Blogger's CAPTCHA feature for combatting blog-spam is proving to be a major headache for innocent bloggers. In the latest change, if your blog is identified as a spam blog, you will not be able to post to your blog using the Blogger API and other tools that use this API.
Blogs classified as spammy will be unable to post outside of the blogger.com interface. If you post to Blogger using a third-party blogging software (like w.bloggar), the posts will be saved as a draft - you are required to log into blogger.com, solve the CAPTCHA and then your post will be published. This can affect publishing via AudioBlogger, Mail-to-Blogger, Blogger for Word, Hello BloggerBot, Flickr, and other API clients.
You can however request Google to turn off mandatory word verification on your posts and have a human review your blog and verify that it is not a spam blog if it is incorrectly classified as spammy. Just click the "?" (question mark) icon next to the word verification on your posting form. That will take you to a page where you can request a review for your blog. A human being at Google will verify that your blog isn't spam, and then whitelist your blog so it no longer has the word verification requirement.
This is the error I received when I published this post from w.bloggar:
Your blog server returned the following error message:
com.google.blogger.exceptions.AutospamException: Your post has been saved as a draft instead of published. You must go to Blogger.com to publish your post. To prevent these errors in the future, request a review at:
http://www.blogger.com/unlock-blog.g?blogID=xxx
Update: Blogger was quick to respond to my Non-spam review and verification request.. This is the email I received from Blogger support.
Your blog has been reviewed, verified, and whitelisted so that it will no longer appear as potential spam. If you sign out of Blogger and sign back in again, you should be able to post as normal. Thanks for your patience, and we apologize for any inconvenience this has caused.
Blogs classified as spammy will be unable to post outside of the blogger.com interface. If you post to Blogger using a third-party blogging software (like w.bloggar), the posts will be saved as a draft - you are required to log into blogger.com, solve the CAPTCHA and then your post will be published. This can affect publishing via AudioBlogger, Mail-to-Blogger, Blogger for Word, Hello BloggerBot, Flickr, and other API clients.You can however request Google to turn off mandatory word verification on your posts and have a human review your blog and verify that it is not a spam blog if it is incorrectly classified as spammy. Just click the "?" (question mark) icon next to the word verification on your posting form. That will take you to a page where you can request a review for your blog. A human being at Google will verify that your blog isn't spam, and then whitelist your blog so it no longer has the word verification requirement.
This is the error I received when I published this post from w.bloggar:
Your blog server returned the following error message:
com.google.blogger.exceptions.AutospamException: Your post has been saved as a draft instead of published. You must go to Blogger.com to publish your post. To prevent these errors in the future, request a review at:
http://www.blogger.com/unlock-blog.g?blogID=xxx
Update: Blogger was quick to respond to my Non-spam review and verification request.. This is the email I received from Blogger support.
Your blog has been reviewed, verified, and whitelisted so that it will no longer appear as potential spam. If you sign out of Blogger and sign back in again, you should be able to post as normal. Thanks for your patience, and we apologize for any inconvenience this has caused.