Posted by ljmacphee on August 27, 2007 under blogging, security | 
I ran across an article about blog pirates at Download squad that you might want to read.
. . . But while linking and references may be the lifeblood of blogging, there’s a submerged undercurrent of blogs and Web sites looking to get something for nothing, sailing the high seas of the Blogosphere with a view to plundering hard working Blogs for what they can in order to build up page views and Google page rankings.
We at the Download Squad noticed this recently when one of our readers not only decided to cut and paste one of our posts into their blog but, also linked to his blog from the comments section original Download Squad post. While we’re flattered at the attention, and impressed at the initiative it was still a little rude. All of a sudden we realized that it had all the hallmarks of a Blog Pirate, a fly by night operation that swoops in, cutlasses blazing, to lift off a treasure trove of stolen blog posts to their Google adsense infested pirate lair Web site. . . .
Blog pirates on the horizon!
See also:
Introducing a Shoddy Blogger
How do you find out if your blog is being pirated? The best method is to grab a phrase or sentence from one of your articles and plug it into Google Search and see what pops up. Use an article a month older or so to be sure the search engines have picked it up.
What to do when you catch someone? Well obviously you must burn down the barbarian’s website. Just kidding of course. You must recycle your bits and I don’t think they are flammable anyhow. See the following two links for detailed instructions on how to handle blog swiping.
What Do You Do When Someone Steals Your Content
What to do when someone steals your original content
See also:
Pirates raiding garden blogs
** update: I wrote a WP plugin to block most bots WP Security Plugin if you are having trouble with bot registrations try WP plugin bot blocker
Posted by ljmacphee on August 17, 2007 under blogger, blogging |
I’ve received several emails asking if I’d like to run an ad on one of my blogs for $30. It set off my warning bells for several reasons. The offers were for blogs that receive very little traffic. The offers did not state if it was $30/day/week/month/year nor did it give any information about the ad format. All of these offers vanished when I requested more information.
Then I ran across a Google blog post on ad containing badware being a problem on Blogger. It didn’t take much digging to turn up a slew of more information.
( From InfoWorld ) Smarttracker.org — the Russian hacker group behind the attacks — is a prime example of the type of outfit carrying out such effective campaigns, Thompson said. In his case the infected PCs got stuck with password-thieving malware, but it could work the same way for botnet programs, adware, or nearly anything else. How Google badware ads work
I strongly recommend that if you are using advertising on your blog you use a trusted source like Google’s Adsense, Commission Junction, or Amazon and check your ads carefully and frequently.
I pulled all my ads except for text link ads. Amazon was supposed to be showing a book cover only. When I checked my site I found an animated ad for Amazon that only sometimes showed the book cover. I also pulled all but text Adsense ads after finding animated ads running on sites where I had allowed for image ads. Now I don’t let any but text ads on my sites since I can’t trust my advertisers not to animate the ads. I hate animated ads personally and avoid sites with them. I don’t wish my visitors to see them either.
If you use an unknown source be very sure you understand the code and test the ad to see what exactly happens. Trust but verify.
More Information:
Stop Badware
Google Webmaster Blog: Malware reviews via Webmaster Tools
Advertisers using badware: who are they?
Posted by ljmacphee on July 25, 2007 under blogging, search engine |
By now I expect you are using Google Analytics, StatCounter or another tool to watch and see who’s coming, from where, what pages they load and why.
One of the best ways to build traffic to a website of any kind is to give your audience what they are looking to find. Especially if it is something no one else has covered. As an example, I put news stories about house plants up on the house plant site occasionally. With in a week of posting a news story I started to get lots of visitors from people looking for a specific plant. This was a plant I had only mentioned in passing. I had no information on it. It was just included in a list of plants in the news article. A quick Google search showed no one else had discussed care of this particular plant either. So I immediately hunted down pictures and information on this plant. It now gets a steady stream of visits every day.
What pages do your visitors visit most often? Are those pages as good as they could be? If not; rewrite them, redo them, do what ever is needed to make them sparkle.
What labels are your visitors using the most? Add more articles on that topic. That’s telling you either you’ve done a better job than others covering that topic or no one else has given people what they are looking to find. The net is a big place. Anything you can find that is not covered or covered well you should be all over. If you are not unique no one will find you.
If people are frequently searching for something on your website put links to those pages right on your front page. Put those sidebars to good use. No one is going to hunt around your site to find something when he/she can hit the back button to Google and hit the next search result that had been returned.
You’ll find some pages that get visited often but that no one stays to read. Take a hard look at those pages. What is missing? Are they too slow to get to the information someone desires? Are those pages not indepth enough? Or are they too indepth and the reader is looking for a quick and dirty version? Rework those pages too. The metrics for ranking websites are changing and time spend on a site is going to matter more. Also you don’t want people not finding what they want. Or the next time you come up in a search they will skip any pages from your site in the search results.
So when you go through your logs don’t just look at the body count. Put in a little time digging and you’ll find your traffic will grow.
More information:
Know who is visiting your website
Posted by ljmacphee on July 6, 2007 under blogging |
Technorati a few months back claimed to track 66 million blogs. Wow. That’s a lot even by internet standards. So who are the bloggers and what are they blogging about?
8% of internet users, about 12 million Americans, have a blog or blogs. 39% of internet users read blogs, but it ranks number 13 in the list of commonly done things online ( behind such things as email, im etc )
54% of blog authors are only published online, but 44% have published work elsewhere.
Popular blog topics: me, myself and I 37%; politics 11%; entertainment 7%; sports 6%; news and current events 5%; religion 4%; hobbies or health topics 2%.
Bloggers are about equally male and female, about 54% are under 30, 33% urban, 50% suburban and 12% rural.
Only 46% use their own name.
59% of bloggers spend less than 2 hours a week blogging, only 10% spend more than 10 hours a week blogging.
The average duration of a blog is 18 weeks. 60% of blogs are abandoned, they have not been updated in two months or more.
57% of bloggers earn less than $99, 82% earn less than $1,000, 92% earn less than $10,000 and only 8% earn more than $10,000.
More information:
Pew Reports: Online Activities & Pursuits
Blog Epitaphs? Get Me Rewrite!
Blogs to Riches
Dating Tips for Bloggers and Advertisers
Caslon Analytics blogging