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December 11, 2005
WARNING: Reports of legitimate Blogger/Blogspot accounts being deleted without cause
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As is often the case whenever there is a free tool available, it gets abused by spammers. Such has been the case with Google’s free Blogger service, and lately they’ve been very active in trying to delete blogs that they view as spam (aka splogs).
Normally I’d say that’s a good thing, but apparently they’ve been a little overzealous in their cleansing of the system and many individuals are reporting that their legitimate, hand crafted Blogger blogs that they spent much time on have been deleted without warning or explanation.
The English Guy has a post entitled Google/Blogger Deleting Real Blogs that I’d highly recommend reading if you’re a current Blogger user or considering using their free service.
A thread at the Blog Party forum suggests that Google is targeting bloggers that have multiple blogs which link to each other. This is a tactic which many legit bloggers do and is a major part of how the whole blogosphere works. It is also a tactic that is used by sploggers. But that in and of itself should not be a reason to go on a search and destroy mission for all bloggers who interlink their sites. The logic in that is faulty – just because a tactic is used by sploggers doesn’t mean that everyone who uses that tactic IS a splogger.
So if you’re using Blogger and you have multiple blogs which you like to link to each other, you might consider porting your posts over to another system, such as TypePad or WordPress.com, before you wake up one day to find your blogs gone and have to go through the nightmare of trying to reach support personel (which has been reported to be very difficult) and proving that your blogs are legitimate.
Consider yourselves warned..
UPDATE 1/30/06: as you can see from some of the comments on this post, blogger.com is currently on a big blog-deleting spree. Again, consider yourselves warned! And btw, I know I originally recommended wordpress.com as an alternative, but if you're looking to incorporate Google Adsense into your blog, you'll need to use TypePad b/c wordpress.com doesn't support 'em. Or else switch to a solution where your blog is hosted on your own server, and then you've many more options to choose from
December 11, 2005 in Blogger, Reviews, TypePad, Weblogs, WordPress | Permalink | Email This Post
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Comments
I also offer free WordPress (mu) weblogs with over 100 different themes and the amount is growing;
The weblogs are hosted on USA servers at a high rank hosting company.
I have my personal weblog for almost 2 year now and know the ins and outs.
see http://usadutch.com/blips (in my native language Dutch)
Posted by: blips | Dec 11, 2005 11:13:17 PM
The warning didn't come early enough for me. Though I'm very happy with my Typepad Blogs, an earlier blog on blogger bit the dust without notice and I still can't get an answer from blogger.com - or from their non-existant tech support.
Yes, you can get the details (http://tinyurl.com/dtkey) but if I think about it steam may come out my ears. Arrrgh!
I know - I got what I paid for - free. But it's still shocking how much that the google/blogger clan doesn;t much give a fig.
Posted by: Susan Reynolds | Dec 14, 2005 11:12:17 PM
This just happened to me and I am very upset. The following blogs were deleted. Gain More Muscle, Weight Loss Ideas That Work, Increased Energy and Vitality, the Unofficial DC Comics Review, Blog Smart Resources Blog, Opportunity Assistance Business Resource Center. These were all hand crafted blogs. Some of them I am repairing with their original URLs. Others have been totally destroyed. Two have the posts as they are hosted elsewhere, but the rest of months of posts totally gone. The comics review one makes me very angry because I had got praise from fellow comic book readers.
Anyway, onward and upward.
Posted by: Keith P. Stieneke | Jan 30, 2006 12:24:14 AM
Blogger DELETED all of my blogs today! All of them. This is just outrageous that they can do this.
I've spent months writing about my online business trials and tribulations and then all of a sudden **POOF** it's all gone.
Damn, this makes me mad!
Posted by: Alan | Jan 30, 2006 2:24:53 PM
Blogger is still at it. I had 5 blogs wiped clean. The only survivors? One blog with one post on it, and thankfully, one I set up to show relatives pictures of my son.
I have a google pr of 4 for my main blog which was full of LEGITIMATE content, created over a long period of time.
I will never host a blogger-type blog, or any other kind of blog, anywhere but on my OWN server... beyond the reach of some teenager sipping Coke and pushing buttons in a Google office somewhere.
Posted by: Chris Kilian | Feb 14, 2006 10:03:54 PM
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