts. Other additions include new templates and the ability to add photos more easily.

You can read more about the upgrades at the Google Blog.

Posted by Elisabeth Osmeloski at 11:55 AM | Permalink

October 26, 2006

Google Helping Racism By Refusing To Take Down Hosted Blogs

The Inquirer reports that Google refuses to tackle racist blogs hosted on Google's Blogger platform. These blogs have racist and neo-Nazi content on them from organizations based in New Zealand and Australia. Brian Stokes, co-founder of FightDemBack!, said that most of the time when his organization reports these types of sites to Angelfire and Tripod, he gets a response. But Google has not responded to his requests and flags. There are more details on this at the Sydney Morning Herald.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:38 AM | Permalink

October 12, 2006

Google's Blogspot.com Down, Blogger Content Inaccessible

It seems like most of the morning, Google's Blogspot service that hosts Blogger blogs has been down. For example, I have been trying to access any of the various official Google blogs such as the main one here, and they all time out or return a 500 server error. The same is true for the Google Press Blog, as well as any site using the blogspot.com domain, it seems. FYI - it seems that www.blogger.com is also down.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:29 AM | Permalink

October 9, 2006

Official Google Blog Gets Hacked After Message On Security

The Official Google Blog was hacked over the weekend, happening embarrassingly after Google had just posted about how seriously it takes security. It's also follows a pseudo-hack earlier this year, when someone else took over the Google Blog when the company accidentally deleted it.

The hack was covered in various places. Google Blogoscoped has a good write-up on what was initially posted (and screenshot here), an anonymous message saying that Google's click-to-call project had been cancelled:

After concientiously considering, Google has decided not to continue with Google Click-to-call project. The project has been in the media on last days because of the notice of Google agreement with e-Bay. We finally consider click-to-call agreement with e-Bay a monopolistic aproach that would damage small companies in the CRM area.

It felt like a hack to many, certainly to me as well, and I posted the same to Google Blogoscoped:

Got to be a hack. Especially notice what's currently tops on the Google blog, a post all about how "Google takes security very seriously and designs all of its services and applications to protect your privacy and data security." This almost certainly is someone reading how "we keep the bad guys out of our systems" and thumbing Google's nose to show nope, they don't.

That post from the Google Blog about security says in full:

Most readers of this blog are familiar with our mission to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. Maintaining the trust of our users and ensuring a positive experience using our products and services is paramount to our ability to accomplish our mission. As a result, Google takes security very seriously and designs all of its services and applications to protect your privacy and data security. Behind the scenes of these efforts is the Google Security Team. We keep the bad guys out of our systems and have brought you features like the anti-phishing extension in Google Toolbar and warnings about Internet malware. As part of our commitment to security, we're putting up some additional help content to let users and security researchers know how to quickly contact us on these issues. We've learned that when security is done right, it's done as a community, and this includes everybody: the people who use Google services (thank you all!), the software developers who make our applications, and the external security enthusiasts who keep us on our toes. These combined efforts go a long way toward making the Internet safer and more secure. Please visit our new security page and feel free to contact us anytime at security@google.com.

The post is incredibly ironic given what's now posted at the top of the blog:

A bug in Blogger enabled an unauthorized user to make a fake post on the Google Blog last night, claiming that we've discontinued our AdWords click-to-call test. The bug was fixed quickly and the post removed. As for the click-to-call test, it is progressing on schedule, and we're pleased with the results thus far.

A bug, also known as a security problem. So much for that trust Google was hoping to maintain with its users. It also happens ironically after publicity about Google shifting attention to improving existing projects, rather than rolling out new ones.

Philipp Lenssen at Google Blogoscoped pointed out what a nice visual contrast the two posts make and posted a screenshot. I couldn't help doing the same:

In March, Google deleted its own blog accidentally, allowing someone else the ability to claim the old Google URL and keep the blog running for a short time outside of Google's control. Official Google Blog Deleted, Blogger Registers googleblog.blogspot.com has more about that.

Finally, the hacked post was published by someone calling themselves Maximal. I found a post from another Maximal on Google Groups asking for help recently with the Google Data API.

Hi, I am making tests with Google Data API to publish my posts. The problem is ... my posts are being published into "the Honourable Dr Mantombazana Tshabalala-Msimang South Africa's Minister of Health" blog (I don't have to say I am not the minister of health of South Africa).

Any help before Honourable Minister of Health of South Africa would speak with Interpol would be apreciated.

Perhaps related?

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 6:16 AM | Permalink

August 11, 2006

Chinese Government Opens Up Blogger Again

CIO reports that after three years, the Chinese government has opened up access to Google's Blogger. Why did they reopen access? Well, no one really knows. Maybe it is because restricting access to Blogger won't stop people from starting blogs with other software?

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 10:46 AM | Permalink

March 28, 2006

Official Google Blog Deleted, Blogger Registers googleblog.blogspot.com

Back in April 2004, Google launched their blog at googleblog.blogspot.com. But somehow, in the past few hours, that blog has been completely deleted from the Blogger servers, and users are instead seeing a "Not Found. The requested URL was not found on this server. Please visit the Blogger homepage or the Blogger Knowledge Base for further assistance."

When tempted with a vacant blogspot URL with a PR9, one blogger did what many are probably very envious of... register the googleblog.blogspot.com blog URL.

Now, those who have the official Google Blog on their RSS feeds, saw an entry pop up a few minutes ago with:

Google, fix your blog pleeasssee!

April 7, 2005

More Bad Press for Google's Blogger Service

In his Media Hack column this time around, Adam Penenberg discusses what we've blogged about before (and where I share a few comments), about problems with the Blogger service in the article: Bloggers Pitch Fits Over Glitches.

Posted by Gary Price at 11:06 AM | Permalink | TrackBack

March 22, 2005

Performance Problems on Google's Blogger Service

Hallelujah! I'm glad to see that Google's Blogger service is doing something about serious performance problems.

As many of you know, I'm also the editor of ResourceShelf.com. We've been using Blogger since the site began in 2001. In the past several months Blogger's performance has been very poor. The ResourceShelf editing team is located throughout the United States and all of us regularly experience problems getting logged-on and posting items. According to this InfoWorld article: Google's Blogger faces performance problems quotes an item on Blogger's Buzz Blog that the main issue is electrical power.

"Performance is a huge priority for us and we're adding a bunch of new machines right now to speed things up," Stone wrote. "New machines are not an issue because here at Google we can add them quite smoothly as needed. The real issue is power -- actual electricity, if you can believe it. So now we're adding more power in addition to more machines."

Google's electrical power issues have been mentioned in the past. For example, Eric Schmidt touches on it in this 2004 lecture from the Stanford Business School. They're also mentioned at the conclusion of this News.com article about Google's data centers.

Posted by Gary Price at 12:03 PM | Permalink | TrackBack

March 14, 2005

Blogger's New Blog

For those of you who want to follow the latest happenings from the Blogger team at Google, you can now read them on their new blog, Blogger Buzz. Btw, nothing about the no-follow tag in the first few postings. In fact, I still haven't noticed any info about no-follow anywhere on the Blogger site.

Posted by Gary Price at 12:00 PM | Permalink | TrackBack

January 21, 2005

Blogger.com: Where's the "Nofollow" Info?

I'm a bit surprised that almost three days after Google announced the "nofollow" attribute that Blogger users (Blogger is a a Google service) still haven't been told about it. As of today, I can't find any news about it on Blogger.com (how it works, how to implement it) or even a link to the Google Blog post about the attribute. The only thing I can find is this info that has been in the "Blogger Help" section for some time. It states that links embedded in blog comments have never received a PageRank boost.

Posted by Gary Price at 9:06 AM | Permalink | TrackBack

December 2, 2004

MSN's Third Portal To Gain Blogs; Where's The Blog Search?

MSN is now offering blogging space through its new MSN Spaces service, making it the third major portal to jump into this area. The first? Google, of course.

Google a portal? Sure, a stealth portal. It's got all the traditional portal features of email, search and free home pages -- or at least the successor to personal home pages, blogs. You just don't see them all displayed in a traditional portal format.

My Google Buys Blogging Company - But Why? article from Feb. 2003 looks at the issue of blogs as a portal feature and Google heading down that path. One of the predictions in it, which was obvious to many, was that once Google knocked over the blog domino, other portals would follow.

AOL launched its AOL Journals service in September 2003. Now with MSN in the space, that leaves just Yahoo among the majors.

Yahoo still has the GeoCities personal home pages service (valued at $3.6 billion when acquired in 1999 -- in contrast, Google likely paid only a few million for Blogger). But I'm sure we'll eventually see Yahoo gain a blogging system as well.

All this is great for those seeking to build blogs, though it has nothing to do with search. What none of the majors yet offer is an actual blog search service.

Yahoo is the closest now, making it at least possible to search to find blog feeds but not through actual blog entries. MSN has promised an actual blog search engine to come out later this year. Google's also said last year that a blog search would come, though it gave no timeline about when. Aside from the majors, we list a number of other blog search engines here.

For more details of the new MSN Spaces service, see this ClickZ article: MSN Enters Blogging Fray with "Spaces". And as an aside, Microsoft blogvangelist Robert Scoble says he's sticking with the Radio UserLand service and provides a wrap-up of reaction to the new Microsoft entry.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 5:15 PM | Permalink | TrackBack

Blogger's Google's Third Most Popular Service, Says Founder

I reported earlier that Google says Google Groups is its third most popular service. But not so, says Blogger founder Evan Williams.

Williams, who left Google in October, says Google-owned Blogger was Google's third most popular service when he was there.

"I thought I'd take the chance to point out Blogger's comparative reach...since I was always trying to get people in Google to recognize it," he writes.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 4:20 PM | Permalink | TrackBack

December 1, 2004

Get Ready Blogger (aka Google), Microsoft is Ready to Launch Blogging Service

Mary Joe Foley reports that Microsoft will launch its weblog publishing service, Microsoft Spaces sometime this week. The service has been available in Japan since August. It will compete with Google's Blogger and Blogspot services as well as other web-based blogging services like Typepad.

MSN is expected to tout MSN Spaces as a direct competitor to blog-creation and hosting tools, such as Blogger, Blog*Spot, LiveJournal and TypePad. Microsoft also will position MSN Spaces as a way to allow users to more easily share photo albums and music lists, too, insiders said.

Foley also reports that MS might allow users to post to their MS Spaces blogs via IM once a new version of MSN Messenger is released in early '05.

Posted by Gary Price at 1:33 AM | Permalink | TrackBack

November 16, 2004

Blogger Now Available in Nine Languages

New Versions of Blogger Available

Infoworld reports in: Blogger goes multilingual, that Google is now making interfaces and documentation available for Blogger in nine languages. Until now, Blogger was only available in English.

Google Inc. is calling the first phase of the service's internationalization...Now, key Blogger sections, such as its sign-in and account pages, are available in Japanese, traditional Chinese, simplified Chinese, Korean, French, Italian, Spanish, German and Brazilian Portuguese, Google announced.

Posted by Gary Price at 11:06 AM | Permalink | TrackBack

November 1, 2004

Someone Else Grabbing My Blogspot Domain

Over the weekend we posted an item about David Krane, Director of Corporate PR, blogging at Kraneland.com.

A recent post on his site discusses how Yahoo erased about 200 messages that he stored on the Yahoo Mail servers cue to inactivity on his account.

Even Yahoo's own Jeremy Zawodny, agreed that this "royally sucks."

Jeremy's right, it does. And here's an example where inactivity on Google's own Blogger service produced a similar sucky situation.

I use blogger to publish my ResourceShelf blog. Originally, it used the blogger-provided resourceshelf.blogspot.com. After i registered the Resourceshelf.com domain, I kept both sites updated as mirrors of each other.

After a software upgrade, Blogger no longer allowed me to publish in both places nor provided any way for me to redirect the Resourceshelf.Blogspot.Com domain to my own site. Even worse, since I no longer was publishing to ResourceShelf.blogspot.com Blogger released that domain for use by others (and without checking with me first).

Visit that site now, and you'll find an SEO-oriented blog that now happily gains all the benefit of the nearly 2,000 links built up over time pointing at my OLD site. It may even be more, given that Google's link reporting tool notoriously doesn't show all the backlinks to a given domain.

That's also why you'll find the site third when doing a search on ResourceShelf. It's not, but all the historic links built up over time says that it is.

Ironically, Danny S. tells me that if this had been a domain name that was lapsed and picked up by someone else, Google would have detected the new registration and not let "old" links count to help make the "new" site relevant. But because we're dealing with a subdomain, there's no registration records to check.

Moral of the story? Always start with your own domain name, rather than a subdomain or subdirectory of someone else's. But it still would have been nice if Blogger had done a bit more to protect me.

Before we conclude this post, Danny just sent along the following note regarding David Krane's blog.

FYI, Google commenting about Yahoo Mail already gained attention by Steve Rubel. But not noticed was this site note. While Krane publishes using Blogger, he writes the blog out to his own web hosting service -- which apparently is Yahoo Website Services, http://website.yahoo.com/. You can see this by checking for a non-existing page on his blog -- it brings up a generic Yahoo error page, http://kraneland.com/dddd. Guess Google better get started on offering web hosting. (-:

Posted by Gary Price at 12:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 4, 2004

Blogger Founder, Evan Williams, Saying Goodbye to Google

Evan Williams, the founder of Pyra Labs/Blogger and currently the Blogger Program Manager, has just posted an announcement on EVHEAD (his blog) that he's leaving Google this Friday.

Google purchased Pyra Labs in February 2003.

William's mentions that he's gotten the "itch" to start a new company but isn't commiting to anything at the moment. He also writes that it's time to "pay attention" to other parts of his life.

Problems at Google?

Williams says that his departure has nothing to do with with Google or Google management. He writes that "all and all they've been awesome" and have "pretty much" allowed him retain control of Blogger since purchasing the company.

So Why the Departure?

The reason I'm leaving probably comes down to personality more than anything. I've just always been stubbornly independent-minded -- even when it wasn't necessarily in my best interest...When I started at Google, I knew I was giving up my independence and knew I probably wouldn't like that eventually. So I promised myself I'd stay at least a year. I stayed for a year and eight months and have had a fun, fascinating, and extremely educational time. I'm honored to have been a part of Google for such a historic period.

Good luck Ev! Enjoy the time off and when the time is right, we're looking forward to learning about your new company.

Just for Fun: Remember the Early Days

Here's a look at the Blogger and Pyra home pages from 1999.

Thanks to S.C. for the news tip.

Posted by Gary Price at 10:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack