Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Something interesting happened to me today


Blogger.com's algorithms have "identified [this blog] as a potential spam blog." See this page for a helpful definition of what spam blogs are. Among many things, it says, "[Spam blogs] can be recognized by their irrelevant, repetitive, or nonsensical text, along with a large number of links, usually all pointing to a single site."

Ouch!   Looks like all those "Links ..." posts have triggered some suspicion.

The mail from Blogger.com folks informed me that a 20-day grace period is all I'll get for requesting a review, and that nasty consequences -- such as vaporization of this blog -- will follow if I fail to send in that request before that deadline.

So, I rushed and filed the request.

Until this problem is sorted out (which may take a day or two), Blogger.com is imposing on me the ignominy of having to fill out a "word verification" box to prove that I am not some automated bot that's spewing out this very post that I'm writing right now.

* * *

This is not the first time for this humble blog to run into trouble; about a year ago, the Google gods thought it was an "attack site". I had to go through a few steps -- involving Google.com's webmaster tools -- to remedy that problem.

4 Comments:

  1. Anonymous said...

    Touché!!

  2. Vinod Khare said...

    This is sad. :( I'm wondering if you're being subjected to some form of web-vandalism. Is someone flagging your blog as spam out of malice?

  3. Subrahmanya said...

    Abi,
    You can seriously think of migrating to a self hosted blog!

  4. Arati said...

    Hey Abi,

    At least you are keeping fine company - Tehelka is also in the same boat - on the black list with google as an 'attack site' !!!