Plagiarists, Content Scrapers, and other Thieves

[Tejas]

So far, I only have about a half-dozen articles out in the directories, but have found that they've been stolen and posted to many sites without my resource box, byline, or backlinks.

I've had good success getting many of these thieves shut down by Google, Wordpress, affiliate managers, and even a web host or two, but it's time I'd rather be spending on more productive things.

Do any of you concern yourselves with policing your articles, and trying to ensure that you have proper credit? Or do you just consider plagiarism part of the cost of doing business. It just kind of burns my *** when I see someone steal a bunch of content from other sites, throw up some adsense and a few affiliate links, and profit without doing any of the work.

Should I let go of this?

Tejas

[Jim Hutchinson]

Hi Tejas

When I post articles, I include a statement that allows others to use the article, providing the links and copyright remain intact. That way I am giving it to them with limitations.

From a search engine point of view, any identical page or article that is submitted after mine is ignored. If there are excessive submissions for duplicate articles, the offending domain is either blacklisted or put into a dark hole like the Google sandbox, where it rots.

When I want others to use my articles, there are article directories for that purpose. They have strict guidelines to leave the author information in the article so it links back to the site.

Content scraping will always happen. You can consider it a curse, or a compliment. I consider it a compliment that says I have done well enough that others want it too. Although you are right in that if the author information and links are stripped, it is a slap in the face because the person who stole it is too lazy to write their own.

If you have the time to chase after offenders, then go for it to reduce the possibility of them benefiting from your work.

I have seen some blogs that will purposely spell a word wrong or throw one in there that makes no sense. That makes the tracking even easier.

[Tejas]

Hi Jim -

Like you, articles that I post in the directories clearly state that they are free for the taking, provided the user includes my entire resource box, complete with backlinks to my site.

The research that I've done, seems to indicate that the search engines have no way of telling the original article from the ones posted later, and so ALL are demoted in the rankings.

Google alerts are an easy way to track the guys who are too lazy to even change the title, and Copyscape can locate almost all the others, but I can't imagine having a hundred or more articles floating in cyberspace, and trying to keep track of who is using them legitimately, and who has stolen them. You could spend ALL your time on this.

But, I have to admit to a perverse satisfaction when I go back to a page to find it has been shut down, or the adsense and affiliate links have been broken as a result of my effort - however temporary this result may be.

Tejas

[Jim Hutchinson]