Your Blog Has Been Splogged!

The Real Blogger Status: Splogging Bots - Do you have a blog on Blogger.com? If so, please heed this WARNING! (I'm shouting on purpose).

==> If you decide to get your own domain and host your blog yourself, your original blogspot URL will be hijacked by a splogger within a day or even less. Links you had on other sites that point to your blogspot.com page will now start to go to some idiot spammer site selling drugs, gambling, porno, and goodness knows what else.

Any work you put into building links to your site will now help line the coffers of your greedy neighborhood splogging man (or woman, I guess).

The worst part of this problem is the Google is doing nothing about it! If you go to the Google Help Group you'll see post after post about this problem stretching back for months. So it's not like Google is not aware of the problem. It's apparently just not a high priority for them.

It would be so easy for them to add a Warning to the page where you decide to change from hosting on the blogspots.com domain to your own domain. Something like:

Warning: You must create a new blog using the same name on
blogspot.com or a splogger will hijack that subdomain name and put his spammy ads on what used to be your site. Your new blog need only contain one page with a notice of your new website address, for example. By creating a new site on the blogspot.com subdomain you are leaving, you will prevent sploggers from taking it over.

In the meantime, if this has happened to you, report it to Blogger Support. They will send you an automatic email, which you must reply to or your request will disappear into Blogspotspace. Don't expect to hear back from Blogger. Just register the complaint under the theory that "the squeaky wheel gets the grease."

Thanks to Chuck at The Real Blogger Status - "What Blogger Won't Tell You" for all the excellent information he provides.