Posted on October 16, 2007 - by Justin Hartman
So I’m pissed. How can I stop this?
Yesterday I wrote a post called Using Social Media to track the Mondli arrest which highlighted my efforts in setting up Jaiku to aggregate what’s been written about in the Mondli Makhanya affair.
Within hours I stumbled upon the follow two websites.
Now this kind of thing is happening almost every single time I post a new item and it’s really pissing me off. Not only is my content being scraped but I’m sure this is having an effect on my Google rank? The only good thing about these above-two sites is that they’ve swapped the order of the words in my heading around so it almost looks unique but still……
I have to figure out a way to stop this but I just don’t know how.
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I am the MD and co-founder of 
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October 16, 2007
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Are they picking up your feeds ? If so why not put a copyright into them ? Or better yet get hold of Blogger – they look like blogger sites and report them for abuse
“COPYRIGHT: It is our policy to respond to clear notices of alleged copyright infringement. More information about our copyright procedures can be found”
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October 16, 2007
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I discovered this morning that the BMW Press Room is experiencing exactly the same issues.
If it was my own feed, heck, I’d throw some affiliate links in at the end of each post in case someone actually clicks on them!
seriously though, i’d also be interested in finding out about possible duplicate content penalties.
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October 16, 2007
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I did some searching and the only sure fire answer I could find anywhere was to turn your posts into images..
But thats defeatist cause you loose your optimization by doing that as google can’t “see” the text in the images.
Anyways It’s obviously automated stuff.
Visit My Website
October 16, 2007
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update
Just did a whois on the offending site, and see that they’re hosted on dreamhost.
I sent Dreamhost customer services and email which contained the following:
“We have noticed that http://www.bmwowners.org which is hosted on your servers is illegally scraping content from our Press Room http://www.bmw.co.za/press This site is clearly a spam blog and apart from ripping off our content, it’s dirtying the neighbourhood on that IP address which is not good for SEO reasons.”
will see what/if anything happens.
Visit My Website
October 16, 2007
Permalink
Are they picking up your feeds ? If so why not put a copyright into them ? Or better yet get hold of Blogger – they look like blogger sites and report them for abuse
“COPYRIGHT: It is our policy to respond to clear notices of alleged copyright infringement. More information about our copyright procedures can be found”
Visit My Website
October 16, 2007
Permalink
I discovered this morning that the BMW Press Room is experiencing exactly the same issues.
If it was my own feed, heck, I'd throw some affiliate links in at the end of each post in case someone actually clicks on them!
seriously though, i'd also be interested in finding out about possible duplicate content penalties.
Visit My Website
October 16, 2007
Permalink
I did some searching and the only sure fire answer I could find anywhere was to turn your posts into images..
But thats defeatist cause you loose your optimization by doing that as google can't “see” the text in the images.
Anyways It's obviously automated stuff.
Visit My Website
October 16, 2007
Permalink
update
Just did a whois on the offending site, and see that they're hosted on dreamhost.
I sent Dreamhost customer services and email which contained the following:
“We have noticed that http://www.bmwowners.org which is hosted on your servers is illegally scraping content from our Press Room http://www.bmw.co.za/press This site is clearly a spam blog and apart from ripping off our content, it's dirtying the neighbourhood on that IP address which is not good for SEO reasons.”
will see what/if anything happens.
Visit My Website
October 17, 2007
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Yep, welcome to the splogs, where your content is plastered all over spam blogs in hopes that they’ll make a few cents off of some poor sod clicking on a Google link…
It sucks, but I haven’t really found a solution for it.
Visit My Website
October 17, 2007
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Yep, welcome to the splogs, where your content is plastered all over spam blogs in hopes that they'll make a few cents off of some poor sod clicking on a Google link…
It sucks, but I haven't really found a solution for it.
Visit My Website
October 17, 2007
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I was having the same problem with my posts to Thought Leader. I’ll leave it to Vince to sort out …
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October 17, 2007
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I’ve noticed it happening with the Bizcommunity.com blog, too.
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October 17, 2007
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I was having the same problem with my posts to Thought Leader. I'll leave it to Vince to sort out …
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October 17, 2007
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gMK: The problem with contacting Blogger is that you’ll always be chasing your tail. There is no way to contact them each time you happen to find a Blogger site stealing your content.
Agent Craig: Yeah I guess turning your posts into images is just no practical
thescott: You also have a valid point man, maybe I should add some affiliate links because clearly this is an automated process. Could make some decent revenue and it will be needed if Google ban our sites for duplicate content.
I’m going to try and see if there is a way to fix this. Still come up with nothing but I’ll keep looking.
Visit My Website
October 17, 2007
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I've noticed it happening with the Bizcommunity.com blog, too.
Visit My Website
October 17, 2007
Permalink
gMK: The problem with contacting Blogger is that you'll always be chasing your tail. There is no way to contact them each time you happen to find a Blogger site stealing your content.
Agent Craig: Yeah I guess turning your posts into images is just no practical
thescott: You also have a valid point man, maybe I should add some affiliate links because clearly this is an automated process. Could make some decent revenue and it will be needed if Google ban our sites for duplicate content.
I'm going to try and see if there is a way to fix this. Still come up with nothing but I'll keep looking.
Visit My Website
October 18, 2007
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this from Dreamhost:
If a copyrighted work that you own or represent is being used without authorization by a website that DreamHost hosts, you can submit a formal DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) notice requesting removal of the material. While it is not necessary to have a legal professional prepare the document, it is recommended. Any competent intellectual property attorney should be able to draw up a formal DMCA notice in a few minutes.
You can read more about this process, here:
http://abuse.dreamhost.com/copyright/#reporting
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October 18, 2007
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thescott see therein lies the problem. While this might be a route for say BMW to go it’s just impractical for us individual bloggers to even try to do this. As I said, it’s a complete losing battle as we’re always chasing our tails.
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October 18, 2007
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absolutely agree.
I’m trying to work out whether or not its *really* worth our while either – i.e. where does this rank on the priority list? probably quite low down for the moment.
Visit My Website
October 18, 2007
Permalink
this from Dreamhost:
If a copyrighted work that you own or represent is being used without authorization by a website that DreamHost hosts, you can submit a formal DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) notice requesting removal of the material. While it is not necessary to have a legal professional prepare the document, it is recommended. Any competent intellectual property attorney should be able to draw up a formal DMCA notice in a few minutes.
You can read more about this process, here:
http://abuse.dreamhost.com/copyright/#reporting
Visit My Website
October 18, 2007
Permalink
thescott see therein lies the problem. While this might be a route for say BMW to go it's just impractical for us individual bloggers to even try to do this. As I said, it's a complete losing battle as we're always chasing our tails.
Visit My Website
October 18, 2007
Permalink
absolutely agree.
I'm trying to work out whether or not its *really* worth our while either – i.e. where does this rank on the priority list? probably quite low down for the moment.