If the title doesn’t make any sense to you, feel free to skip this post.
A few times a year someone decides to hold a search engine optimization contest to see who can get top rankings for various search terms on Google. As the number #1 hit for “Matt” on Google, I can totally understand the fun of this sort of endeavour.
However many times the contestants in these contests use less than kosher means of winning, such as spamming or creating dozens or hundreds of blogs all linking to the same website. (Sometimes called splogs, or spam blogs.) These blogs use up quite a few system resources, junk up the tags system, and can slow the site down for normal folks.
There are many blogs being created here by people wanting to use our blogs to try to win this contest. But WordPress.com is about blogging. It’s about communication, thoughts, news, and many other things in life. It is not about SEO.
These blogs are not welcome and will be removed when found.
WordPress.com News 
If a user find a spam blog, can they be reported?
Absolutely!
You can:
Use the feedback form
Use the contact form
Use the report form
And we’ll take a look at it immediately. When you’re logged in there is a “report spam” under “blog info” on your blue admin bar.
Two words: Unetichal SEO
And as I see it; they should be disqualified from the contest when using splogs and comments.
Thank you for kicking those manipulative little jerks out of the pool.
Matt, I’d like to exchange links with you PhotoMatt – please link to me using the words carcasher…oh wait, think I misread the post.
Seriously though, good for you for voicing up and trying to keep this a “community” and not a thrifty nickel ads type site.
I’ll say a hearty “yes” to keeping the click harlots at bay. 😉
thanks for keeping WP clean
word.
Here’s an seo joke
http://blaugh.com/2006/08/25/all-seos-sems-are-spammers/
Kudos to you, Matt. These SEO contests have gone totally out of hand are nothing more than noise in the discussion…
Another great reason to have a blog here. Things are monitored, reported, and removed as necessary. Good job!
What up Matt? I hate splogs!
😎
Very good idea!
I used to want visitors on my old blog site (on blogspot) and none would come (though I did nothing of the sort) Now I don’t ask for them but they come to my blog! 🙂
I’ve seen some spam blogs in WP and will be reporting them. Thanks for the report as spam button. Kudos! Try to do something about the dead blogs too. I’ve see some that haven’t been updated since February and these are the type of blogs that come first under the WP Next option.
Hopefully the idea o getting us involved in this will work. It should be more about writing interesting posts or things that interest people more than spamming.
Thank you!
hi Thank you!
just a test for my new avatar
Great boys, keep WP clean…
I hate splogs, or spam blogs that have not anything to say!
Thanks.
amen. thanks.
time to put that ‘next blog‘ button to use!
thanks for that!
I agree with the initiative !
I almost thought you were holding a contest to see if someone could knock you off being the number 1 matt for a second. Ha!
Good to see you are on top of it though. Don’t want idiots wasting resources that us good intentioned folk could be using. 🙂
If I were actually looking for an SEO company, then I’d search Google for “SEO”.
I figure that the only GOOD ones are the ones who can optimise for THAT term. Anything else is snake oil.
Thank you! Keep the spam away!
Way to go! Kill the splogs!
Google and Yahoo CAN identify Splogs and penalize them by putting them low in the search results.
I hate splogs, I think google, myspace and yahoo are filled with splogs, Thats why I like WordPress.
Kill’em and bury’em
I read a very interesting article in Times Magazine about SEOs. Looks like the trend is fast catching the internet bubble :). More on my blog…
Yess, kill em all!!!
Just in case you want even quicker and easier access to the “Next Blog” link, you can copy it from the blue admin bar into your browser’s toolbar. That’s even handier than scrolling up to the top of a blog!
Oh, and thanks to everyone who has reported a spam blog. Clicking the proverbial “Kill Spam Blog” button is so satisfying!
yup! splogs are irritating!