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CAPTCHA Verification Required For High Volume

Occasionally in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken, we see a query from a confused blog owner.
I made a large number of posts today, and Blogger is now requiring me to solve a CAPTCHA, for every post. I tried to find the form to submit, so that my website could be reviewed, but I could not find it. What do I do, now?
This blog owner, like too many, does not understand the spam mitigation policy.

Long ago, we first became aware of the Blogger policy on excessive posting volume.

The limit was stated, originally, as 50 posts / day.

At the time when the anti spam policy was first publicised, we were told that CAPTCHA screening would be required, for any new posts exceeding a count of 50 in any day - and that the counter would reset at the end of the day.

Recently, we have some blog owners explicitly state that they are publishing less than 50 posts, and still being subjected to CAPTCHA screening. There are two possibilities, here.

  • The Blogger anti-spam policy is dynamic, and the threshold may vary, dynamically, depending upon details not being stated.
  • The breaking time of the day may not coincide with the local clock observed by any blog owner. It's possible that some activity from the previous local day might contribute to a count of 50 posts, as observed by any given blog owner.

It may not be accurate, to advise any blog owner, reporting this problem, that exactly 50 posts, in any day, will consistently trigger CAPTCHA screening.

We don't know, specifically, when the daily limit reset is scheduled.

In complete accuracy, we can only note that excessive posting volume, approximating 50 new posts in any 24 hour period, will trigger CAPTCHA screening - and that sometime during the next 24 hours, the count would reset - and normal posting would then resume.

It's possible that the "24 hour" period is calculated according to a local clock - but the reset, following a period of acceptable activity, is a worldwide process for all blogs, simultaneously. This would make the reset period more like "48 hours", for some blog owners.

The exact time span of the "48 hour" period is not known. This is simply a reality of the 24 hour, worldwide, use of Blogger.

It's likely that "pages" and "posts" publishing activity is combined.

Recently, the total limit of static pages was eliminated. That leaves the possibility that the daily publishing of static pages is aggregated with daily publishing of dynamic pages (aka "posts").

Other cases where high posting volume may be a problem include use of Mail-To-Blogger, and the Blogger app on smart phones. Mail-to-Blogger now produces Draft posts, which can be published from the Posts menu. We have reports that the Blogger app is also saving Draft posts - but we're not yet sure what options are provided for Publishing the Draft posts.

Publishing of pages and posts, like blog creation, may be fuzzy.

Like creation of new blogs, it's possible that page / post activity is subject to activity of your neighbours, when limits are considered. Many spam publishers will use multiple Blogger accounts and computers - and Blogger may aggregate activity of similar accounts, and nearby computers, when monitoring limits.

Comments

Lorelei said…
Will this apply if I'm going back in to the same post to edit a number of times in 24 hours (although I doubt I've ever done it 50 times) or just if I would make 50 separate posts (which sounds almost inconceivable to me lol)
Nitecruzr said…
Lorelei,

You're allowed to edit your posts as many times as you wish. The limit is on new posts published to your blog.

Spammers love to add multiple posts, daily, to bulk up their splogs. Long ago, publishing new posts was a guaranteed way to attract random traffic to one's blog.

http://blogging.nitecruzr.net/2008/01/more-traffic-to-our-blogs.html
osamamoosa said…
well on blogger from google before you going to match the captcha they say proof that you are not a robot ?? right ? and now you say this to prevent spammers ?? what if the authoer is not really a spammer and he is only publishing his writes ?? i tell you it seems that google is letting people works on her side or in her favor by what is called OCR (Scanned to editable Text) worked out by blogs authors .
Linda Starr said…
I only have one post a day at most and yet the captcha just showed up today and my commenters don't like it, how can I get it removed. I even have to use the captcha now to comment on my own blog, prove I'm not a robot, what a pain in the petute

My blog is

http://bluestarrgallery.blogspot.com/
Nitecruzr said…
Linda,

The CAPTCHA required to publish comments is not related to daily publishing of posts. The comment CAPTCHA is consistent, regardless of post publishing volume.

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