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Understanding Blog and Ping

Understanding Blog and Ping

The last six months has seen a massive rise in content theft blogs and spam blogs, and there’s one thing these blogs usually have in common, and that’s the whole “Blog and Ping” thing, but if you don’t know what Blog and Ping is, don’t feel bad, because most people don’t.

But before I start a word of advice: don’t do it. Knowing and understanding your enemy is important in formulating ways of overcoming and defeating them. People who create these blogs are leeches who deserve nothing less than being banned from the search engines they so desperately seek to be included in.

So what is Blog and Ping?

I’ll give a short answer and a long answer because Blog and Ping comes in a few different flavours.

The Short Answer: Blog and Ping is a online marketing term applied to a system that utilizes blogs and pings (short for pingback) to deliver content and/ or sites for indexing in search engines with the ultimate aim of profit.

But that doesn’t really explain a lot, because basically that’s what blogs already do.

Background
For those of you too young or who never got into writing more traditional web pages, basically getting your webpage into Google, Yahoo or other search engines has always been somewhat difficult. The time it takes for your static web site to be indexed by Yahoo for example after you submit it to them without taking up the paying option is around 6 weeks, and sometimes longer. Blogs changed the rules of indexing because where as you use to have to wait for the search engines to index you, all of a sudden bloggers could wave a big red flag with the words “I’m over here” written on it and the search engines would come. Pinging a central server such as Weblogs.com meant that a central list was available of blogs that were posting at a given point in time, and the search engine spiders then followed the links on these lists and bingo: your blog gets indexed.

The vultures circle
When your on a good thing, people notice, and the vultures started to notice blogs getting a really good run in search engines, and they pretty quickly worked out why….introducing Blog and Ping.

Flavours of Blog and Ping
Blog and Ping comes in different flavours and variations to the theme. Each Blog and Ping promoter has a different sales pitch that also states that their flavour is the best. The commonality to all of them is that they involve pinging sites such as Weblogs.com as a means to deliver the search engine spiders to a blog. But this is where things get different.

Real blogs, stolen content
One strain of blog and ping promotes blogs as being a great way to make money from Adsense and affiliate programs with scripts that steal content from other blogs and repost it in an attempt to create a legitimate looking site that gets traffic from search engines.

Michelle Timothy’s RSStoBlog.com is a leading pusher of this flavour of Blog and Ping. To quote Ms Timothy:

” Imagine for a minute that you had a tireless assistant that worked hard night and day finding fresh, relevant content for you to post to your blog. Now also imagine that this tireless assistant not only finds this relevant, keyword specific content for you but also posts it to your blog at exactly the times you want it posted … and they do this day in and day out, until you beg them to stop!”

I’ve not provided a link to the site, but by all means cut and paste the URL into your browser, because the people using it are stupid enough to give testimonials as well. Their example WordPress blog also includes a stolen story to the Blog Herald as well.

Spam blogs
I’ve split spam blogs into a separate category because the stolen content blogs can in reality function and look like real blogs if they are done properly, and many people would be unable to tell the difference. Spam blogs on the other hand stand out like a sore thumb, and these are another flavour of Blog and Ping. The theory with these sites is essentially a new form of link farms, in that they are never really created for viewing by the general public, but as a way for the search engines to discover other sites, and to reward those sites for multiple links. A three step process: the search engines spider finds your spam blog ping at Weblogs.com, follows it back to the blog, then discovered links to static web pages and then goes through to index them. The difficult thing of course is without content the search engine spiders won’t visit, so these sites create all sorts of rubbish as content, often with keywords scattered throughout posts, to assist the spider going onto index the money making static web site.

There are a number of sites promoting this, and each one usually has a slight variation on this theme. BloggingEqualizer.com states the following on their method:

The technique consists of 4 steps:
1. Build a search engine “spider trap” by creating a free blog on Blogger.com (they can’t resist freshly updated content).
2. Grab a free account at MyYahoo.com.
3. Post links to the Web pages you want spidered inside your blog.
4. Then, just call the search engine spiders to dinner by sending (or “pinging”), with the click of a button, the blog to your MyYahoo account.

Sites like Instantblogandping.com promotes a version which involves automatically reposting your own static webpages to Blogger with links back to their source.

See Also
copywriting software

Is there money to be made in Blog and Ping?
Yes. The same way as there is money to be made in Amway, because Blog and Ping is really just another variation on the old multi level marketing theme without as many circles on a whiteboard; the only people who make money are the promoters and the people at the very top of the pyramid.

First and foremost the promoters are most likely raking it in. Most of these programs/ scripts are on the market for between $100 and $500 USD, and guess what: they wouldn’t be offering them if there weren’t thousands of suckers out there who’d fall for the slick marketing spiel and promises of automated riches and happily put their hands into their pockets to buy them. They say there is a market for everything, and with the internet being so large and with so many people using it this also holds true for Blog and Ping programs.

Some of the earlier users would have made some money out of Blog and Ping as well, in around the middle of last year when spam blogs were still relatively unknown and those using Blog and Ping techniques would have been few and far between. Today, with literally millions of spam and content theft blogs out there it would be nearly impossible for anyone to even earn enough money back to cover the cost of Blog and Ping package they’ve bought if they are looking to make money off their blog.

In terms of SEO strategies the honest to god truth today is that if you’re looking only to get your static site indexed into one of the big search engines Blog and Ping actually does work, but only in the same way that a few text links from a few decent blogs would deliver the same thing, and you’ll pay a lot less for a proper text link from say here at the Blog Herald then you’ll pay for most of these programs.

The end is nigh
Already some in the SEO industry are saying that Blog and Ping is dead due to the massive increase in users, content theft sites and spam blogs. If you’re getting any benefit out of Blog and Ping now, you won’t be for much longer because already some search engines are talking about excluding your sites.

Is there any good in Blog and Ping
Yes, but in the same way that there is good in porn, because the pursuit of money often drives technological change. Services such as reblog have potential to be used for real meta-blogging in the same way you can set up a link blog at Bloglines today. The challenges presented by people using Blog and Ping strategies will force search engines and others to find new ways of filtering the rubbish out and that will be a good thing for the blogosphere.

Note to Google and the Blogger team: sooner rather than later please.

View Comments (50)
  • A nice introduction to one of the many scourges of blogging. Unfortunately people are lazy by nature so if they see get taken in by a slick get rich quick spiel then they will fall for it.

    Human moderation is the only way to weed out spam, it means less content but theat least it ensures quality.

    Are the people who killed ‘blog and ping’ the same ones responsible for the death of email. Don’t tell them about RSS.

  • Excellent post. New bloggers might not know about these practices, and you have explained it well. Let’s hope search engines find a solution.

  • This is a well written and informative article. For those of us who just blog a little for ourselves, I never cared much for ratings or such, but that is me. If your writing keeps someone from falling for one of those get rich schemes, so much the better. Indeed, banning such “low lifes” from the search engines is a mild punishment (a pity we can’t be more harsh for people that basically add rubbish to the internet). Just a thought.

  • Hasn’t Google a responsability in all this ? Blog & Ping “strategists” just want to draw traffic to their link farms where you see a bunch of Google Ads. Google also get money from spam and fake blogs when people click on the ads…

  • Duncan, you’re not offering a natural perspective on this. I’m certainly *not* advocating “Blog & Ping” (as described in your article), but your article could have been a little less biased…

    I use “RSS to Blog” exclusively to publish merchant datafeeds to themed and niche blogs. There is nothing spammy about that. It’s not stolen content. It’s been specifically provided by the merchant.

    You comments, although accurate for the most part, are just too general and falls short of providing the positives that some of the tools *do* offer.

    That said, *any* tool can be used for good and/or bad… which, of course, lies solely in the hands of the user.

    Warmly,
    Andre Chaperon

  • What’s interesting is that Blogger doesn’t do much of a job of pinging.

    As far as solving the problem, I’d think it’s a matter of tweaking the algorithms – the abusers do the following no-nos: duplicate content, pages of nothing but keywords, large numbers of incoming links happening very rapidly, multiple links from same C-block. And for the legitimate user, providing original content ought to be the biggest single defense against problems if the tweaks are done right.

    The problem is going to be convincing Google that they need increased scrutiny of the site they own that is the biggest source of the problem.

  • What’s you opinion of the “Blog and Ping Automator”?

    I beleive it is a creation of Jeremy Burns. and Duston Strucman.

  • You’re all missing the point. “Spam” is forced upon the user. This IS NOT Spam. It’s just useless content – you have to find it – it doesn’t find you so no harm done. Email spam is nasty as it finds it’s way into your inbox without your permission. Not so with “spamblogs” they have to be searched out.

    Now for google adsense. You are exactly right – the user has to click on those ads. They won’t click on them unless they are interested in them AND most likely they will be interested because they have landed on a page with content that is relative to what they were searching for.

    So you may not like the model – but the advertiser, publisher, Application provider (google) AND the user are all happy because they got what they wanted.

    If you don’t like “spamblogs” don’t go to them.

  • I have mixed feelings about feed-only blogs, but I tend to agree with nederhose on this one. If you don’t like something, don’t look at it. I don’t like the cable news channels…so I don’t watch them. They aren’t going away, and I not going their way.

    I use some RSS feeds on a couple of my websites, but that’s just to add to my own content. Note, these are “live” feeds just begging to be syndicated, and they compliment my content.

    Do they attract the search engines? Supposedly, but I haven’t noticed any difference within the last month or so of usage, but that doesn’t mean that I’m going to stop using them, because I myself find them useful, and I’m guessing my visitors do to.

  • Just because content is not original means that it is stolen? You got me there… you use the word theft over and over and over again. Why do sites offer rss feeds of their content, for the simple reason is they want it seen on other sites.

    There is no stolen content on rsstoblog sites. They are merely captions that are intended to be spread around the Internet.

    If you call that theft, then what do you call what Google, or any other search engine does. Every piece of info on a google serp is not original content. It’s a “scraped” (why do you say scrapp??) result from another site with a link to it. Same as a blog made with rsstoblog. In fact the main source of the material on a rss2blog site comes from Google News.

    Unbelievable use of the word theft in this post. I can see both sides of the ethical/moral argument, but when people start saying the content is “stolen”, I can’t stand it.

  • Greg
    RSS feeds aren’t there to be used for someone else to put on their site and make money, they are available so readers can know when you’ve updated your site. Google News doesn’t feature full stories, they offer extracts and a link. Thats fair use, stealing a full feed and running it on your own blog without permision is theft.

  • Duncan
    I agree, that is fair use, and that is exactly how rsstoblog is used in most cases. It grabs excerpts of news stories from a few sources including Google News, and Yahoo! News, places them on specified web page, and includes a link back to the source of the news story.

    I recommend next time you post out of haste/jealousy, buying the software you are reviewing before you write smear campaigns about it. Get a grip on your ego also.

  • This is a very negative view on this subject. Not all content is stolen and blog and ping are not like amway etc. 95% of websites encourage their users to use their RSS feeds. Can you really call this stolen content?

    Can you make money blogging. Of course you can. That’s the reason there are ads on this site. “Affiliate” doesn’t mean MLM either, it’s just simply an affiliation, no Multi-level marketing stuff.

  • You are what is known as a “bottom-feeder”.

    I’m not slamming you, I’m just pointing out that you proclaim yourself as the moral majority, yet you are participating in one of the most harsh marketing methods known on the net.

    It is called reverse marketing. And it is such a tough market that most people can’t manage it (lol, many don’t even know about it anymore), yet it is so profitable that only the highest quality of marketer can pull it off effectively.

    And you do a great job. But don’t you feel sort of weird talking about content theft when in fact the lions share of the content you put on this site is regurgitated snippets from other sites, and then there is the matter of the content and keywords that you steal from the person/company you are slamming. Doesn’t it just feel odd that with one face you claim that you are morally above this or that, while your other face is doing something much more complex, much more subtle, and to what ends? For your profits of course.

    As I said before, I don’t blame you for this aggressive marketing technique, I am just asking if you get a little twinge of guilt every once in a while because of the deceit you propel towards those who are still basically new to the net and do not understand that you are simply a marketer using an advanced tactic that is not widely spoken of because of the difficulties in doing it effectively.

    Also, for everyone reading this. It is likely my last post because this guy has a habit of coming back with a lame little insult when presented with reality, then he removes the ability to post any additional comments on that particular blog page. It is both amusing and sad.

    To his credit, I must admit that I was able to make 2-3 posts pointing out his unscrupulous tactics on the last blog before he took away post ability.

    He really didn’t stop the posts until he realized that I was enjoying myself and would certainly expose his entire marketing technique if he allowed the posts to continue.

  • Nice post. Some parts I especially like:

    “but only in the same way that a few text links from a few decent blogs would deliver the same thing, and you’ll pay a lot less for a proper text link from say here at the Blog Herald then you’ll pay for most of these programs. ” …. Sorry, but do you know that Google frowns on this probably moreso than the “theft” blogs you talk about. You might want to go back and erase that, even though you meant it.

    What about a site like topix.net? … essentially a “theft blog”? … It’s all “stolen” content, yet Google doesn’t seem to think it’s a “theft blog.” And what about the big G itself? How much originial content do they produce? Looks like a scraper site to me.

  • “Me” or whoever you are
    An extract, say a quote or line or similar is considered fair use under law, and this is the model Topix and Google use. There are some “blog and ping” products that only feature an extract, and whilst I’m not confortable with them personally, legally they are ok (see memeorandum, the new site Scoble and that crowd are carrying on about for example). What I’m against, and what I’ll continue to stand against, is the use of anyones full post’s/ articles, and also the use of either full or part content without credit. Sorry folks, people work hard to write content, opinion etc, if you take the full feed agains the licensing conditions your stealing (and as you guys know there is plenty of legally available free content out there as well, why not use this if you must use full pages of content??)

    As for Gregs comments, RSS feeds are there to be used on services such as Bloglines, they aren’t there so you can just steal the content. Me, I run a part feed so as much as I’ll frown on you using my part content on your spam blog (and plenty of people seem to be) I can live with this a whole lot more than you taking my full content or anyones else for that matter.

    If we want to play semantics here, run an aggregator site with article extracts and links to the original content (god, its not as though its difficult to do!) sure, some ppl will look down at you, but its a whole lot nicer than stealing an entire feed. Then I’ll start listening to your arguments about “but we are just like Google News”…indeed start showing me that your doing this and I’ll even invite some of you to submit an article on it with your side (I’ve already emailed Greg with no response).

    As for Simply Wonderful carrying on about “marketing techniques” what I write is normally reflective of my personal views or those of the majority of my readers. I know morality is difficult for you to grasp wonderful, but believing in things and holding ideals to be true isn’t dead and burried, well it might be in the good ol US of A but it ain’t in my neck of the woods.

  • I’m not for stealing whole articles, but some of the software you mention doesn’t do that – they take excepts, as you said. It’s simply organization and presentation of information (like G, like topix, etc.) …

    But, back to one of my original points – selling links. You must know that the heart of sould of Google’s search theory (and other search engine’s) is links. Put up a scraper site and no one is going to link to it. You might get the off-chance visitor here and there, and with the millions upon millions (soon to be billions?) of internet users, yes, a scraper site might make you a few bucks. But, as I said, the heart and soul of the “legitimate” web is based on links. One of the guiding prinicples (perhaps the most sacred principle) behind G’s search engine theory is that people link to other sites because they are of quality. Now, can you tell me when people don’t link for quality, for some alturistic purpose, but for MONEY???? This is why Google would like to eliminate this practice more than anything else. The scraper sites will always be bottom feeders and no one will really care about them. Those who do REAL damage to the web are the “so-called” respectable sites who pimp themselves out for cold, hard cash.

    Believe me (I know you probably don’t because you’re blinded by your own greed), but Google and the likes of Google absolutely hates your link-pimping ways. … Ok, now … do I really care that you sell links? No. More power to you. But all this is just to say get off you f-ing high horse about the bottom feeder sites that make no real difference on the web. According to Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc., YOU … yes YOU are doing much more harm to the web than any spammer, scrapper, aggregator site. The search engines are already pretty good at eliminating those site. What they’re worried about are black-hats like yourself that aren’t so easily taken care of.

    But, as I said, I think it’s fine what you’re doing. Just cut the self-righteous crap and you’ll find your whole life runs more smoothly.

  • Me
    again, I’m happy to run a case if you can demonstrate to me which software/ tools does and doesn’t. Certainly I’m the first to admit that I’m not aware of all the offerings out there, but certainly the ones I’ve seen do. Drop me an email with the details.

  • But what about when you have an actual website not selling anything? Weblogs.com now tells me I am identified as a ping-spammer, but I don’t understand how. Does that mean that my blog has been stolen and is being used somewhere for profit? Could one of the services I use be doing this? I use statcounter, blogrolling.com, and bloglet.com. I’m new to the blogging thing and thought these services would help my blog. I also use ping-o-matic and weblogs.com. How do I get taken off of the ‘ping-spam’ list?

  • But what about when you have an actual website not selling anything? Weblogs.com now tells me I am identified as a ping-spammer, but I don’t understand how. Does that mean that my blog has been stolen and is being used somewhere for profit? Could one of the services I use be doing this? I use statcounter, blogrolling.com, and bloglet.com. I’m new to the blogging thing and thought these services would help my blog. I also use ping-o-matic and weblogs.com. How do I get taken off of the ‘ping-spam’ list?

  • Excellent article! I loved every word.

    May I reference it in an up-coming article of my own on this topic?
    Please contact me and let me know. Spam of any flavor sucks!

    Recovering Email Publisher…
    Trii

  • You guys crack me up with all your stolen content talk, hilarious. And what’s even funnier is your talk of no money to be made, pure comedy. Keep thinking that.

  • What you are saying is ridiculous!

    You seem to be very confused about certain concepts.

    I am not saying that everything you wrote is wrong… I agree with most of it… There should be no space for Splogs on the Internet, they are a waste of everything; peoples time, server time, search engine time etc. And get in the way of real and good content.

    But saying that Blogging and Pinging is BAD is like saying that airplanes are BAD because terrorists use them to further their needs.

    Yes, black hat marketers use blog & Ping to further their needs, often through Splogs.

    But Blog & Ping is also an important tool for everybody else too.

    I run 4 different Blogs, none of which are Splogs (see http://www.unsoundnews.com/blog/unsoundnews.htm if you want proof). And I Blog & Ping after EVERY SINGLE POST!!!

    why? Because it is an effective tool.

    If I Blog & Ping, I am guaranteed to get a minumum of 30 unique visitors within a few hours, for a BRAND NEW SITE!

    You can take a brand new site and Blog & Ping GOOD, keyword specific content several days in a row, and you will start seeing traffic from all of the major search engines! You can climb out of the Google Sandbox in Days, instead of Months.

    To say this is a bad thing is not just silly, it is misleading.

    Again, I agree with much of what you say, but possibly you should try to be a little less misleading and a little more objective in your posts.

    With the Page Rank and Alexa ranking that your site has, you must see plenty of new traffic, and you should take your position seriously and not offer such flawed information!

    Michael Valiant

    http://www.PingTheEmpire.com

  • Hi,

    This is Vladimir from http://www.pingoat.com

    Here are the real facts about pinging your blog:

    – a ping helps you for updating your information on different websites

    – a ping won’t deliver traffic to your blog, a ping will generate indirect traffic to your blog by sending requests to webpages that are using RSS feeds for content.

    – a blog is just a blog, it’s not spamming, you won’t get banned unless, you are really spamming (check http://www.spologspot.com – it’s an extension of pingoat)

    Hope this solves the problem a little bit about blog and ping stuff.

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