I have been following the spam blog problem, also known as splogging, since David Sifry’s annual report about the state of the blogosphere was sent out in October, 2005. One thing about the report that really caught my eye was the number of splogs being generated on a daily basis. Nearly 10% of all new blogs generated are splogs. In my opinion, that is a low number based on the number of blogs being set up, but given the number of 70,000 new blogs being set up per day, I would say that we have an epidemic.The cause of this epidemic some say is related to the fact that with a free blogging platform like Blogger.com and hosting provided free by blogspot.com, setting up a splog is as easy as sending an email. What does splogging mean? Splogging is about clicks and money. Sploggers are driving traffic to their sites and also they are generating income. It is the last part of this statement that has me most intrigued. We have all heard the adage about “following the money”, and in following the money I was lead down an interesting path. I was also reading about content and the stealing of content for purposes of generating rich content for searches that may lead to clicks. How do you make money from ad clicks? Google Adsense or Adwords. The formula began to mix in my head and it suddenly dawned on me why Google is perhaps so slow to help correct something that is clearly giving blogs a black eye. Google bought Blogger.com in February of 2003, and then later in that same year, Google launches Adsense which is free to all of the bloggers that want to earn extra money via their blog. This is a free service that makes it easy for advertisers to pay for online advertising through Google and through the blog medium. It makes perfect sense that having as many blogs as possible using Google Adsense would make Google more money. The more blogs that are set up using Google Adsense the more exposure the advertisers have, and the more Google charges for that exposure. It seems to me it’s clear where the money goes. Now enter splogs into the mix. People wanting to make money are setting up a free blog through the use of platforms like Google’s Blogger.com, and they are using free hosting through Google’s blogspot.com. At this point the overhead is zero for a potential splogger. Splogger signs up for Google Adsense ads and puts ads in his free blog also provided by Google. The splogger then enters into the blogosphere stealing content and keyword rich posts from other sites and bloggers, and starts generating revenue based on that content. For very little effort, and money, he is in business. For the sake of argument, if a blogger can earn an average of $20.00 per month using Google Adsense on their blog, why not start 100 blogs, or why stop there, why not start 500 or 1000? This bolsters my opinion that Mr. Sifry’s numbers of blogs being set up are skewed as it relates to the number of splogs. It is obvious that Google needs to address this cancer that is eating away at the heart of blogs, and put a stop to the use of their own platform and hosting for exploitation. We must police ourselves if we want to continue to rise in popularity and importance, and if we are to be taken serious by the MSM and by potential advertisers. If not, we may be cutting off our nose in spite of our face.