• Adweek, Tuesday, December 27, 2005 10 AM

Nearly one in five Web logs could be spam, according to new research. Umbria Communications, a consumer media monitor from Boulder, Colo., found that 2.7 million out of 20.3 million blogs are created purely for marketing purposes. The firm estimates that between 10 and 20 percent of Web logs are spam. Many display stolen content from RSS feeds in order to trigger text ads from AdSense, Google's contextual ad program. Umbria examined results from blog search engines Technorati, IceRocket, and BlogPulse this October to conduct the research. It actually found that Google's Blogger tool feeds the most Web log spam, which the company then makes money on through AdSense. The latest Internet pest has now merited yet another ridiculous nickname: Umbria calls them "splogs."

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