Google wonders if Music Thing is spam...

This arrived this morning from Google:

Hello,
Your blog at: http://musicthing.blogspot.com/ has been identified as a potential spam blog. To correct this, please request a review by filling out the form at XXXX
Your blog will be deleted within 20 days if it isn't reviewed, and you'll be unable to publish posts during this time. After we receive your request, we'll review your blog and unlock it within two business days. If this blog doesn't belong to you, you don't have to do anything, and any other blogs you may have won't be affected.
We find spam by using an automated classifier. Automatic spam detection is inherently fuzzy, and occasionally a blog like yours is flagged incorrectly. We sincerely apologize for this error. By using this kind of system, however, we can dedicate more storage, bandwidth, and engineering resources to bloggers like you instead of to spammers.
Thank you for your understanding and for your help with our spam-fighting efforts.
Sincerely,
The Blogger Team
P.S. Just one more reminder: Unless you request a review, you won't be able to use your blog.

I wonder if it was that post yesterday about ugly guitars, which had a big mass of links saying "Sword guitars, Sword guitars with wings, Gun guitars" etc, all with links back to old stories. It did look a bit spammy when I wrote it - I've now taken it down. Or maybe it's just all the runescape gold comment spammers...

Posted by Tom Whitwell.

Comments:

Yeah that is weird, but I would have thought that your post history should count for something and if you want to list a few resources or past posts it shouldn't flag you as a spammer! Mind you they must have some impressive software happening if it does...

# posted by

Anonymous : 10:36 am

I wish all spam blog were like yours !

# posted by

Factran : 10:51 am

I think it's good that they have some system in place for clearing out mass quantities of garbage, but I'm surprised MT would get flagged at all. I wonder how many other legit blogs got flagged.

# posted by

KeithHandy : 12:33 pm

Tom, you spammer! :)
Some time ago Google accused my band website of spamming. If you just react, nothing goes wrong. It is good that they put effort in optimising their systems and filtering out the junk.

Perhaps it is time to setup a nice Wordpress blog and be in control yourself...anyway, keep up the great work, MusicThing is cool.

# posted by

Anonymous : 1:52 pm

Hi Tom,

I happen to be an avid reader, and to work in SEO and search marketing. SO, after seeing this post, I must comment:

It is *really* hard for people to see the problems with putting your blog at the mercy of a blogger or wordpress subdomain... until something like this happens.

Seriously, you have an amazing thing going here, and, whether you know it or not, you are losing some of your privileges, and dare I say rights, by hosting in this way.

I recommend - get your own domain (unfortunately for you, musicthing.com, musicthing.net, and musicthing.org are all taken, I just checked) and be in control of your own content and website traffic.

I'll be happy to help you with some advice if you want/need - just email me.

# posted by

Anonymous : 2:06 pm

I'd recommend signing up to Google's Webmaster Tools:
http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/

Not sure how Blogger works, but if you can add a meta tag or upload an HTML file then it'll verify you as the owner of the blog. You'll then be able to see lots of useful stats, diagnostics, possibly info on why they think your blog's spammy, etc.

# posted by

ManxStef : 2:22 pm

as google says, the classifier is inherently fuzzy and I found them to be quite reasonable -- very early in the game, before there was a form to fill in, they flagged my generative Today's Spam, which I found hilarious. Instead of contacting me, they blocked new posts; because the posts were robotic (daily at 00:00Z) I didn't notice for a long time, and when I investigated and explained the site was re-enabled. Art imitates life imitating art, something like that.

oh, and as to why I stopped the spambot posts in May? I switched to Google For Your Domain and their spam filters were so effective, I no longer has sufficient data for any 'meaningful' answers.

# posted by

mrG : 2:27 pm

Thanks Paul, everyone.
The extraordinary thing about Blogger is that it's free and incredibly robust. I've never had significant outage on Blogger. I've never had the site squashed when stories have been on Digg.
The free-ness is nice too. I was getting warnings from my web hosting company just because I hosted the Favicon there - that one tiny graphic was generating enough bandwidth for them to be asking me for more money. Sure, I could have found a better value web host, but then I found Google Pages, and you can't get better value than free.
So, because I don't have a nice pretty wordpress installation on musicthing.co.uk, my adsense earnings go on music gear, not hosting fees.

# posted by

Tom Whitwell : 2:51 pm

Um, you might want to be careful; a really popular scam right now is saying that you need to verify the authenticity of your account or blog or whatever by submitting info to "x". Then "x" takes said info...

just make sure before you do anything that it's really what it says it is...

# posted by

Eric : 3:19 pm

I had the same thought as Eric. I was wondering how you were able to put up this post considering the message unless of course you already took care of it.

I chose blogger for MATRIXSYNTH for the same reason as Tom. I hosted it on matrixsynth.com until my ISP took it down due to too much traffic. They wanted what I considered exorbitant fees to keep it running so I found Blogger. Free and owned by Google. It's also nice knowing that the site has a better chance of survival should I ever lose interest and/or am unable to continue posting.

Very scary email Tom. I bet it was the post you took down. Good to know.

# posted by

matrix : 4:24 pm

Taking down the post is fine, but I hope you also requested a review. From my reading of the note, failure to request a review will mean that in 20 days they'll take down your blog. It doesn't say that they will automatically recheck it to see if it's no longer considered a spam blog.

# posted by

Anonymous : 4:40 pm

I would register my own domain name, get a web hosting account and get rid of blogspot ;)

# posted by

Anonymous : 7:23 pm

Keep up the excellent spamming Tom!

# posted by

Jason : 9:58 pm

This sounds like phishing to me. Are you sure the form is at google.com or at blogger.com?
It doesn't seem like te way google tracks spam.

# posted by

Dave : 10:56 pm

what dave said. i'm betting this is a phishing attempt.

# posted by

Anonymous : 12:29 am

Just as a heads up... I have seen some blogs (eg http://theonlinephotographer.blogspot.com/) shut down by Blogger, because the blogger had a very popular site and wasn't able to fight google's classification as a "spam blog."

# posted by

Anonymous : 7:19 am

excuse my ignorance, but what is a 'spam blog'?

# posted by

Unknown : 8:00 am

Hi Tom. I hope Google clears you. MusicThing is a great read.

Just in case they decide to wipe you out back it up: link

To remove Navbar, get rid of "blogspot": link

I have blogs with Wordpress.org and Blogger. Both are great and have pros and cons.

wire to the ear
the berlin image

# posted by

Oliver Chesler : 9:27 am

That's automated systems for you, If they'd taken 2 seconds to have a real person review it they'd have seen that it's not. doh!
Best blog on the interweb, apart from mine of course :)
Keep on spamming music thing.

# posted by

Anonymous : 9:28 am

well, the online photographer story sums it all up really: http://theonlinephotographer.blogspot.com/2007/06/laid-low-by-spam-fighting-robots.html

at you have the .co.uk domain if you ever need it in a emergency in the future.

I recommend dreamhost, I've used them lots of times:

DREAMHOSTAUDIO - enter that promocode for 30% extra bandwidth and $50 off the year plan. With their specs, I doubt you'd ever get a mail from them saying your favicon was using too many resources...

# posted by

Anonymous : 3:39 pm

maybe it is a sign that you should find a a new blog host and transfer.

# posted by

Anonymous : 2:02 am

Anyone know where I can get stuff to make my instrument bigger and able to satisify?

What I'm surprised by this is that there is no human invention before they do this. Surely a list of potential spammer should be reviewed by someone first. 5 seconds on this site would make it obvious that it is not spam.

My band site has been black listed by google. I know the graphics are pretty crappy but the music is good!!!???

# posted by

Anonymous : 3:45 am

one problem with spam is there's just too much of it to do a human review... spammers can generate thousands of splogs a day at the click of a button. So, unfortunately, an automated spam scan is the only way to deal with it, and until the algos become much more advanced, there will always be a few mistakes...

Anyway, keep up the good work on music thing!

# posted by

Anonymous : 12:06 pm

Spam-o-licious. Google - what plannet are you guys on?! I know people who work at your company who read this blog. I'm kinda surprised they havn't surfaced yet ;-)

# posted by

Anonymous : 7:16 am

if this blog is spam..... keep on' spammin!! ;)

# posted by

Anonymous : 7:56 pm