Part IV of Technorati's "State of the Blogosphere" covers the darker sides of the blogosphere, including the increase in spam and fake blogs, comment and trackback spam. Along with the growth in the blogosphere (as reported in parts 1, 2 and 3 last week), Technorati has also been tracking an increase in the number of people who are trying to manipulate the blogosphere.

Summary:

Along with the explosive growth in the blogosphere, there has also been a growth in spam blogs and fake blogs

These blogs are almost always created by automated programs, not by people

They are usually created with an economic incentive - to get better search engine rankings, or to create affiliate or advertising revenue

Technorati has been working closely with major toolmakers, search engines, and hosting providers to quickly identify and stamp out spam and fake blogs

The key to reducing blog spam is to eliminate economic incentives, and we are working with major advertising and affiliate programs to create roadblocks for spammers and creators of fake blogs

Industry players including Amazon, AOL, Ask Jeeves, Drupal, Google, MSN, Six Apart, Technorati, Tucows, and Wordpress and others are getting together in the second half of September for the second Web 2.0 Spam Squashing Summit.

» State of the Blogosphere August 2005 Part 4: Spam and Fake Blogs

State of the Blogosphere Part I, II and III