I can remember when Mybloglog first flew onto the scene all those years ago. A great idea, which got off to a shaky start after a certain professional scammer discovered a way to manipulate it for his own ends, Mybloglog soon became a great way to see who was reading your blog at any given time. Furthermore, it rewarded other bloggers for visiting your blog by providing links back to their pages via the avatars that appeared on your page.

It was a win win situation. And everyone who used it intelligently got a slice of traffic.

But there was a problem.

Although the original loopholes had been closed the less scrupulous elements of the blogosphere had the scent of traffic in their pig like nostrils. In a nutshell, all the scammers had to do was target high traffic blogs and visit them at regular intervals to ensure their avatars showed up as often as possible.

The previous Upstart Blogger design had a nice piece of code in the footer that extended the standard Mybloglog code to allow thirty avatars to appear, complete with links back to their owners Mybloglog page.

I noticed a number of familiar faces. People who I was very happy to link back to.

But as my traffic grew things changed. The familiar faces were pushed out by new, strangely provocative, faces. My regular readers were still visiting, I knew that because they still showed up in comments and on my Mybloglog page. But they were constantly being pushed out of my footer by the provocative newbies.

Curiosity got the better of me and I decided to click on some of the new faces. And I’m sure you know the sort of thing I found. Gambling, dating, private webcams, all the usual refuse that infests the internet. Thankfully, because the links only go back to respective Mybloglog pages, my eyes were spared the worst.

It was a clear case of spammers and scammers finding a way to drip feed themselves with traffic simply by visiting high traffic blogs.

There method was frighteningly simple. Open a Mybloglog account, grab a provocative avatar, like the scammer’s number one choice of a photograph of an attractive woman, and then set up an automated browser to constantly hit the high traffic blogs.

It had to go. I have zero tolerance for that sort of behaviour.

Until Mybloglog finds a way to clean out the junk this will continue to be a problem. And my advice to all bloggers, especially those who have a large amount of traffic, and particularly those who value their reputation, is to remove the Mybloglog code from your pages before your readers, who may not be blog savvy, get the wrong impression about you and your blog.

Offend your readers by linking to something distasteful and they won’t come back.

One more thing. If you miss those thirty avatars at the bottom of every page, some of them smiling back at you, don’t worry, they will be making a return very soon as part of the Upstart Blogger Inner Circle, a new initiative that will launch next month.