(Reading time: 3 – 5 minutes)
Old Skool Bloggering! We’re taking a trip back in time, to when blogging was new, like last summer. Ok, new to me, but still.
First, a little backstory; context matters.
A week ago I unsubscribed from every one of my 385 RSS feeds.
385 feeds.
The mind boggles… what was I thinking? (we’ve covered some of that ground, more later)
So, Boom! All gone.
I’ve been rebuilding my RSS over the last week, and stopped in to visit one of my favorite pro-bloggers, Gabe Young at Free Blog Help. (Yes, Gabe is a pro, and no, he doesn’t bandy it about.)
Free Blog Help focuses on what I guess you might call “classical” blogging: short, tightly focused articles covering a specific aspect of our craft. In his latest (as of this writing), Gabe found a web scrape thief – and wonders, “now what?”
I was outraged when content theft first happened to me. Adding insult to injury was seeing my article To Digg Or Not To Digg — That is the question posted on Digg, attributed to someone else.
Here’s what I’m doing about it now: not much.
I just don’t care, because I believe this behavior has a limited lifespan preying on unsophisticated users, and my Web Heroes (that’s y’all) are definitely smarter than that. These days, I don’t believe anything on the web that doesn’t have a real face behind it.
That being said, there 7 things you can do about it:
- Avoid using the letters ESS EEE OHH in the title element, url or any header element. Articles with those letters get fully scraped – apparently – within seconds of hitting your feed. It’s truly amazing. It’s like pr0n or something.
- Avoid trending topics in those same elements. I published 2 articles on the EYE PAT this week, and again, both were scraped instantly.
- Consider moving to partial feeds. WordPress doesn’t really handle partial feeds very well, and people generally stink at writing teaser copy, but a partial feed will stop a lot of this.
- Internal linking is how I catch most of it. If you aren’t doing any internal linking, consider making it a regular practice. I’ve heard it’s good for search results too.
- Consider whether fighting it might be a waste of time. I don’t fight it anymore because the last time I tried, I spent hours attempting to determine where the site was actually hosted. Turns out it had some sort of shrouding or something, and none of the hosting companies would own up to it. “Not our problem.”
- Posting your article to Digg right after publishing gets you a time stamp, should that ever be necessary. It will certainly help when someone else posts it to Digg with their attribution.
- Assume the universe will send you customers who are reading your stuff because you wrote it, not because they found some article in a search engine, which is displayed on a content scraper.
Check out Gabe’s articles if you haven’t already:
I hope you enjoyed this little back-to-basics excursion. Sometimes, we get all caught up in the “bigger picture,” and forget it’s made up of little pieces like this.
Hrm… if you thought that “hardening” your blog posts against content theft might be a part of the Blog Maintenance Challenge Curriculum, you might be right!
Here’s a few questions:
- When did you last have something ripped off, and why do you think they wanted your article?
- What did you do about it?
- How did you find out?
To anybody considering it: please please don’t move to a partial feed. You’ll lose a considerable proportion of your RSS readers – myself included – and those people generally won’t bother coming back to your blog to read every article. Partial feeds are too much trouble to bother with, generally.
If you run WordPress, get yourself the “RSS Footer” plugin and set it up so it links back to your original post with your original byline.
Personally I don’t mind if people spread my articles around, so my RSS footer content is this:
(%%BLOGLINK%% and %%POSTLINK%% are resolved by the plugin to link to my blog and the specific post, respectively)
You could put a copyright notice there too, and your name if you’re the only one who posts to your blog.
Now if some scraper pulls your feed, at least you get a backlink out of it :)
.-= Ricky Buchanan´s last blog ..SpeakingFox: Tell Firefox To Talk =-.
That’s a great hint Ricky. Thanks :) Knowing absolutely zero about any of this, I have to ask: Does it really work as you’ve described it? What I mean is, do they really take the entire thing that you’ve written and re-publish exactly as is? If so, you’re right. Doing what you are with your footer is a great idea.
Another rookie question, are these things always done via the RSS feed?
Fascinating stuff :)
.-= Eleanor Edwards´s last blog ..1 Minute Motivator: #FollowFriday @jillmiddleton =-.
It’s almost always done via the RSS feeds as far as I know, yes. And yes, they republish the RSS automatically so the footer gets published too. Here’s an example:
http://accesstechnews.wordpress.com/2010/01/28/accessibility-and-the-ipad-first-impressions/
The “related posts” stuff is in my RSS feed too BTW. Those guys republish everything I post, but I don’t really mind honestly – they do it for a bunch of accessibility blogs and I think it’s done with good intentions. Most scrapers republish stuff on blogs stuffed FULL of advertisements in the hope of making some pennies from that.
.-= Ricky Buchanan´s last blog ..The Ultimate MacSpeech Dictate 1.5 Global Commands List =-.
So actually, this has the potential to be pretty cool no? Depends what you want I guess. For something like Give A Brick where we want everyone everywhere to give a brick, adding that plugin could mean that more folks get to know about us. Sort of beats the cheats at their own game ;)
That said, if I ever saw someone submit something I’d written under their own name to Digg, I’d be pretty peeved ;)
.-= Eleanor Edwards´s last blog ..Why I spent the last 23 minutes singing in the kitchen while my children quarrelled outside =-.
Reverting to partial feeds? Ugh. Don’t know about you, but finding that an interesting blogger uses partial feeds makes me itch to unsubscribe.
Have to admit though that I can also find the latest posts on my favorite people on my Twitter lists and Facebook page so partial feeds can still be an acquired taste. :)
My opinion on this is evolving. At some point I’m going to have to make some hard decisions concerning who, exactly, are my customers, and how best to serve them.
Information without action is a waste of time.
I know I’ll lose readers along the way.
.-= Dave Doolin´s last blog ..Why the Apple iPad Will Make Me More Productive =-.
Thanks Dave,
You’ve introduced me (again!) to something I knew zero about. I need to stop hanging around here, you keep exposing my inadequacies ;)
That said, good to know. Just not even sure what to do with this information, other than maybe try out the footer plugin Ricky mentioned.
.-= Eleanor Edwards´s last blog ..Dr Egg’s Hair Shaving Adventure =-.
You should definitely use the footer plugin. I’m using it myself.
Hmm, inspired by your massive unsubscription mayhem, I think I have to do the same. I’m at 200+ for which only handful I actually read nowadays?
As for content scraping; I do internal linking, not because of scrapers, but because it’s good for everyone, including SEO as you mentioned. Apart from that, I don’t care. I’ve stopped self-submitting to Digg or any other bookmarking site a while ago.
.-= Antti Kokkonen´s last blog ..Achieve nothing – Little advice for getting nowhere =-.
Do it!
You’ll find your way back to where you need to be over time.
And the people that matter (like me, heh…) won’t mind at all. We know you’ll be back if we have something for you, and if not, that’s cool too.
I have a lot more to say about Digg & friends, article worthy.
Just coming back quickly to point 4: “inline” links should really be on your agenda when you write an article (for SEO purposes but also for your readers). Search engine simply LOVE them because they can’t really be manipulated as easily than links in the footer or side bar. Plus the surrounding text give them more context.
.-= Tom@NetAccountant´s last blog ..10 web design conventions that will make your website as good as Amazon.com =-.
Absolutely! I do a fair bit of internal linking, but can be time consuming, and sometimes I slack.
I also use structured linking techniques, where a certain type of article will always have the same kind of links. The Practical WordPress Tips series always links forward and backwards.
I had one of my first original ‘manga’ drawings ripped off a few years back; created the creature from scratch, coloured it digitally, then one of my friends saw it somewhere else. Lol.
Never did find the site though, little annoying.
Reminds me though, I have to go through my articles and do a spot of interlinking again; been a while since the last time I did it.
.-= Heather´s last blog ..The Elf Blacksmith =-.
Put it up again!
It wasn’t very good lol. Think I might have it kicking around somewhere though; we’ll see.
As a thought though, swithering about putting my portfolio on my blog in its own page; good idea?
Yes, put it on it’s own page or set of pages, and find a way to structure it so that people can go as deep as you would like them to go.
Okie doke, in that case I’ll just spend some time this weekend figuring out how to format it correctly; should be fun.
.-= Heather´s last blog ..Friday: Now with added Game and Awesome =-.
You mean someone scraped my eye-paddy-pad article? Hrrm. That’s well, what it is.
.-= Deacon´s last blog ..I’m a Printmaker, Not an Artist =-.
Wow. Between posting my comment above and now, my deliberate practice post was scraped by some site.
On the one hand, they are ripping off my stuff, on the other hand, I am getting a do-follow link out of it, as are you Dave, since I mentioned you in the post.
I guess I could call up GoDaddy and complain to them.
.-= Deacon´s last blog ..I’m a Printmaker, Not an Artist =-.
I’m thinking that I might have to go on a posting spree. This is going freak out everyone here when stuff is going by at 3-4 per day, but I have a bunch of stuff that’s getting backlogged. I’ve got DP on my spreadsheet for near future keyword work.
.-= Dave Doolin´s last blog ..Why Apple’s iPad is Dead On Arrival =-.
Posting… Spree…
Go for it! Sounds like fun to me.
.-= Heather´s last blog ..Friday: Now with added Game and Awesome =-.
Why not try to find popular blogs that accept guest-posting for “feed” the extra posts to?
.-= Tom@NetAccountant´s last blog ..10 web design conventions that will make your website as good as Amazon.com =-.
Once I nail my position in SERPs, I’m happy to spread the word.
What I’ve found is that ideas attach themselves to the person with the most mojo. I’ve seen it over and over. There’s even a discussion rolling along on Third Tribe at the moment. (oops I need to get my affiliate link here).
So, gotta build my mojo.
We’ll be doing some mojo building as part of Blog Maintenance Challenge as well.
.-= Dave Doolin´s last blog ..The Starfish Principle – Trying counts as success =-.
I’m not sure what you mean by ideas attaching themselves to the person with the most mojo – expand??
.-= Ricky Buchanan´s last blog ..Control Your Cable Box With Your Mac On The Cheap! =-.
@Ricky – I have a blog post and blog page coming on how ideas work.
Basically, it’s not fair, but what else is new?
There’s a back story as well. Once I write it all out, you’ll understand why I’m being elliptical.
Interestingly enough, the site that scraped my stuff doesn’t show up in Google, even for a search of the blog title (which sites usually rank 1 or 2 for). Google seems to know this site is junk. The real question, does having a link from a known scam site impact SERP placement for my site?
.-= Deacon´s last blog ..I’m a Printmaker, Not an Artist =-.
One incident I remember was a site that was aggregating sites with content similar to mine into their own blog. I wasn’t too pleased that my stuff was getting posted as theirs. However for at least one of those posts the author of the site created a unique post responding directly to one of the articles they scraped, with a backlink to my site. So it was probably a bad implementation of good intentions. That site lasted about a month before it disappeared. I wouldn’t doubt if some others who were getting scrapped complained.
Only other incident was someone taking my post, translating it into Spanish, and posting it to their blog. No big deal though in that case. They credited my original article, and provided a way for my content to get out to non-english readers. I kind of wish that would happen more often actually.
.-= K. Praslowicz´s last blog ..Alyssa Milano’s Nikon FA =-.
1. Yeah, I’m betting most of the scraping sites have a pretty short half life.
2. How can we enable more translation…? As I think of it, I may have a partial solution. How’s your plugin programming for WordPress?
[EDIT: UPDATE: Folks, go visit Kip and buy his black and white prints. Old school photography, superbly done.]
.-= Dave Doolin´s last blog ..Social Media Overload! You can’t be everywhere… what to do? =-.
I’m probably just clueless but how do you know if your stuff is being swiped? And if you are too clueless to know, are you too clueless to care?
Thanks, that’s an excellent article all by itself. I’m *crushed* for time ATM… I’m going to put this one out to the Heroes:
Anyone care to write up an answer for Ralph? Let me know, and I’ll link to it. (or you can post it here, whatever you want)
I think there is something to being too clueless to care… up to a point… then you need to work out your own strategy. Because it is infuriating.
I found mine out because I had some internal linking in my article. When the scraper’s system posted the article on their site, it fired off a trackback to my site.
.-= K. Praslowicz´s last blog ..Alyssa Milano’s Nikon FA =-.
EVERYTHING I write at ProBlogger gets scraped by a multitude of sites (that’s the ProBlogger cred, not mine), immediately.
My Cleavage stuff – it’s personal and not related to much that makes money (for anyone except me), so not a whole lot of scraping.
Possibly I’m being a bit Pollyanna, but I just don’t care. Maybe I’d get to caring if I saw my stuff ranking higher under someone else’s name – but I doubt that will happen in my subject matter.
(Also, that would require that I ranked highly for any of my keywords. Don’t worry – I’m on it.)
WRT RSS: I’ve abandoned my RSS reader. It is just so accusatory these days.
I prefer receiving posts direct to my e-mail inbox – and so a partial feed would (and does) irritate me.
PS I like what Danielle LaPorte and Chris Guillebeau do with their direct-to-inbox posts (using Aweber, I believe). They make them pretty. I always open them.
When I drop the posting frequency I may send to the list as well. Right now I think it would be too much.
High ranking on relevant keywords = passive income.
On my less-inspired days, I wonder whether it’s any use though. I have this nagging suspicion that any keyword yielding even a few pennies of profit will, at some point, be commandeered by outfits with heavy SEO artillery. We’ll see.
Took me a while but I finally figured out how to send the whole post to the RSS. Didn’t know that was an issue but… It will be interesting to see if anyone bothers to steal my stuff, I think the hunt down and shoot method is good to take care of it. too bad there is not a digital version of that. Thanks for keeping us up to date and interested Dave!
.-= Justin Matthews´s last blog ..My Blog Is Calling And I Must Go! =-.
The first time it happens it sucks.
After a while, you get used to it.
My take is that people will educate themselves at some point, and the yield from ripped off content would drop.
.-= Dave Doolin´s last blog ..Why the Apple iPad Will Make Me More Productive =-.
Let those thieve eat nails (or spiders) and get horrible indigestion. Honestly, I knew that this kind of thievery went on but had no idea that it was so prevalent. I think one of the problems would be centered around too much automation as some services will find and deliver content for you to post – hopefully with credit – or for use as research material for your own, original content.
hmmmm…. it is a conundrum
.-= Valentina´s last blog ..WordPress Direct Review =-.
Ahhahaha!
Seriously, the longer I’m in this, the less I’m caring.
Too busy inventing new stuff!
Did vou update this posts? Because it looks like you linked to the answer to my question. Checking it out now. Thanks again.
.-= Ralph´s last blog ..Saturday Bonus =-.
Excellent!
Post an update!
Love how we think alike and in this case, even about the same time.
Thanks for the plug!
.-= Gabe | freebloghelp.com´s last blog ..Found a web scrape thief – now what? =-.
Gabe, I see this happening all the time. Sometimes it’s fun, other times it peeves me. I had an article in queue last year to publish December 1 on how blogging is like exploring caves… and lo, Elizabeth PW publishes something with cave exploring the same day. Weird.
.-= Dave Doolin´s last blog ..7 Excellent Tips for Handling Content Robbers (’cause you cain’t shoot ‘em) =-.
I know it s*cks, but I will consider the 5th item you mentioned. I personally hate content scraping. If you are asking when was the last time it happened to my blog- my answer is almost every time I published a post! Ridiculous…
.-= Bert Padilla´s last blog ..Selecting the Best Niche Blog =-.
Bert, try putting in a couple of internal links in each article, the RSS footer, and tracking your hits.
Then do the opposite. If you get more traffic with scrapers, let ‘em scrape!
Seriously, the world is changing. I’ll pay – and have many times – twice as much for an ebook which I know is cutting edge and I can email the author, than something out of date on Amazon. Amazon doesn’t care about me.
People will learn to NOT care about scrapers or to do business with them soon enough. Build your reputation and be ready to help them when they appear on your virtual doorstep.
.-= Dave Doolin´s last blog ..Why the Apple iPad Will Make Me More Productive =-.