Could it be any more Savage?

March 28, 2006 2:16 PM

What is the purpose of this website/blog? (Beware pop-up ads)

I ran a search on the LS650 Savage motorcycle and found this site:

http://savagehre.blogspot.com/

What is its purpose? Is it feeding another site somehow? Its obviously not of any use by itself/out of context.

posted by iurodivii to Computers & Internet (7 answers total)

It's a spam blog. There are a bunch of similar ones on Blogspot. Where exactly this particular set of them is intended to drive traffic, I couldn't tell you.
posted by staggernation at 2:32 PM on March 28, 2006

This is a spam blog, essentially designed to boost a particular site's google rankings with links to certain pages. While the majority of articles are just, as you can see, pulled from news feeds, planted articles will use key terms to link to the target.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog_spam can provide you with some insight into their methodology.
posted by beaucoupkevin at 2:34 PM on March 28, 2006

i don't see any links to whatever it is supposed to be feeding. maybe it's been "neutralised" in some way by google - perhaps they have some kind of automated procedure that tries to detect and delete such links? but really i would have thought they'd simply delete the blog.

so it doesn't make sense to me either.
posted by andrew cooke at 3:23 PM on March 28, 2006

It's possible the spammer got part of the autoposting script wrong. (Just a guess--I've had spam come in with subjects like "$MessageSubject" or claiming to be from someone named "[%from_name%]".)
posted by Tuwa at 4:18 PM on March 28, 2006

Sometimes these are created to test google placement. If it works, multiple blogs with actual links can be created using the same techniques, supposedly bringing in more revenue.
posted by null terminated at 7:09 PM on March 28, 2006

Yes, as everyone mentioned, it's a spam blog (or 'splog' as some call em). If you encounter any of these on blogspot, you might want to 'Flag' it (on the navbar in the upper-right), and the Blogger support team will take a look at it.
posted by fishbulb at 2:31 AM on March 29, 2006

I'd say the fact that you found it (through whatever means you found it) and the fact that it has shown you (or tried to show you) pop-up ads means that it's already served its purpose for at least one person (you). Extrapolate that to anyone who finds the site in the same manner as you and you'll see the profit potential. This type of spam is an increasingly-annoying trend which often makes searching blogs nearly impossible (try searching blogsearch.google.com sometime).
posted by helios at 1:14 PM on March 29, 2006