Blogs Scraping Content - What to Do

[KevinG]

Something came up yesterday that I thought would make a valuable post for some people.

This is for anyone that runs blogs, and it also applies for any site that may have it's original text content copied.

It's no secret to many of us that the online business attracts a large crowd of people looking for easy riches with little to no work involved.

One of the things I've seen this past year is blogs set up that pull content from other blogs RSS Feeds.

I have seen my original posts copied onto other blogs.

Brief Background:
The blog I run is in the adult humor, celebrities and babes area.

However, I also have a substantial site in the cigar lifestyle market. It is NOT a blog, but there are a ton of cigar bloggers that know my site.

The legit, hard-working bloggers, unbeknownst to me until yesterday, seem to have thought it worthy to add me to their list of "buddies". (Flattering, I must say.)

Yesterday, I received a group email from the best, most professional cigar bloggers listing a bunch of other blogs that have been stealing their content.

One of them offered the solution of submitting a DCMA take down notice to the offending sites host companies.

Here is what I told the group:

It seems these sites that you guys mentioned have set up blogs that have a bot to scrape content from RSS Feeds because they are too lazy and dumb to actually produce real work. Of the four sites mentioned in all the emails I received, there is only one that I would be concerned with. The rest are not worth the effort.

- http://www.loversoftheleaf.com/ - this site is monetized with Google Ad Sense. IF he is scraping YOUR content, YOU should report them to Google. Each one of you should do this. He is making money off your content. (I did not find any of my content there.)

The url for Google Spam reports is:
http://www.google.com/contact/spamreport.html.

In this case though, it might be better to use the specific mechanism for reporting Google Ad Sense Violations.

You just click the Ads by Google link on the offending site. Explained in detail here:
http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/014665.html

As to the rest:

1. http://www.cigarsmoker.net - seems to have stopped posting around Dec 4. No monetization seen on his site. Probably a waste of time to worry about.
2. http://clubhousecigars.com/ - No monetization seen on his site. Probably a waste of time to worry about.
3. http://7cigars.com/ - definitely scraping content, but they are linking back to the original posts, so this can actually help your sites. If you allow pingbacks and their posts become a comments on your blog, just delete them. If you use Akismet Spam plugin for Wordpress it should catch any of that.

If any of you guys want to exchange links, let me know.

Happy smoking and blogging!
Kevin

[DannyCox]

Maybe I misunderstand the whole concept, but I thought the reason people used RRS feeds was to allow others to use the content. I really don't know much about the blogging side (although I do intend to learn) but isn't that what RRS feeds are for?

I know a guy with a sailing Blog who has all the RSS feeds removed so people can't link to them. It's just a small, more personal Blog, not meant to make money, and he uses it as a ship log to share with friends and family.

[KevinG]

Excellent point Danny. Let me explain.

Yes. You are right. One legitimate use of rss feeds is to get your content syndicated on other sites. The right way for it to be done is to have your partial post ( a teaser) published on other sites with a click through to your site to read the rest.

One hand washes the other. They get a little fresh automatic updated content and you get the potential click-thru traffic.

Illegitimate variations of this is the problem my original post was addressing.

1. Some sites just pull the content, do not link back and give no credit to the source.

2. Other sites pull the content and link back. However, they also post their link into the comments section on your site and include all kinds of low quality very spammy links out from your site.

What I do with these losers in case #2, which happens to http://www.horndog.com every day is delete their comments that are embedded with links, but my link gets left up on their site. They are too lazy and stupid to do any real manual work, so they don't even notice that they got deleted but my link is still up on their site. Their sites are completely automated.

This is easily managed because I use the Akismet plugin that catches all of these without even publishing them. Whenever I want, at my leisure, I can come in and press one button and delete all of them in one click.

[DannyCox]

ah, okay. I understand now.

BTW, I am putting together some questions for any of the "Blog Gurus" here on Oprano. I'm totally rebuilding Carol's site and will be adding a Blog (she writes them all over the place already). I'll have some questions on how to best use and utilize the Blogs for a traffic and marketing standpoint. I'm such a "set in my ways" old-timer, I have fallen behind all this newfangled stuff

[KevinG]

Originally Posted by DannyCox

ah, okay. I understand now.

BTW, I am putting together some questions for any of the "Blog Gurus" here on Oprano. I'm totally rebuilding Carol's site and will be adding a Blog (she writes them all over the place already). I'll have some questions on how to best use and utilize the Blogs for a traffic and marketing standpoint. I'm such a "set in my ways" old-timer, I have fallen behind all this newfangled stuff

LOL Danny. I get a little set in my ways too. I am also an "anti-fad" type of guy.

Whatever the latest thing is that everybody is doing is usually the last thing that I want to be doing. I hate the general "sheep mentality" that society has.

When blogs first came out and every retard with a computer started blogging I thought it was annoying.

However, blogs have graduated into being very professional with some real monster money making machines. Not that I'm a fan, but just look at Perez Hilton. He sells ads on his blog for $16,000.

[Toby]

Originally Posted by KevinG

...just look at Perez Hilton. He sells ads on his blog for $16,000.

A bit off topic, but aren't most of these blog sites making mad $$$ doing so almost by accident? The site became hugely popular first, and THEN they started monetizing that traffic. Monetizing wasn't the initial intent.

[KevinG]

Originally Posted by Toby

A bit off topic, but aren't most of these blog sites making mad $$$ doing so almost by accident? The site became hugely popular first, and THEN they started monetizing that traffic. Monetizing wasn't the initial intent.

It could be. That certainly happened in adult 10 years ago.

However, there are also some blogs that appear to have meaningful corporate backing, that are very well done and appear to have lots of traffic and revenue. They are professional and smart and not examples of someone just "stepping in shit".

http://fleshbot.com/ sends a lot of love to us over at Burning Angel and Joanna Angel.

http://fleshbot.com/342962/avn-award...down-t+minus-3

[Hammer]

I've actually used scrapers to create blogs for some of my sites that don't have RSS feeds like most blogs, but since anyone can use a scraper to create a blog from the content of any website, they are obviously abused. The point of scraping is supposed to be to allow people to create feeds for sites they frequent but don't have a feed available. Unfortunately, just like with most things, some people find ways to use things for purposes they were not created for.

[RawAlex]

One thing you can do is if you identify a scraper, you can filter them by IP with htaccess and send them to a nice bullshit feed. Make one up of nothing but CP erotic stories or something. Let them feed on that for a little while. They will certainly leave you alone after a bit.

[Hammer]

To clarify, what I meant to say was that I've used scraping to create feeds from some sites I have that don't already have feeds.

[KevinG]

Check out this wicked-ass cool plugin to deal with scrapers. I haven't tried it yet, but I am about to.
http://www.joostdevalk.nl/make-the-s...-work-for-you/

[buggerlugs]

Originally Posted by KevinG

Check out this wicked-ass cool plugin to deal with scrapers. I haven't tried it yet, but I am about to.

Thank you for this link! I've been looking for something like this for a while for the various blogs I have.
Content theft is always a potential problem in the back of my mind - its bad that people will steal photos and movies but these days even written text is a target. This will be put on all my blogs from now on

[steved]

I had a big problem with some people scraping my sites and google listings to use for SE only. They were cloaking the site so all you can see is their site with the scraped content hidden from visitors.

I've been using that WP plug for a while. I get some nice traffic from the people scraping from my sites for blogs.