I'm Dr. Joshua Schwimmer, a nephrologist in New York City. • Kidney Notes was the first active nephrology blog, and The National Library of Medicine still uses Kidney Notes as an example of how to formally cite blogs in the medical literature. • Professionally, you can find me at Kidney.nyc. • Kidney Notes is for educational purposes only, not medical advice. Consult qualified health care professionals. See disclaimer.

Thursday, September 29, 2005

The Physiology of Spam Blogs

From Google Blogoscoped:

"Spam is like the aliens among us. They look like us, dress like us – but they also eat the houseplants."
-- John Holbo

This post may end up on spam blogs. Let me explain why.

In my recent interview with Joe Harris, a keyword blogger, several “high paying” keywords got mentioned (like mortgage, gambling, poker, or mesothelioma). There was an unexpected side-effect to this post, as it was also featured in Google News; many spam bloggers, I suspect, subscribe to Google Alerts for their spam keywords. They then fill their (mostly Blogspot-hosted) plogs with posts sent to them via Google. The final irony is that they’re often using Google AdSense to make this a commercial venture. In other words: someone’s abusing Google to get traffic, on a blog hosted by Google, filled with content automated by Google, and they’re making money from it via Google...

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