Looks like I didn’t have enough information when I called her a spammer.
Her blog submitter is set up to only submit to her own list of blogs. I don’t know if they are tame blogs - owned by others who approved the postings, or by her herself. Either way, it’s technically not blogspam as it is defined that way, since the owners have approved it.
Life would have been much easier if you’d EXPLAINED this to the spam hunters, Maryanne! Without anyone having to sign up - which you know we’d never do.
However, there is one area where Maryanne, and the people who sign up, might have a problem. The problem is Google. The way they define search engine spam, then I believe this either falls within that definition, or they’re likely to expand it to incorporate what you guys are doing. More on Google and webmasters. And this warning at the bottom of the page here.
The likely outcome is that they’ll ban or weight all blogs they identify as being part of that network, and so any comments with links posted to them will not have any weight in Google. I’ve seen Google do a lot of stuff in the past, and this is - still pure speculation - something they’ll probably devote some thought to and come up with SOMETHING.
As a friend said: This is a new version of a linkfarm. Something Google already hates. I don’t know what they do to linkfarms, but they do …something. Look at a discussion on Webmaster world about link farms. And this article. Blogmysite is different from linkfarms, because as far as I know it’s not a reciprocal links scheme. That doesn’t insulate it against sanctions however, as all new techniques, it will be held to scrutiny.
Another problem is rel=”nofollow”. Blogger for instance, has that implemented. That means any comments with live links, will have code in the links (even though the commenter didn’t code them that way) that tells search engines (and not just Google) not to pay any attention to the links. It’s possible they’ll follow the links. It’s even possible they’ll index the pages linked to. But the links won’t count as backlinks. Most blog software has that implemented by default as well by now. The point was never to have people click on the links, but to get better rating in Google, right?
Updates
Here we go. The positioning has begun. I can’t remember having seen the sentences that are on top of blogmysite before. I won’t quote them directly, though, it’s probably not allowed by her TOS. Basically, she says the ads will be posted to two blog networks that are owned by her, and to blogs that have requested to be added. I would NOT have thought this was a spam submitter if that had been present on her page before!!!! So this must be very new. Oh yes, I found a cached affiliate ID page from May 22 (on MSN). It wasn’t there then.
The sentence on her page argueing that posting comments isn’t spam would be meaningless if the comments are meant to be posted to a network of blogs that have given permission. So it’s no wonder I thought she was going to spam me and others.
Hey, Maryanne, you may want to have your computer checked. There’s a string in your user agent that I suspect could mean you’re infected with something. Read more about it here.
I see she’s posted on usenet about this too. Maryanne, if Google was mistaken in banning you (because the software isn’t a blogspam submitter), then they will unban you. Simple as that. If however the ban is held, then it’s because they consider it search engine spamming (and I don’t know if they will or not). Wordpress got banned earlier this year, and was unbanned when they took down the linkfarm they got banned for. In high profile cases that get the attention of the top dogs (and this is certainly high profile enough), the status is often updated quickly.
There’s a link to my blog from her member login page. Some untruths on there about me. I am into truth. If I had to lie to win a fight, I’d back out. I call’em as I see em. And if I was wrong - through not having enough knowledge, I’ll admit to that, and make reparations.
last update:
I don’t see the logic in telling all her members about my site and my fight against webspam in general, and then saying she’s going to sue me. One of my pet peeves is search engine spam. It’s one of my categories on this blog. I was wrong about Maryanne’s program being blogspam. But as far as I can tell, it’s search engine spam. Which is something that I consider bad. No, not illegal. But since the search engines can do pretty much whatever they want - there’s no law that says they have to index or list your site, then laws don’t enter into it. They’ll do what they do, and we don’t know what that is. I was afraid I’d be banned myself for a while, and I could well have been, if the chips had fallen a bit differently. It happens quickly, and they don’t tell you why.