18 November 2007

Blog Reading Level -- You've Gotta Be Kidding Me

UPDATE: this so-called reading level test is a way for a blogger to unknowingly increase the search rating for a cash payday loan company.

If you put this badge on your blog, you should remove the ALT tags for the payday loan company from the HTML code before uploading this badge on one's blog or web site.

Hat tip to CK of arbitrarymarks.com for mentioning this potential blog spam issue.


I saw this blog reading level test on the "A Perfect World" blog:



The result for my blog makes me question the quiz technology. I'm a very simple and ordinary person.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey Steve, did you notice the link that code subtly puts in your site? You might want to edit it out---it goes to a cash advance site if the image disappears from the host server. Some people think it's a sneaky way to send out spam.

Steve Caldwell said...

Thanks for the warning on the cash advance spam.

I checked out the tip using a Google search for "blog readability test spam" and I also reviewed the HTML code that I had pasted in.

I had edited out the cash advance site link before adding the graphic to my site when I first posted it and I reconfirmed that tonight.

I suppose the lesson learned here is to be careful about blindly pasting HTML code into our blogs.