"Splogosphere" growing faster than ever

For about the blogosphere, the fastest growing segment of the Internet is now the splogosphere. According to the latest State of the Blogosphere report, between 3,000 and 7,000 splogs are created every day.

by Kristina Knight

A splog is a blog created specifically to point to a legitimate website, pushing the website's pagerank up. In many cases a splog simply steals content from other sources or is created from nonsense.

Technorati, the largest website tracking company on the Internet, is currently tracking more than 70 million blogs. That number is up from 55 million blogs in September, 2006. They estimate that more than 120,000 blogs are created every day with at least 3,000 being splogs.

December showed a sharp uptick in splog creation with 11,000 new splogs created every day. However, even with splogs infesting the sphere, blogs are still fast-growing in popularity for news and information among consumers. There are currently 22 blogs in the top 100 listings for news and information.

For marketers, this is a mixed blessing. On the one hand, blogs are becoming more trusted for valuable news and information. On the other hand, splogs will likely begin creating a black eye for the industry. Before advertising on any blog, a marketer needs to take into account whether the blog is a trusted source of information, with return visitors or if the blog is a one-hit wonder that won't invite users to return for information.