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Monday, October 4, 2010

Tips from Jeff

HAS YOUR BLOG BEEN DELETED?
DO YOU WANT YOUR ORIGINAL BLOG RE--OPENED?
If so, read on.

Depending on which Blogger algorithm deleted your blog, or your entire account including Gmail, there are generally two different approaches you can take to get everything reinstated provided your blog is not a spam blog.

FIRST APPROACH: Attempt to log into your blog. If you cannot get to your dashboard you probably received a screen from Blogger which says your blog has been deleted due to possible violation of TOS (Terms of Service). If this screen asks for your mobile phone number, you're in luck! Give your mobile number, choose "Text" or "Automated Voice", and press enter. Keep the screen up and your phone handy. Your phone should ring in less than 60 seconds. You will get a code number. Enter the code number on the the screen and press enter. Your blog should be back up and available within another 60 seconds. That was my experience. Very simple.
TIP: If you do not have a mobile phone, enter your land line phone # and choose "Automated Voice". You will get a computer call within 60 seconds giving you the code number, so have a pen and paper handy, or let it go to voice mail.

SECOND APPROACH: Attempt to log into your blog. If you can get to your dashboard but you see that your blog has been locked, deleted, closed, etc. due to possible violation of TOS, take a deep breath because Blogger is gonna make you jump through hoops to get your blog back open to the viewing public.
First: Click "Request Unlock Review" which is located under your blog on the Dashboard. (This is hoop #1 because absolutely no one will be reviewing your blog!).
Second: Keep clicking "Request Unlock Review" DAILY until you finally get a new form with a word verification fill-in. Complete word verification and submit. (This is hoop #2 because no one is going to review your blog yet.)
Third: Go to Blogger Help--> Blogger Forums--> Something is Broken. (This is the hoop Blogger never tells you about!) Create a new entry requesting that your blog be unlocked. Several things to include in your entry: you MUST include your blog's URL address. State that you have already a) requested an unlock review, and b) you have completed the word verification form. Request that your blog be reopened.
TIP 1: At this point, you'll be very frustrated. Do not be abusive in your request. Keep it short and simple even though you may want everyone at Blogger to eat shit. This is not the post to vent your frustrations.
TIP 2: Make sure you click "follow this thread" at bottom of post so you will know if someone responds.
TIP 3: Send the URL address of your post to us so we can follow along and track the progress. Jeff has had way too much experience dealing with this process and can be very helpful to you if he knows what's going on.
Fourth: Sit and wait. Once you get an employee's attention, your blog will be reviewed for the very first time!! The Blogger Employee will either reinstate your blog or decide it violated TOS and not reinstate it. This one decision is final and there is no appeal. No one from Google/Blogger will ever tell you why your blog was deleted, locked, etc. in the first place, what you can do to make sure it never happens again, or anything about the final decision. Don't waste your time trying to get a detailed response from a Google Employee on anything pertaining to your blog being deleted, locked, etc. It'll NEVER HAPPEN!!

BLOG ON, FOLKS!!!!!
Jeff & Brent


Kindly let us know your experiences. Information is power and we can all learn from the information you provide.



14 comments:

JOHN said...

I hope that by posting a comment that blogger will not red flag me ! I have lost seven blogs this year. C@rwashGuys being my flagship and locked from one today;Militaires. I couldn't read the security word-verification and used the handicap feature. I guess it is a crime to be special! Thanks Jeff , for the tips on resurecting our blogs. I will be working with these. Any tips to make our blogs not look like SpamBlogs? My blogs have little or no text and I think that may be the issue. Best of luck to all You Bloggers and Phloggers!

Anonymous said...

JOHN, you asked the million dollar question: what are we doing to make our blogs appear as spam? Unfortunately, I don't have an answer, but I am still trying to find out!
You don't need to worry about posting to this blog. Blogger will not close your blog because of it. They don't operate that way.
Originally I thought that image blogs were being closed as possible spam, but that is not the case. Many image only blogs have never been closed, and just as many work/image blogs have been closed. I just don't know what it is that catches the algorithm's attention. If I ever find out, it will be published here, no doubt about that!
If you ever need any help, let Brett and me know!

Anonymous said...

Hi Jeff, and welcome aboard Brent.

Naked Public Guyz has been deemed a spam blog for 7 weeks now. We are close to either never getting the blog back or to getting it back. The ball is in Google's court as of yesterday the 6th.

http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/blogger/thread?fid=5a2b322d92e9db86000491f9ea9016f1&hl=en

That is the URL to my "Something Is Broken" topic in Blogger's inadequate help forum.

Has it worked yet? Um, no. But hey, it's only been a week since opening the topic. One week out of seven weeks. Just several more weeks to go.

Your info above is spot on. It is exactly the steps we took to get to the point where someone or some people will actually review our blog's closure. We just don't know how long it will take from here for the definitive answer.

If your blog is closed for spam only, follow the 4-step process to have it reinstated. It is the only way to get a blog accused of spamming reopened. I do not know how to go about getting blogs reopened for other reasons.

Everything the guys say above about the process is what we have been told at the help forum. Save time and grief by following the 4-steps as soon as your blog is closed.

Good luck.

Thank you Jeff & Brent for offering your help to bloggers who are wrongly closed.

Mike of Nkdgyz

Anonymous said...

Let me add a couple of things, my 2-cents, about Blogger's system.

They employ spam bots to continuously crawl blogs here looking for characteristics of spam. They do so by viewing code, not the actual blogs as we see them.

It's all numbers.

Blogger needs help in redesigning how it combats spam.

1st off, they let a bot make the decisions to close blogs.

2nd, there is no real review process until you follow the 4-step process. Blogger does not even tell us about the 4-step process. Amazingly poor on Blogger's part.

My thoughts. A bot closes us. That action immediately accuses us of being spammers (criminals) unless we go through the 4-step process and are reopened.

Blogger never explains anything. They treat their spam detection and removal process as trade secrets. They claim that if they explain how they fight spam it will give an upper hand to spammers to work around it. I think that is a poor excuse. Let the spammers work around it. It will only make fighting spam that much smarter.

My solutions for fighting spam? Do not close suspected spam blogs immediately. Flag them. Let them operate and monitor them. Determine if they are really spam blogs. If they are, after a few days of monitoring and gathering info on the blog owners, close them, close the spammers entire accounts, log their IPs and do what they can to make sure that person is unable to open more blogs.

They know that they close innocent blogs all the time. They do not care. They consider wrongly closed blogs to be casualties of their war on spam.

Google can do much better than this.

Mike

Brent said...

Hey Nkdgyz, thanking you for you for your kind welcoming to me to the Blog and Wow, I couldn’t agree with You MORE!!! You hit the nail right on the HEAD!!! Why isn’t Google doing a better JOB at stopping the spam than letting their “spam bots” do the job for them???? Well SAID!!! Hoping you have “Backups” and that you can get Your Blog either re-opened, or using your backup’s, moved to another address soon!!! If so, please let us know either way.

And To John, sorry for taking so long to reply to your comment, but been some what busy with My (1) year birthday with my Wallpaper Blog, but I would like to echo what Jeff said, the owner of this blog, plus add the following comment to you. There are many, many Blogs, and it doesn’t matter who they are directing their Blog Viewer’s to, whether straight or gay, that are “Only Image Blogs” with very little text on them, and they are NOT being closed! For example is “Tom”, known as Furboi, with Furboi’s Hot Men @ http://furboi.blogspot.com/. He as been running his Blog since March of 2009 with over 7 MILLION HITS, with very little text, mostly ALL IMAGES and with no problems!!!

So with that said, let me share with you what happened to me that I think trigged things and just might have been the possibility that trigged the Google Blogger’s algorithm's attention to my Wallpaper Blog last June when I was shut down, while my blog had been up and running for 9 months with no problems, with over 146,000 hits, and was mostly all "Images"!!! It wasn’t till I posted “A Link” to one of those free download services, to download a file that I wanted to share with everyone on my Wallpaper Blog, a Power Point Slide Show! That is when it happened to me John and whether this is what may have been what made my Blog be considered a “Spamming” Blog or not, well I have no idea if that was the case or not, but I’m no longer sharing ANY LINKS in any of MY POSTINGS on My Current Wallpaper Blog, and so far, it still working…(((( Keeping Everything Crossed, Including My Nuts))))((((BIG SMILE))))! Just some food for thought for you John and All Other Blog Owners!

Anonymous said...

Jeff, Brent, interested parties, something odd has happened. Naked Public Guyz has been restored. It's back.

When I signed-in before leaving comments here earlier it was still closed. It seems to have been restored maybe an hour ago or so.

You have been in our blog roll since we discovered you. Now a few more people will start finding you again.

You can add "restored" to Naked Public Guyz in your listings.

Woohoo!!!!!

Mike of Nkdgyz

Brent said...

Wow, Great News Mike of Nkdgyz and I will get this information posted to Our Next Posing....But If you would like to keep your current Blog that is back up and running, stay up and running, I HIGHLY RECOMMEND to You, from what I saw on your Blog, it should be listed as a Blog with "Adult Content" or it is for sure is going to be shut down again!!! Check Out Our "Needing Some Help???....How Do Section, "Listing Your Blog As An Adult Blog" for how to do this Mike!!! Just trying to help.

Anonymous said...

Brent, hi, thank you.

Hmmmm, just a little something about your friendly warning. Our blog has been listed as an adult blog since day 1. It warned me a little while ago like always even though I am signed in. I also checked our setting and it is still to have a warning page. I think we are OK.

Wink, wink, I get it. You took an opportunity to advert your "Needing Some Help" section. Very clever. I will try to incorporate your tactic somehow at our blog. A subtle redirect.

I am also very happy to report that we had 48 blogs listed in our main blog roll when we were closed on August 20, 47 of them alive, and when the blog was returned today all 47 of them are still alive.

Lastly, Naked Public Guyz is living proof that following the 4-step process to get a blog back does work. We learned of the 4-step process last Friday. We did the 4 steps that day. It took 6 days to be reopened.

Bets are that it will take less than 6 months to be closed again by a spam bot, but next time we know what to do immediately.

Take care. Mike

Anonymous said...

Hi MIKE! I've been watching your blog closely the last week or or. On again, off again, on again, etc.

Blogger used to add a warning page to blogs if other people complained about it. I haven't seen one of those Blogger added warning pages in at least 6 months, right around the time they changed their algorithm bot. Blogger refuses to give bloggers answers. Most "answers" come from volunteers. I suspect Blogger does not tell us how to make our blogs not appear as spam simply because that is the magic door to real spammers. If they knew how to get around it they would. I suspect Google/Blogger is swamped with spam blogs, perhaps more than we could imagine. Jeff

Anonymous said...

Brent, Jeff, happy weekend. There are 2 warning pages. The usual 1 that just says the blog contains adult content. That 1 shows up when people visit most adult blogs. Then there is that lousy 1 that they used to place on blogs when someone had complained about the blog. I think they stopped placing that 2nd one after a complaint. Good. For the blogs with that lousy warning, it is a constant reminder that there are people out there who are gay-hating bigots. A couple of years ago the anti-gays began a campaign to attack gay-themed websites (blogs too) and they did so by reporting all the gay sites they could find. Blogger has played into their hands by adding those warning pages saying the blogs had complaints. Not true complaints about content other than it was gay content.

Mike

Anonymous said...

Blogger will not explain anything. That is their right. They have to protect their brand. There is some explaining from helpers in the help forum. You have to spend some time finding things, though, and since it is not official info you have to just trust what is being said.

The guy who helped us did a great job, so I commend him for that. He explained things nicely and held our hand. Nice.

I also found his info there. Blogger gets 60,000 new blogs on an average day. 5,000 of them are spam blogs on average. Employees at the Blogger are not given the tools to fight spam, so only the spam bots can do the job.

Sounds fair. Getting closed is not the real problem. It is the process required to get innocent blogs reopened. Nowhere does Blogger itself tell anyone that there is a 4-step process for getting blogs back. They expect bloggers who are closed to go to the help forum and find that info there. That's not good or realistic.

I used to blame Blogger employees. I now feel that they are in a corner. It's the Blogger system, not necessarily the folks who work there. I get the feeling that they are overworked and also wish some changes could be made.

Blogger employees are people like the rest of us. Overworked, underpaid, in debt and in need of a break. I'm gonna give 'em a break now.

Hey, at least Blogger has fixed the video screen preview problem. A screen preview beats a blank screen.

Mike

Anonymous said...

1 more comment tonight. Since Blogger will not explain anything pertaining to spam fighting, we are left guessing what causes problems.

We should not have to worry that ANYTHING we place in our blogs will cause us to be closed. Not pictures or videos or links or widgets. That is still a big beef I have with Blogger. It's in the code. We do not have access to that code. We cannot know what we have done that led to a closure if it happens. We can only guess and assume.

NPG was closed on August 20, about 6 hours after our last posts. If you like, check out our last post on August 19. Check out what I wrote to end the day. I wrote to our visitors that we would see them next time unless Blogger closes us for no good reason, and sure as sh*t we were closed 6 hours later in the middle of the night.

A coincidence? It's hard to believe it was. I still believe that an anti-gay employee is there, or maybe more than 1. I have no wisdom to share about what to do about it.

Some things in this life we will never know. I chalk this problem up to that. Forgive but don't forget.

More later.

Take care, guyz, and thanks for your cool and important blog.

Jeff, I'm glad you found a good co-author to help you keep the blog operating. I hope it solves your problem with time to keep things running.

Mike

Anonymous said...

Hey MIKE. Sounds like we had similar problems with Blogger, and got the same information. I complained bitterly when I stumbled across the final step to get unlocked. Google never told me about this. You will see my posts all over the forums. The guy who helped me goes by the name Nitecruzr, and I have recommended him to many bloggers.

They can do what they want with their free product: it's their ball so one either plays under their rules or doesn't play at all.

Daddy's boy said...

You asked for experiences-here's mine. My blog, A Collection of Men, had been locked many months ago. Daddy Jeff, (perhaps you remember me), helped me go thru the 4 step process and it worked, and it took about 4 weeks to get my blog unlocked.
Recently, my blog was closed again. Not Found this time. I have not kept my blog active, but I want it open. Not sure if my blog was closed by blogger because it has not been updated in a long time. Anyway, this time I got the Send Blogger Your Mobile Phone Number after I tried to log in. It worked just like Daddy Jeff said, with one exception. After I send my cell #, I waited but never got a call. There was an option on the open page to "Try Again" (or something like that) so I sent my # again, I received a call within 15 seconds, was given a 5 digit code number, I entered it, and my blog and my e-mail were back open.

Thanks for all your great work!

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