Ah! All my sites are getting hit heavy by sploggers!
Ok, according to this definition I’m being hit by a combination of Splogger and Scraper sites:
Spam blogs, sometimes referred to by the neologism splogs, are artificially created weblog sites which the author uses to promote affiliated websites or to increase the search engine rankings of associated sites. The purpose of a splog can be to increase the PageRank or backlink portfolio of affiliate websites, to artificially inflate paid ad impressions from visitors, and/or use the blog as a link outlet to get new sites indexed.
Spam blogs are usually a type of scraper site, where content is often either Inauthentic Text or merely stolen from other websites. These blogs usually contain an high number of links to sites associated with the splog creator which are often disreputable or otherwise useless websites.
Ever since I started my blogs I’ve had sites copying my posts – some giving a link back to the original post, others not linking back at all. However, since December or so this problem has increased. In fact it’s been so bad in the last two weeks that my husband and I have had at least 100 posts stolen from our sites.
I get a pingback from the sites that include our post links in their stolen copy of our posts – that’s the main way that I’ve been finding these sites.
I call them sploggers because of course the sites are full of adsense ads – so they are trying to build a site artificially to gain traffic in order to scam adsense and make some money by using other peoples content to earn money. However, technically, they are scraper sites – as in bottom feeders – because they are gathering content from our sites rss feeds.
This site has only had a few posts stolen that I’m aware of, but my gardening site, my celebrity blog, and my husbands two sites – Odd Planet and Guitar licks have been hit hard.
Yesterday, after a combo splogger / scraper site stole 10 posts from Celebrity Scoop I decided to fight back.
Ok, just to back up for a second. I have been fighting back by reporting these sites as spam to google, and by doing a whois search on their domain name to find out who the sites web host is, and sometimes even the sploggers email address.
Alright … fighting back … I created a graphic last night. A big red stop sign that says “Stop stealing my site feed”, and created a post, that when copied on the splog site would notify anyone viewing the site that they are reading stolen information. Check out my “Take back the Net – Stop copyright Thieves” post on Celebrity Scoop.
We have to stop these sites.
The more duplicates of our posts out there, the higher the chance that google will take OUR sites off their index as a penalty for duplicate content. It could even affect our page ranks too. Not to mention the whole copyright violation and even bandwidth stealing (if they are hot-linking to an image in your post) problem.
Other than turning off our RSS feeds how else can we stop these thieving sites? I’d love to hear some ideas.
That’s scary! I haven’t had this problem yet (and I hope I never will), but I would guess the best way would be to turn off hotlinking and maybe sign each post with a 6pt. copyright?
Hi Tricia,
This is a common problem for every webmaster. The best thing to do is actually ignore it because you will NEVER stop it.
These people are doing it automatically and expect to get banned by Google eventually, but they”ll always have a few hundred to a thoasand of these sorts of sites active.
It can actually be beneficial when they include the links of your content as you get a linkback which helps with your SE rankings, it can’t ever hurt you anyway.
Most SEs recognize these sites as spam and remove or penalize them anyway. Just let the Search engines handle it.
Only time to worry is if a site has copied your content and is ranking higher or close to you – then report it.
But if you keep reporting every single one you’ll be fighting a losing battle when its not really effecting you anyway. Its just something you have to live with. Your time will be better spent creating some new posts.
Hi there, i’m from Holland and just vote for you’re blog. Have a nice weekend. Greets from Holland.
Betty
Tricia,
First, I’ve enjoyed your blog at Blogmad for quite some time, but have never felt the need to comment before today. You and your husband both do a great job, your columns are very entertaining and easy to read. It makes sense that these scammers would want to steal your content.
My associate Thom Powers and I run a political news website at PowersAndMorrison.com. In setting up the site, and in recruiting citizen journalists as writers, we ran into this problem right away on several fronts.
As a news site, we always cite our sources when referencing, and if we create a page at P&M for someone, it is certainly with their permission and usually at their request. But as you said, these are choices the website makes, and there is really no way for you (or me) as a blogger to MAKE them credit us properly.
At one point, one of my Special Features writers, Victor Lopez, was having his work stolen, blatantly, by a writer who left P&M to start his own news site. Victor is in prison in Puerto Rico, and posts by sending written letters to us that we type up. Victor requested that we set up the system so that Nobody could steal his work without proper crediting.
This is what we came up with:
1) I created a blog at WordPress (you obviously know how to set up blogs)
2) I titled that blog Victor Lopez at Powers&Morrison.com (I suggest you name your blog similarly)
3) This blog you’ve just created is where you post, and where your feed comes from, BUT…
4) Use another website as a ‘window’ to your normal blog.
Using this format, anyone ‘stealing’ your content via RSS Feed, will necessarily also be stealing your original trackback URL (because it’s in the title)
I also sign all of my articles with the following disclaimer:
“-Nathan Morrison is a political news columnist for Powers&Morrison.com
For further information on this or any article printed herein, please contact: Morrison@PowersAndMorrison.com
http://www.libertyinchaos.powersandmorrison.com”
Using a ‘signing note’ like this included at the end of each post (I type mine every time, but you can set them to auto sign) makes your author name and original URL a part of the article text itself. This includes it in feeds, and also makes it technically illegal to remove from the rest of the article (since you published it in that format).
I hope this helps. Sorry my explanation isn’t the most clear.
Basically what you want to do is add a layer in between your ‘posting blog’ and your readers. So that nobody ever gets back to the posting place, unless they’re getting the feed URL, and that feed URL is loaded with sourcing information.
You can see the system I set up for Victor here:
http://victorlopez.wordpress.com
that’s the place I post…
http://www.victorlopez.powersandmorrison.com
that’s the place the posts feed to, where I control EVERYTHING on the page, including access to the feed 🙂
If you need help or have questions, my email is posted.
Great article. I hate people that do this, they make our jobs so much harder having to deal with all this extra B.S.
-Nathan
I’m using the Angsuman’s Feed Copyrighter Plugin for WP.
Inserts copyright message in Feeds. The message is of the standard format (can be customized): Copyright © 2005 YOUR BLOG NAME. This Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact legal@BLOG_ADDRESS so we can take legal action immediately. By Angsuman Chakraborty.
You can see how it looks if you pick up my feed.
You can find the plugin here:
Angusmans Feed Copyrighter plugin
If you need more help in the subject of getting to them, try here:
Plagiarism Today
I´ve had the same problem in a less degree. Honestly I have no idea how to fight those splogs. I´m sorry I can´t help you…
Have a great weekend anyway!
I’m taking action. Forwarded a letter of complaint to the company possibly responsible for hosting the splogs. http://www.hostgator.com
It’s yet to be confirmed, so here’s hoping i might find some help in at least gaining the contact details of the owner soon.