LS Blogs, the blog directory and search engines very own blog.

Its amazing the lengths some people go to in order to get people to visit a site, how many of you readers have received a email like this in the past..

Hello xxxxxxxxx,

How would you like to have your a'd on 2 Million Websites ?

I'm not pulling your leg!

Discover the new way of advertising on the Internet!

This Tool is one of the hottest - if not the hottest,

marketing tools available!

Discover the power of the Blog Blaster!

Brandnew software revolutionizes the power of online advertising

-neve'r seen before!-

This email is for a little bit of scumware called “blogblaster”, it is mainly purchased by unscrupulous site owners, or idiots.

What does it do? Well it basically sends out lots, and lots of automated comments to blogs, spamming as the ad says “up to 2 million” blogs with a comment that has a link back to the spammers site.

Software like this is a pain, as it makes it too easy for idiots to go around spamming blogs, to much spam in someone’s comments can really detract from the readability, and could even result in the blog owner disabling comments, or enabling comment moderation.

Lets say you start getting these comments on your blog, what can you do about it?

Firstly you could do a search on the net to see if that same comment has been posted on lots of other blogs, if it has you can tell by the sheer number of postings if it is from a automated package, or a genuine visitor.

If you find genuinely automated comments on your blog, what should you do?

You could put the nofollow attribute on your comments, so they dont get any benefit in the search engines from the link, or you could delete the comments, perhaps you could be sneaky and even re-write the comment so instead of something like

“You have a really interesting blog about cats, please drop by my site about <link to spammy cat site> and take a look, we sell many cheap cat accessories”

It could be altered to something like

I am a spammer, I use automated blog submission software to spam blogs, a quick search on many search engines will reveal that this comment has been letf on thousands of blogs. I didnt really read your blog, I just dont not that ethical, so please bear in mind my lack of ethics, and my utter lack of respect for your site when you visit the <link to spammy cat site>, and if I was a real reader of the blog, I would come back and question why this comment now says what it does, but Im just a sad person using automated software to fill up the blogospere with my rubbish.

Whatever you do, dont just let the comments sit there, unless you want your comment section to quickly fill up with junk! If you already have a plan for dealing with comment spam, then well done, keep up the good work.

I wonder what would happen if someone set up a test blog and clearly stated that comments could not be left unless you paid a amount of cash for the privelidge, and that leaving a comment without paying up front would result in the commenter being invoiced say five thousand dollars.

A real human would see that message, and not leave a comment, but the automated software would just go ahead and leave the comment. Would it be legally enforcable? Could you actually send the invoice, and sue if the spammer did not pay up? Imagine, if that was the case, and lots of people did this, it would put the spammers out of business real fast…

I had a chuckle today over a couple of submissions in the backlog, despite lots of guidance on site about choosing the correct category when submitting, lots of people still dont bother.

I sometimes just move sites myself to more appropriate categories, but there is a high chance they will just get deleted if the submitter has not taken the time to find an appropriate category to submit to.

You would think, that of all people, a SEO blog, especially one about ethical issues in SEO, would be able to submit to the correct category? Nope not in this instance (no I wont give the link), a so called leader in web placement (their words not mine!) and they cant even submit to a directory properly. A seo blog is not a blog directory, so it should not have been submitted to that category! Needless to say I rejected it.

That was closely followed by another submission, about link exchanges and seo, which was submitted to the video game category….. The blog did not mention video games, that I could see, so in the reject bin it went.

Obviously in the last instance the submitter actually went looking for a category, so its not like they didnt know about the categories, its probable they just wanted to find a category with only a few links in, to get more PR.

Well, it backfired, as they didnt get listed at all. Sites wont get into the wrong category, I check the category, and if its way off, I move it, or delete the submission. So cheating is useless here - dont try it.

It does not take long to do what the vast majority of submitters do - and thats to read the guidelines, and submit to the appropriate category, and follow the rest of the guidelines. Doing so makes the directory a better place for everyone that uses it.

Many bloggers use adsense, those little google ads on their blogs.

For those of you that use them, you may be aware that the summary page does not include a “all time” option, you can only view today, yesterday, last 7 days, last month and this month.

The only way to see your full earnings for all time, is to go to the advanced reports page and view it. This can be a pain, especially if you have used adsense for a long time, as the all time report can be HUGE!

Another problem, with not having a all time option on the summary reports is you cant see your referall stats for a period longer than 1 month - and also that information is not shown on the advanced report, so you have no idea how many referalls and conversions you have in total….

Well, if you use this little trick below, you can have a all time option, and see this information. Its quite handy, and very easy to do.

Simple change the last parameter in your url in the address bar so instead of reading

https://www.google.com/adsense/report/overview?timePeriod=today

it becomes

https://www.google.com/adsense/report/overview?timePeriod=alltime

Thats it. You now have all time stats available on the summary page, which can save you
scrolling down a long, long report on the advanced page, and will save google some bandwidth in the process!

Obviously, you use this at your own risk!
Personally I can’t see any harm in using it, as it is just showing you your stats..
Its not trying to cheat the system in any way, and I cant see any rules against it in the terms and conditions, but Im not a lawyer, so you need to decide for yourself.

I frequently carry out manual quality checks on LS Blogs, to try my best to keep the listings as clear as possible, removing bad listings, and dead blogs.

Occassionally (only happened twice so far) I find something more sinister, a blog that tries to infect its readers with a virus. Obviously when this happens, the blog (and ALL blogs from the same user) are deleted, as the last thing I want is to have infected blogs in the listings.

In the past, you could only get a virus if you actually ran a program that contained a virus, or were infected by another program that had access to your computer.

These days though, thanks to the wonderful world of windows, and those new fangled ways of programming, you can now get viruses in pretty much anyway you can think of.

You may not be able to get pregnant from sitting on a toilet seat, but I wonder how long it takes before you can get a virus on a windows box from sitting on a toilet seat. Anyone who is used to the old school of thought that you cant get a virus just by viewing pictures or files had better start redefining their views, as its a different world out there now.
Even something as innocent as opening a windows media movie/audio file can now infect you, and this is what I found on someones blog today.

It is VITAL that you have upto date anti-virus protection on your computer, and you should never, ever download and run (or even PLAY) anything from a website without running a check on it first.

Remember, many web pages have embedded content, that plays automatically, and you could get a virus just from visiting that website now.

Keep upto date with virus news, install protection, and be viligent.

Also, if you have a blog yourself, its doubly important to make sure you have a clean virus free machine, you dont want to infect any files on your blog, which could in turn affect your readers.

If anyone ever finds a virus on a blog, be sure to inform the site owner, if the site is listed in LS Blogs, let me know, so I can delete it from the listings.

Thankfully, most blog owners are sensible, and it is, as I said earlier, VERY rare to find a problem like this, but you should be aware a problem does exist.

Seeing as a new version of wordpress is available, I decided now would be a good time to upgrade, seeing as I had not done any modifications yet.

The upgrade process really was painless, and quite quick, with the longest part being a backup of all wp files and the database.
Now I just have to see what new features are available.

Many of you may be aware that you can personalise (I spell it with a S as I am English, in case any americans were wondering) your google homepage.

I have added a module that you can add to your google homepage, should you wish to do so, that displays a random blog from the LS Blogs blog directory each time the page is shown.

You can personalise your homepage by visiting google.com/ig and select from the standard modules which ones you want, or you can add one of the many custom modules.

To add the Random Blog module, you need to click the “Add Content” content link at the top, then on the left you will see

Create a Section

You need to enter

http://lsblogs.com/gmodule_random_blog.xml

and hit the go button.

It is my first module, and if it proves popular, I may expand its features, and add more modules in the future.
 
Hope you like it, if you do, feel free to blog about it so others know, after all if your blog is listed in the directory, your blog could be the one that pops up randomly on someone elses google home page. Note, blogs in the adult category are not shown by the random blog module, only the blogs in the non-adult categories.
Obviously some blogs may contain some material that is not work or child safe, so as always, its at your discretion whether to allow use of the tool

Happy new year everyone, hope 2006 goes well for you all,

Thanks to everyone who helped make LS Blogs what it is today, good luck with your blogging, and dont get to drunk - those hangovers can be horrific

Best wishes

ken

www.lsblogs.com

Its not technically a White Christmas for LS Blogs, as it didn’t snow on Christmas day, but its snowing now! Apologies for the poor picture, but I have been up all night, and didnt fancy venturing too far to grab a quick picture of the snow.

Also, my camera is not exactly waterproof (or snowproof for that matter)

Found this posted at the searchenginewatch blog (details here)

(yes, the spelling mistake is intentional, its how it was posted)

Google Recruits Creator of Pyhton

+ Dirson,
posts about another successful recruitment of progammer by Google. It
appears that Guido van Rossum, the creator of the Python programming
language, is now a Google employee.

Python is not a language I have used yet, but it has a active following, and getting the creator of a programming language on your team is always a handy achievement. Wonder if google will suddenly start providing a lot of new support for python now?

Also, if you like reading blogs from google employees, then that same post has interesting news about blogs by googlers.

Google employee’s are just people like the rest of us, but they do work for google, which has a lot of power on the internet, so you never know what interesting hints and tips you may gleen from their blogs.

As you may be aware, lsblogs does not just list blogs, it also lists sites related to blogging, including forums that discuss blogging.  One site I visit frequently, which is not just about blogging, is the cre8asite forums

Today, I noticed a interesting thread - someone took on a spammer and won compensation from the firm that spammed him. Whilst the amount won is not enough to retire on, its certainly a interesting victory, and one that may open the floodgates for lots of other people to take on the spammers.

If spammers start getting hit where it hurts them the most, financially, then perhaps, just perhaps, one day spam may be a thing of the past.

Cre8asite Forums -> Businessman wins e-mail spam case

QUOTE
A businessman has won what is believed to be the first victory of its kind by claiming damages from a company which sent him e-mail spam.

Nigel Roberts, who lives in Alderney in the Channel Islands, took action against Media Logistics UK over junk e-mails in his personal account.

Under new European laws, companies can be sued for sending unwanted e-mails.

The Stirlingshire-based firm has agreed to pay £270 compensation to Mr Roberts, who runs an internet business.

‘Tiny victory’……