Sometimes it seems as though the internet is full of thieves. When I first started my blog I noticed that my high resolution finished pictures were being stolen. That lead me to learn how to place an unobtrusive water mark into my images.
Now it seems my posts are being stolen word for word and published to sites full of ads. I guess I should be flattered, that some one thinks my posts are worthy of stealing. But they don’t even include a link back to my site. If I even get the idea for one of my posts from another site I always make sure to credit that resource. I would ask people do the same for me.
It turns out this is common practice out there in the big bad internet. They even have a term for it - Blog Scraping. Well I thought there was nothing I could do about it until I came across this post.
I was all set to add some code to my site when I thought “Hey I should just make a plug in to do this.”. Thats when the light bulb went on, and I realized that there probably was a plug in already written for that. So I resolved that I would search first to see if there was a plug in out there already made. Well it just so happens that some one beat me to the punch in writing the plug in. If your running word press you should check out Joost de Valk’s SEO Blog to grab a plug in that inserts a link back to your site in your RSS feeds.
I really don’t know what else one can do to prevent these Blog Scrapers from stealing your content. But if you know some better ways please tell me how in the comments.
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12 responses so far ↓
1 Joost de Valk // Jan 11, 2008 at 6:24 am
I’m glad you like my plugin, thx for the link!
2 Nicole in Kuwait // Jan 11, 2008 at 6:27 am
Shoemoney has posted about this today as well.
I like that idea too.
Mine was a bit harsher.
Get a good hacker and let him bug the site a bit for a while
3 Joost de Valk // Jan 11, 2008 at 6:28 am
Nicole: Shoe linked to my plugin
I made it on his request 
4 Ben // Jan 11, 2008 at 5:03 pm
Joost, no need to thank me for the link. You made a great plug in and I thank you for it.
5 Nicole in Kuwait // Jan 11, 2008 at 8:21 pm
Ahhh - doooh - too much Internet mushes my brain cells
(*Still hasn’t figured out how th Plugin will work, but is sure she will one day*)
Does that Baby work for b2evolution blogs as well?
6 Nicole in Kuwait // Jan 11, 2008 at 8:30 pm
Btw. you have a Typo in your title (unless I can’t spell no more
)
And my provider seems not to like Joost’s website
All I get is a blank page no matter which link I try.
I love Kuwait…
I’ll try later again, sigh….
7 Ben // Jan 11, 2008 at 8:33 pm
I had trouble accessing Joost’s website too, I think his server is having troubles handling the traffic surge. Btw thanks for pointing out the typo…
8 Nicole in Kuwait // Jan 11, 2008 at 8:40 pm
Oh, ok.
You’re welcome
9 Wogan May // Jan 13, 2008 at 8:38 pm
That was really clever, heh. I don’t see my blog being scraped yet, but it’s very likely, given the sort of things I blog about. Maybe I should get that plugin too…
10 Ben // Jan 13, 2008 at 8:42 pm
If you run Word Press and Adsense consider signing up to beta test my new adsense plug in for wordpress.
11 Ben // Jan 27, 2008 at 8:10 pm
Once again, I noticed my posts being stolen. So this time I left a comment on the thief’s blog, plus wrote e-mails to all the advertisers about the plagiarism.
I am going to have to become a vigilante I guess.
12 duesearee // Feb 9, 2008 at 9:13 am
I’d prefer reading in my native language, because my knowledge of your languange is no so well. But it was interesting! Look for some my links:
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