Blog Owners, Marking Stats Log Entries As Referer Spam, Won't Accomplish Much

We see the occasional optimistic suggestion in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken, from blog owners tired of the referer spam, in their Stats logs.

Why can't we just tell them which Stats entries are spam?

This is, admittedly, such a simple suggestion - it surely must present part of the final solution.

If one considers the purposes behind referer spam, one can see a problem with having individual blog owners designate specific pageview entries, in their Stats logs, as referer spam.

There are actually multiple purposes for referer spam.

Look carefully at the entries, in your Stats logs. Are all of the websites, which are being advertised by non existent links to your blog, actually spammy? Chances are, if you look closely enough, you'll find one or two which just don't seem to fit the pattern.

• The volume of hits makes the pageview counts look suspicious.
• There's no link to your blog, from the websites.
• Looking closely at the content of the blog or website, it just does not look like the typical referer spam target.

This blog was honoured, as a false target, in October 2011. I have no doubt that other blogs and websites are also the targets of similar, deliberate attacks.

With referer spam used strategically, the spammers could simply adjust the volume of their attacks, to make innocent victims more visible, and more vulnerable to false accusation by the less observant blog owners, who simply want all referer spam stopped.

To guard against referer spam being used strategically, to attack innocent blogs and websites, any designations "This is referer spam!" would have to be complemented by "This is not referer spam!". Ultimately, all Stats pageview entries would have to be verified as "Spam!" or "Not spam!", to prevent referer spam from being successfully used as an attack technique. How many blog owners would want to scan their entire Stats log, daily, and mark all pageview entries as "Spam!" or "Not Spam!"?

Understanding the nature of referer spam, one sees that the only way to effectively combat it is to have Google globally examine all pageview activity for all blogs, over long periods of time, to identify actual referer spam - and to avoid falsely designating innocent third party blogs and websites as being intentional referer spam customers.

>> Top

A Blog Deleted, As A Suspected Spam Host, Is Not Subject To The 90 Day Limit For Restore

We see signs of panic, periodically, in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken, about blogs deleted as suspected spam hosts.

My blog was deleted for spam 2 months ago. I need my blog restored, this month, as I don't want to lose it!

This is a common misconception, about spam deletions, and the mysterious 90 day limit.

There's no deadline for either the start, or the completion, of the review process, when a blog is classified as a suspected spam host. The owner may request review a year after the blog is deleted - if he's willing to wait for a year without concern. Alternately, he may ask for review the same day that he discovers the blog is offline. When the review is requested, Blogger Support may be immediately available, and may return a blog to service that same day - or they may be busy, and require a month to respond.

When the blog does get reviewed, the rules are simple.

• If the blog is judged to be righteously classified, the blog is deleted, with the URL locked to the deleted blog.
• If the blog is judged to be spuriously classified, the blog is restored, and control is returned to the owner.

In either case, the URL is not made available to the public.

This is either good news (if you are the owner), or bad news (if you wish that you were the owner).

You cannot gain control of the blog, or of the URL, by reporting the blog as a spam host - whether the blog has 1 post (one post published 10 years ago), or 3650 posts (one post published daily, for 10 years). If the blog appears to be inactive, your only option is to contact the owner, directly. If Blogger classifies an inactive blog, following your reporting the blog as a spam host, the blog will remain deleted or locked, until the owner requests review.

If the owner deletes the blog, the URL may - or may not - be made available.

Pick an available URL, and start your blog - and concentrate on the interests of your readers.

>> Top

Blogger Blogs And Commenting Permissions

Not all Blogger blog owners know that the ability to comment, like the ability to publish and read posts, is a privilege which they control - and a responsibility which they need to control, carefully.

Any blog owner who wishes to publish a blog, and not be subject to frequent deletion of the blog, as a suspected malware or spam host, needs to understand the responsibilities, and the risks.

There are levels of ability to post comments to a blog, which you select from the dashboard Settings - "Posts and comments" wizard. Protect yourself, if you allow comments.

• Anyone - includes Anonymous Users.
• Everybody with a Google, or an OpenID, account.
• Everybody with a Google account.
• Blog members only.
• Comments disabled.

Choose this setting with great care.

If you allow comments by "Anyone", prepare to deal with the spam. Note that anonymous users can post either anonymously, or using "Name / URL" tags, at their discretion, with "Anyone" selected. "Name / URL" does not provide authentication. "Anyone" means anyone, period.

Besides "Who can comment?", you may also control comment publishing using CAPTCHA (aka "word verification") screening, and using comment moderation. These settings, like "Who can comment?", are part of the Settings - "Posts and comments" wizard.

Every blog owner, hoping for any visibility in the Blogosphere, needs to choose these settings carefully - or risk being buried by spam.

• Who can comment?
• Comment Moderation.
• Comment Notification Email.
• Show word verification

Comment Moderation, and Comment Notification Email, together, provide 2 settings which can bury your email Inbox, depending upon activity of commenting on your blog. Choose these settings wisely.

If you allow spam comments without control, you may later find yourself asking for help, in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken

Help me! My blog was deleted by Blogger!

Protect your blog, and your blog's future, by allowing comments, responsibly.

>> Top

Country Code Aliases Cannot Be Bypassed, Productively

Occasionally we see the innocent query in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken, about the recently introduced Blogger feature - country code aliasing.

Is there any way I can opt out from this constantly changing of the .com termination, into .be, .bg, or .ro, depending on where I travel?

Not many Blogger blog owners realise the benefits of country code aliasing, which is, like auto pagination, a feature which is not optional. There are publicly available workarounds, which may bypass the effects of country code aliasing - and which may cause more trouble than simple URL confusion.

Many spammers would love to setup gateway blogs, and automatically redirect their unwitting victims to other blogs (or non Blogger websites) which contain their actual hacking, porn, or spam payload. Blogger / Google, like some browsers and security programs, actively prevents automatic redirection of Blogger blog traffic.

Not all blog owners understand the effect of Blogger malware classification. Similar to spam classification, malware classification actively scans through Blogger blogs, looking for signs of malware. Here's an example - a very simple code snippet, recently discovered in the header of the template, in a blog which has been repeatedly locked for "Malicious JavaScript" / "Spam".

var·blog·=·document.location.hostname;
var·slug·=·document.location.pathname;
var·ctld·=·blog.substr(blog.lastIndexOf("."));
if·(ctld·!=·".com")·{
var·ncr·=·"http://"·+·blog.substr(0,·blog.indexOf("."));
ncr·+=·".blogspot.com/ncr"·+·slug;
window.location.replace(ncr);
}

To prevent malware detection here, I'm omitting the essential opening and closing tags, which would normally encase the code snippet.

<script·type='text/javascript'> ... </script>

If your blog contains similar redirection code, to bypass country code aliasing, you may get a notice, one day, that your blog has been deleted for "Malicious Javascript". In order to get the blog restored, so your readers may view it, you may have to remove the Malicious JavaScript - then wait until the blog can be reviewed, to ensure that it is safe for public visibility.

You will accomplish more, and cause yourself (and your readers) less pain, by learning to live with country code aliasing - and concentrating on convincing the various search engines and other Internet services to accept Canonical URLs, so country code aliasing will work, seamlessly, with the Internet service which interests you. Alternately, use better designed gadgets and Internet services.

>> Top

Benefits Of The New Dashboard Based Spam Review Request Option

The improved spam review option has been available, on our dashboards, for slightly less than 2 months. For all it's usefulness, it appears that some blog owners see the new option as just another bit of red tape, which prevents them from publishing their blog. We see suggestions in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken, periodically.

Can't you just submit my review request now, without making me wait another 2 days? Is my dashboard review request really necessary?

Unfortunately, the better the dashboard based spam review option works, the more this confusion should be expected.

Long ago, we had a "Deleted Blogs" link on the previous Blogger dashboard. That link, and the hidden list, were obscure - and explaining how to find the "Deleted Blogs" list was not a job for the weak or impatient. When a blog owner would post in the forums

Why was my blog deleted? I am not a spammer!!

we would typically reply, immediately, with the notorious Spam Appeal Guidelines - then later, cooperative blog owners would see

Your appeal is forwarded to Blogger Support ...

In order to speed up recovery of the less spammy blogs - and shorten the restore wait time for all deleted blogs, Blogger Engineering added the dashboard based "Restore" button. The new button serves two functions.

1. For blogs deleted by Blogger, that are marginally spammy, the blog owner can request an expedited review.
2. For blogs deleted by the owner, less than 90 days previously, the owner can easily restore his own blogs, as convenient.

The new button serves several groups of people, in various ways.

1. Owners of less spammy blogs benefit by expedited restore. When successful, they see their blogs possibly restored on that same day, without their spending any time in the forums.
2. Owners of marginally spammy blogs benefit by regular review and restore, from a shortened queue - since some blog owners will use the expedited queue.
3. Blogger Support can spend less time with the marginally spammy queue, and produce quicker turnaround - yet spend more time examining the truly spammy blogs.
4. Only the genuine spammers will not benefit from the new review queue.

This produces a Win - Win - Win - Loss (sorry, Spammie) scenario.

The blog owners who get their blogs back in a few hours probably won't post in the forums, and praise the improvement - they will be busy re publishing their newly recovered blogs. We may see more oblivious spammers, because Blogger Support will able to spend more time examining truly spammy blogs - which should encourage Blogger Engineering to tweak the automated spam classifier, into digging deeper into the Blogger Blogosphere. So we should expect to see more posts in the forums, for a while.

Why was my blog deleted? I am not a spammer!!

And, it's possible that not all deleted blogs will be listed by the "Deleted Blogs" wizard.

>> Top

Adding AdBrite Ads To Your Blog May Cause Spurious Spam Classification

For several months, we've been seeing reports from various Blogger blog owners, about yet another possible source of spurious spam classification.

I just received the email:

Hello,

Your blog at http://yourblog.blogspot.com/ has been reviewed and confirmed as in violation of our Terms of Service for: MALICIOUS_JAVASCRIPT. In accordance to these terms, we've removed the blog and the URL is no longer accessible. For more information, please review the following resources:

Blogger Terms of Service: http://blogger.com/terms.g
Blogger Content Policy: http://blogger.com/go/contentpolicy

-The Blogger Team

This happened almost immediately after I added HTML script recommended to me from AdBrite.

Use of the dashboard review request will generally repeat the originally offered verdict.

MALICIOUS_JAVASCRIPT.

In most cases, final review, when properly requested in the forum, will finally result in the blog being restored.

Review of various discussions in Webmaster Central indicate that AdBrite is not well regarded, in anti malware circles. One helper there suggested that AdBrite has a problem with security, allowing spammers to publish into their service - which puts unacceptable content on the blogs showing their ads.

If you want to publish a Blogger blog which does not get periodically locked as a suspected spam host, you might want to consider using a different ad hosting service - and to remove any similar third party gadgets from your blog.

>> Top

The Dashboard Spam Review / Undelete Option Can Be Used To Your Advantage

Recently, Blogger added an improvement in the spam review process, to help shorten the review cycle. Blogs that are deleted or locked, as suspected spam hosts, are now listed on the dashboard, behind a "Deleted blogs" / "Locked blogs" button or link. Each blog, deleted or locked by Blogger, can be submitted for an automated review, by using the "Restore" button next to any blog listed.

Not all blog owners see the benefit of the new option. Some owners think this represents yet one more hurdle, in the endless protocol.

I just want my blog restored! Can you please just forward my review request, without the red tape?

Many blog owners don't realize the benefits of the dashboard based spam review request wizard.

• Many blogs, with review requested by the dashboard link, can be reviewed, and restored, within 24 to 48 hours.
• Blogs restored after dashboard based review request don't require the owner to spend time in the forum, requesting review.
• Blogs restored after dashboard review request don't require Blogger Support to spend time conducting a manual review.

Use of the expedited, dashboard based review process shortens the review process for everybody.

There's a special benefit during weekends. Blogs submitted for manual review will sit in the review queue for at least 48 hours, when no Blogger staff are available to conduct the review. And that 48 hours starts only after the review request is forwarded to the Blogger Support review queue.

Many forum based review requests are recognised, by the helpers, hours - or days - after the forum topic is posted by the blog owner. The forum based latency causes frustration for everybody, and further delays the forwarding of the request. And some review requests can be processed only when key Blogger Support personnel are available.

Use of the dashboard based spam review request makes it easier for everybody. And this helps the forums run smoother - and more blog owners and readers can be helped.

>> Top

Redirecting The Traffic From Your Blogger Blog

Some Blogger blog owners are confused about their ability to redirect traffic to, or from, their blogs. Sometimes this leads to problems, as in the need to report a problem with spam classification, in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken

Why was my blog just deleted, for "Malicious JavaScript"?

Other people will want to know why, after renaming their blog, all the search engine references now point to a dead URL. Still others may want to rename specific posts, and yet have the post URLs match the new titles.

Blog URLs, and Post URLs, are complex details, for Blogger blogs. By default, both are managed for you. Not everybody understands how to manage blog and post URLs, when necessary.

Not every blog owner understands that ones readers are not possessions, to be manipulated at will. Many spammers would love to use various Blogger blogs as gateways, redirecting their readers either to other Blogger blogs, or to non Google controlled websites. In order to discourage spamming activity, neither type of redirect is permitted, by the Blogger spam classifier.

Even if automated redirection was permitted, many redirection techniques may not work for everybody. Modern browsers, designed to prevent abusive activity like hacking and spamming, may have filters which explicitly block DNS settings, and scripts, designed to redirect traffic from one website to another. If you design your URL migration strategy to require automated redirection - and even if Blogger / Google does not delete the blog for abusive technique - you may still not see a consistent transfer of existing traffic, to your new URL.

You can redirect a Blogger blog, to a non BlogSpot URL, using properly setup custom domain publishing - "CNAME" referral. That is the only valid way to redirect a BlogSpot URL, to a non BlogSpot URL. Any other method will eventually leave you posting, in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken

Why was my blog just deleted, by Blogger?

If you rename your blog - and publish to a new BlogSpot URL, your only recourse is to publish a "stub" (empty) blog to the old URL, and visually redirect your readers.

This blog is now published as "blogger-status-for-real.blogspot.com". Please update your bookmarks.

You can, if you wish, redirect the blog feed, after renaming the blog - but this should be done only when necessary.

There are several specific cases where the blog feed should not be redirected.

Blogger recently provided us the option to redirect traffic from one blog post to another - but the syntax used by the custom redirects wizard explicitly prevents redirection outside the base blog URL. That said, we have seen some imaginative redirections, between different URLs in the same blog.

Use of the custom redirect feature can generate interesting problems, not all of which can be prevented, easily. You can redirect some URLs - but you need to understand what you can, and cannot do - and why you cannot do everything that you would like.

>> Top

Improved Spam Review / Undelete Option In Blogger

One of the more positive changes in the "New GUI" involves an improved ability to find, and correct, deleted and locked blogs.

Finding deleted / locked blogs, under earlier versions of Blogger, was always a challenge - both for the person looking for the necessary display - and for the people trying to instruct how to find the necessary dashboard display.

In the current Blogger dashboard, one simply logs in and looks for the "Deleted Blogs" button - right beneath "New Blog", when the blog owner has any self deleted blogs, or any blogs deleted or locked by the Blogger abusive blogs classifier. Clicking on "Deleted Blogs", we see a list of blogs - with either an "Un delete" button (for self deleted blogs), or a "Restore" button (for spam classifier locked / deleted blogs).

Neither the "Restore" or "Undelete" button produce an immediate or universal result - both are still subject to previous limitations.

• The "Restore" button leads to the "Review Request" dialogue - and to the actual spam review - still subject to the opinion of Blogger / Google spam experts.
• The effect of the "Un delete" button is limited to blogs which can be un deleted.

It is simply now far easier to find the spam review / un delete mechanism, than it was under the previous GUI.

If your blog was deleted by you - or deleted by Blogger for hosting malware, you should be able to hit "Restore", and the blog will be restored while you wait. If the blog was deleted or locked by Blogger for suspected spam hosting, you will probably have to solve a CAPTCHA - then wait 24 to 48 hours, while the blog is reviewed. In the long run, you will probably find this extra effort will be worth your time.

In some cases, the owning Blogger account may be locked, following unusual account activity - generally, brute force password guessing attempts, in an effort to hijack control of the account and any owned blogs. After submitting an account restore request and / or changing the account password, the blogs owned by the account will be restored - generally 24 to 48 hours after the account is restored. This is a normal, and unavoidable, result of Google, protecting your account and blogs from hacking activity.

Just be aware that not all blogs will be listed by the "Deleted Blogs" wizard.

Please be aware of the limitations of the restore process. This process serves blog owners who have been spuriously classified. If you request restore - and Blogger confirms that you are a spammer - you will be best advised to start over, or to find a different platform for publishing.

If you do start over, you should be very careful, and avoid making the same mistakes - lest you be subject to more strict punishment. Spammers simply are not welcome, in Blogger / Google - sorry.

>> Top

Blogger Blogs Showing "Possible Blogger Terms of Service Violations" Notice

Last week, we saw a fairly large number of reports from blog owners, reporting that their blogs had been apparently classified as spam hosts - but with a new symptom.

Possible Blogger Terms of Service Violations

This blog is currently under review due to possible Blogger Terms of Service violations.

If you're a regular reader of this blog and are confident that the content is appropriate, feel free to click "Proceed" to proceed to the blog. We apologize for the inconvenience.

If you're an author of this blog, please follow the instructions on your dashboard for removing this warning page.

When the problem was forwarded to Blogger Support, they identified a recent change in the spam classifier as a cause - and suggested that they could review and reverse all such false classifications, en masse.

Later that same day, Blogger Support declared that the problem was resolved.

We've been seeing intermittent reports of this problem, recurring, since the latter declaration. We're handling them on an individual basis, starting from reports in Blogger Help: Something Is Broken.

If your blog shows this symptom, please start a new topic in Something Is Broken. - and indicate the "Possible Blogger Terms of Service Violations" in the Question title / Subject. We'll do our best to expedite resolution of your problem. Please be accurate, brief, and complete - and as always, state the URL of the blog.

>> Top

How Not To Make Your Blog Private

Blog owners have been asking, for years, how to protect their blogs against viewing by undesired or unknown readers.

How do I password protect my blog?

When told that Blogger password protection involves membership invitations, accepted using a Blogger Google account, some would be private blog owners decline the suggestion.

That's too complicated for my readers! Can't I just give everybody a password?

But Blogger does not use common passwords.

Some blog owners, who are technically astute, find add on template code, provided by third parties - which demands a password, in a popup window, to continue. This is where their problems start.

The addition of third party supplied JavaScript code, to our blogs, has always been a dodgy process. With third party JavaScript code used to provide password protection against unknown readers, this is even more hazardous to your blog.

This month, we have a blog owner who installed password protection code in his blog template - and subsequently found his blog locked.

I received email saying that my blog has been removed, and has been marked as spam. The email is as follows:

Your blog has been reviewed and confirmed as in violation of our Terms of Service for: MALICIOUS_JAVASCRIPT. In accordance to these terms, we've removed the blog and the URL is no longer accessible.

Can you please review and unlock my blog?

But the story does not end there. Subsequent review of the blog was denied, by Blogger Support.

Your password prompt is not dismissable - and forces users to close their entire browser session, as the Cancel button does nothing. This is malicious behavior, and prevents anyone one on our team from even reviewing your blog content.

This leaves the blog owner with a deleted / locked blog, and no chance of getting the blog back.

Besides the potential threat above, which becomes actual only after spam classification detects the add-on code as malicious, any security expert will recognise two reasons why this solution is worthless.

1. JavaScript code can be blocked, by any reader with a well implemented security policy.
2. If not blocked, anybody can view source code and find the "password" right there, in plain sight.

This "solution" is therefore worthless for two reasons.

1. It is risky.
2. It does not work.

Why risk loss of your blog, for a risky solution that does not work? There's only one way to protect your blog from unknown readers.

1. Send each would be blog reader a membership invitation, using the Permissions wizard.
2. Instruct each reader to open and accept the invitation, using any preferred Blogger account.

>> Top

Your Blogger Blog, And The Wave Of Spam Behind You

The sport of ocean surfing has been described as something like "constantly falling down an ever advancing wall of water", while trying to stay upright and ahead of the wall of water (aka the "wave"). Publishing a Blogger blog, and dealing with the spam, is similar to surfing.

I am frequently advising people, who complain about the constant waves of spurious spam classifications, blog clones (aka "content thieves"), and referer spam, to keep looking ahead - and keep publishing their blogs. Like ocean surfing, you want to keep looking ahead and remain standing - don't fall down, and let the wave behind wash over you. The latter leads to drowning.

Blogger blogging provides a great environment for spammers to operate.

• The Blogger address space provides great cover for the spam.
• We publish our blogs, with constantly updated content.
• We advertise our blogs, and provide our updated content in our blog feeds.
• We read our Stats logs, see the referer spam, and give the spammers free inclicks.

What more could any spammer ask for?

• Free address space.
• Content provided by other people.
• Advertising provided by other people.
• Activity provided by other people.

And that is the wall of spam, that we, as publishers of Blogger blogs, have to stay ahead of.

How do we stay ahead of the wall, constantly approaching? Keep publishing your blog, keep watching your reader audience, and ignore the spam. Look ahead, stay upright, and don't fall down.

And that's surfing, in the ocean of Blogger blogs.

>> Top

Empty Or New Blogs Are Especially Vulnerable To Spurious Spam Classification

One example of agony, seen all too frequently in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken, comes from new (would be) blog owners.

I setup my new blog, using a great blog name, properly chosen - but before I could post, I got email from Blogger.

Hello, The review of your blog at http://yournewblog.blogspot.com/ confirmed that the content violates the Terms of Service for: SPAM. In accordance with those conditions, the blog has been deleted - and its URL is no longer accessible.

This was a new blog, with no posts! How can it be considered spam??

Unfortunately, this blog owner is the latest victim of the spam problem, and "friendly fire".

If we consider the known lifetime of spam blogs, we can see that new non spam blogs are especially vulnerable to spurious classification as spam hosts.

A spam blog, as methodically published by a spammer, goes through 5 stages of existence, in its lifetime.

• Empty (just published).
• Reserve (previously empty, republished with scraped content added).
• Active (previously reserve, republished with payload added).
• Detected (previously active, locked by the Blogger Spam Classification bot).
• Deleted.

Unfortunately, an Empty spam blog is remarkably similar to an Empty non spam blog (even one with a great, properly chosen name) - depending upon various other details. This leaves some new non spam blogs looking like spam blogs - and subjects them to spurious classification as spam blog.

As the Blogger Spam Classifier examines each new blog, it sees an empty blog. The presence of similar empty blogs, recently examined, may make any new, non spam blog look like another member of the latest spam blog cluster.

It's possible that, the longer a blog remains empty (with no published posts), the more likely it is to be spuriously classified. Personally, as soon as I create a new blog, the first thing that I do is to publish a post with some minimal content. Maybe that's what everybody should be doing.

Welcome to my new blog.

or alternately, the well known Lorem ipsum.

>> Top

Attention Canadian Blog Owners: The URL Of Your Blog Is "BlogSpot.com" - NOT "BlogSpot.ca"

We have a number of blog owners, apparently located in Canada, who have been sharing their "blogspot.com" published Blogger blogs, using the "blogspot.ca" alias. This week, two major services - FaceBook and McAfee Anti-Malware, have decided that links mentioning "blogspot.ca" are not trustworthy.

Use of the Country Code aliases - of which "blogspot.ca" is simply one of many - has provided potential for confusion, for some time. What some blog owners may not realise is that only the online viewers of the blog (and the owners, viewing their own blogs) see the "blogspot.ca" alias - and only when they are located in Canada. At the same time, people in Malaysia see their blog (and other blogs, published to "blogspot.com") as "blogspot.my", people in Mexico see their blog as "blogspot.mx", etc.

Thanks to the use of the canonical URL, specified in the blog header, the search engines index "blogspot.com" published Blogger blogs, consistently, as "blogspot.com".

It's possible that FaceBook and McAfee have tightened down on their link validation criteria. Noting that the "blogspot.ca" alias is not indexed by the search engines, they may simply be objecting to people posting links that have no reputation. Multiple people posting links without reputation could be seen as an organised link spamming campaign - and FaceBook has reacted.

Why FaceBook (social networking), and McAfee (anti-malware), seem to have changed their criteria simultaneously, remains to be seen.

For immediate concern, we see many Canadian blog owners with massive amounts of previously posted FaceBook links, pointing to "blogspot.ca". Unfortunately, this may be an issue which the blog owners need to discuss with FaceBook.

>> Top

CAPTCHA Verification Required For Excessive Posting Volume

Occasionally in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken, we see a query from a confused blog owner.

I made a large number of posts today, and Blogger is now requiring me to solve a CAPTCHA, for every post. I tried to find the form to submit, so that my website could be reviewed, but I could not find it. What do I do, now?

This blog owner, like too many, does not understand the spam mitigation policy.

Long ago, we first became aware of the Blogger policy on excessive posting volume. At the time when the anti spam policy was first publicised, we were told that CAPTCHA screening would be required, for any new posts exceeding a count of 50 in any day - and that the counter would reset at the end of the day.

Recently, we have some blog owners explicitly state that they are publishing less than 50 posts, and still being subjected to CAPTCHA screening. There are two possibilities, here.

• The Blogger anti-spam policy is dynamic, and the threshold may vary, dynamically, depending upon details not being stated.
• The breaking time of the day may not coincide with the local clock observed by any blog owner. It's possible that some activity from the previous local day might contribute to a count of 50 posts, as observed by any given blog owner.

It may not be accurate, to advise any blog owner, reporting this problem, that exactly 50 posts, in any day, will consistently trigger CAPTCHA screening.

In complete accuracy, we can only note that excessive posting volume, approximating 50 new posts in any 24 hour period, will trigger CAPTCHA screening - and that sometime during the next 24 hours, the count would reset - and normal posting would then resume.

It's possible that the "24 hour" period is calculated according to a local clock - but the reset, following a period of acceptable activity, is a worldwide process for all blogs, simultaneously. This would make the reset period more like "48 hours", for some blog owners.

The exact time span of the "48 hour" period is not known. This is simply a reality of the 24 hour, worldwide, use of Blogger.

Other cases where high posting volume may be a problem include use of Mail-To-Blogger, and the Blogger app on smart phones. Mail-to-Blogger now produces Draft posts, which can be published from the Posts menu. We have reports that the Blogger app is also saving Draft posts - but we're not yet sure what options are provided for Publishing the Draft posts.

>> Top