Promotion or Hijacking?
I’m flattered when another blogger mentions me, my blog, or a post I’ve made. When I see a trackback - I can’t wait to go check it out. Sometimes it leads me to a blog (and I use that term loosely) that is nothing more than a regurgitation of other bloggers posts, including mine. They all look the same - a title, followed by X made the following post on X today. Then, about 90% of my post follows and finally a link to my original post.
The optimist in me would like to think that there is a real person behind those blogs who is genuinely scouting for good content and featuring it in a collection of sorts. But, Since there seems to be zero original content on these things I get the feeling that our content is just being hijacked and used by these so-called bloggers to fill space and make money from adsense ads that run alongside them.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind a bit if another blogger writes about a post I’ve made and includes part of my content - so long as they at least add their own thoughts in their post and a link. But a blog where every single post is a copy/paste of 90% of someone else’s content with no original thought? Looks like it’s just there to hi-jack the search engine traffic and profit from the ads.
Am I wrong? What do you think?
that seems to be a very common practice nowadays… the blogs that do have a name that i can’t remember right now…. :\
Hugo: they’re called “Splogs,” which comes from “spam blog.”
the first trackback i ever got was from such a site. The good news is, they do get shut down regularly.
I had mixed feelings about one such trackback. I actually got some decent traffic from one such hijacked post. Maybe all these Sploggers have banded together, much like us legit guys.
But oh man, it does feel good when someone mentions you legitimately.
Yeah, Scrapers are the pits. Thankfully, Askimet seems to catch most of the ones that try for my site. I also have the Feed Copywrite plug-in on my site which puts this “If you’re not reading this” copywrite tag on every rss feed (that’s how they get your posts), which at least gives everyone reading the trackback your real url. I also have to grit my teeth when they say something like “Arnold wrote this interesting article today” — my name is NOT Arnold.
I do love trackbacks to legit sites, though — what blogger doesn’t?
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I’ve had that happen to me as well. Although it’s annoying, I didn’t think I could do anything about it. So, I just move on.
I have had issues with people doing this to my site too. If they are running google ads on your content then you need to click on the very bottom of the ad where it says ‘ads by google’ to report them for stealing your content.
I have had to do this many times to get my content protected from scrapers or splogs. Just make sure you are not actually clicking on the ad itself becuase you do not want them to make money off your writing.
You can go to copyscape to enter your URL and see if any other sites are copying your work because not all of the scrapers provide a link back to you. I found this out the hard way.
Elliot & Margaret - thanks for putting a name to it. You’ve educated this dumb guy!
Margaret - I’m definitely going to try some of the things you suggested.
Kim - yeah, after some research i was starting to feel the same way. I *shouldn’t* have to spend a day or two protecting my content from thieves. I’m going to try a few things and maybe post about it.
lulugal - I tried reporting to Google. I got an e-mail back that it has to be on paper (like snail mail) and include everything but the name of my first born. They are obviously not interested in solving the problem - i guess as long as the ads are getting clicked google is happy.
The occasional quote is acceptable every now and again, but when the bulk of it is unoriginal content, that when that blog becomes a splog.
I Concur Bob!
It seems that it’s easy enough to find some decent blog content, quote it, link it, and call that a blog in itself.
I’ve decided that I’m going to open a store, but instead all of my products will have extended delayed shipping so I can order them from walmart–oh, and 2x the cost.
No matter how many times a site gets shut down for this there are at least 100 more to take its place. I have had some of my stuff taken too.