I know I have read something similar recently in the WoW Blogs, net bots swoop in and scrape our blog content, throwing it up on their sites as:
Unknown wrote this interesting article….
I would feel slightly (only slightly mind you) if the sites were WoW related, but the majority of them are completely off track in scraping Armaggedon’s Coming.
- Pet sites
- Wrestling Sites
- Humor Sites (OK, maybe that’s legitimate
) - the list goes on…
I even feel slightly guilty… well before I started this blog, I used scraped references. I had no idea at the time that they were scraped, except often finding the same content on multiple sites. I naively thought that they were all sites of the one company, just spreading the love around, picking up hits from different people with different needs.
Well, I know better now, and hopefully after reading this you will know a little bit better yourself.
Anyway, for once whinging isn’t the point of my post, rather it’s an attempt to help out those of you that write blogs and are feeling the same helplessness.
There is a wonderful blog writer by the name of Lorelle. She has wonderful resources for blog authors both at The Blog Herald and Lorelle on WordPress, so if you haven’t check out her stuff, and subscribed to her feed, then I will give you 20 seconds to do so now….
Back… that took more than 20 seconds, but I am glad you are back!
Anyway, she recently threw this post up, which is right on the money if you have been scraped, or fear being scraped (which you should, even if you haven’t yet).
The Year of Original Content: How to Fight Back Against Abusers
I probably don’t need to add much more, but as always, I will go on, and on, and on, and on…
The last 2 things to mention are:
Specific plugins for WordPress(.org) users: WordPress Plugins Battling Evil and;
Tips for WordPress.COM users (who can’t add javascript or screw around with their templates): A Tagging Bookmarklet for WordPress and WordPress.com Users
Anyway, hope that helps… Go get them content thieves… now’s the time to pull out the battle axe, totems and fireballs!
Gnomer and Out!
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.
http://gnomeaggedon.net/2009/03/01/sick-and-tired-of-the-blog-scrapers/
I’ve noticed a few of my post showing up in scraper sites before and here recently I’ve been hit by the “Unknown wrote this interesting article…” website.
It’s incredibly frustrating to see excerpts of my content being haphazardly thrown up on a site that is only there to steal search traffic and monetize off of ads. The one consolation in this is I know their sites will most likely NEVER rank well in any search engine for any WoW related terms. Still its very disappointing that people do such things.
Thanks for the tips and links on how to fight back…I’m going to try a few of those plugins when I have a chance.
[...] read two interesting posts today on blog scraping, which I’ll link you to now: 4 Healz and Armageddon’s Coming (gnome mage [...]
1. Lorelle is an excellent; nay, required, resource for any blogger, no matter the platform
2. If yours is a WordPress blog, check your spam folder often: You will find trackbacks from scrapers, without a doubt. Follow the links, apply Lorelle’s lessons.
3. Pray you aren’t highlighted by WoW.com, because you will only encounter MORE scrapers (why AOL hasn’t tried to put those people out of business yet–the scrapers, not WoW.com!–is beyond me).
Hey Kes, thanks for dropping by…
Yes Lorelle is an excellent resource as you say.
The old spam folder tends to overflow with the pingbacks from these sites (especially around the time of WoW.com linkage)… and it only ever seems to grab 50% of them.
I think the problem is it’s so easy to set up these sites… 2 at once by the same site owner the other night!?! Yet such a pain to deal with them
[...] read two interesting posts today on blog scraping, which I’ll link you to now: 4 Healz and Armageddon’s Coming (gnome mage [...]
[...] The wonderful Gnomeaggedon told me to slap up a Creative Commons licence, which I have now done, along with a stern warning that I will hunt down any offenders and kick them right in the shins. Oh, and Gnome also pointed me at a post regarding scrapers and how to fight back. [...]