RSS Feeds: Splog Wars II – The Scrapers Don't Get A Chance To Strike Back
At the request of HMTKSteve of Ramblings from the Marginalized, and because I've been meaning to write this anyway, I'm going to tell you why Google restored my PageRank again.
Never mind that I no longer do sponsored posts. They're all gone and my PR was restored after I requested reconsideration from Google. It dropped again last month, while I was out of the country, and I requested reconsideration again upon returning. The cause for the drop the second time? I'm pretty sure it was splog (scraper/spammer blog) linking effects combined with someone reporting a banner in my left sidebar as a paid link (when it isn't). The latter situation gets my goat because Google dishes out the penalties first, without proof of any kind, and removes the penalties only when you contact them.
I digress. My PageRank dipped because I wasn't paying attention to the sploggers (I had other worries on my mind) for the last couple of months. This mini-tutorial will tell you how I managed to get my PR back up, and a point higher than I expected.
Google XML Sitemap
The Google Webmaster Tools is the starting place, but before you use them, you need to make sure your blog is set up to make it really easy. The first thing to do is include an XML sitemap at the root of your website. There's even a handy WordPress plugin that does the dirty work called Google (XML) Sitemaps Generator for WordPress. Pardon the term, but you can Google for sitemaps for other kinds of websites.
Google Webmaster Tools
If you don't have an account with Google, go to Google webmaster tools and create one. After you've done that, or after you've logged into your Google account, you should find yourself at the "Dashboard". This is where you add your site, upload your sitemap for the first time, and verify site ownership.
The dashboard is also where you do another form of dirty work, as you'll see if you look at the links to the right of the page. You can download data (once the data is populated in their databases), report spam in their indexes (this is where you report sploggers), report paid links (be careful to report verified paid links only — they're pretty easy to spot) and request reconsideration.
Google Alerts
If a splog links to you, you may or may not receive a ping. If you do, so much the better. If not, use Google Alerts to find out when anyone mentions your site anywhere that's indexed by Google. If it isn't indexed by Google (you can find out by searching and I'll explain that in a moment), Google can't and won't do anything about it. Here are the search terms I use for my blog:
link:http://untwistedvortex.com
link:http://www.untwistedvortex.com
Untwisted Vortex
UntwistedVortex
untwistedvortex.com
www.untwistedvortex.com
It may seem like overkill, but this catches them all.
Digital Footprints
When you get a ping or an alert, Google wants to know what search term caused the splog content to appear in their index. I use the FeedEntryHeader WordPress plugin to prepend (yes, it's a word) my copyright information to the beginning of my full feeds. When I search, I search for "2008 RT Cunningham" (with the quotes) and every site using my full feed, scraped to partial or otherwise, pops up. Most are legitimate sites, like social sites, while others are blatantly obvious sploggers.
I just did searches for 2007 and 2008 and found 24 links, all legitimate. There were many more when I first returned to the Philippines and I reported the bad ones.
Request Reconsideration
Don't even bother with requesting reconsideration if you have paid links on your site without rel="nofollow" added to the links. Your request will be denied. Otherwise, go ahead and do it once you've reported all the spam you find. Even if you don't find any spam, and your PR dropped, request reconsideration anyway. People make mistakes.
I shouldn't tell you this, but I will. Even if you have paid links without the "link condom", you should request reconsideration, especially if the paid links are only on certain pages and not sitewide. I don't need to say this, but stay away from payperpost.com and text-link-ads.com — Google has already made it known that they'll penalize you for their links and sponsored posts. Of course, if you don't mind a PR of 0, it really doesn't matter, in which case you shouldn't be reading this.
Contact The Sploggers
Or contact their web hosts, whichever works best (most splogs don't have contact information). Attempt to get the offending page(s) removed so they don't accidentally get indexed by Google again. Remember to preserve the evidence (screenshots work) before contact.
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How do you find splog posts from before you started adding your copyright data to each post?
HMTKSteve's last blog post..Movie Review: Dan in Real Life
That's a hit or miss situation. Use the Google Alerts. Even splogger old posts, when they move in the index, generate alerts.
It may take a week to see results. Request reconsideration when you can't find anymore. Trust me, Google will.
To add to what RT's saying about contacting the hosting service: A great way to find out who's hosting a site is using the "whois" service.
You can always contact the Hosting provider using the abuse@ (host) email address (in most cases).
I think it's better to contact the hosting service (if possible) in most cases. They're more likely to prevent their service from being abused by spammers.
Of course, in some cases they won't co-operate and in some cases, there might be no way to contact them directly.
But it's worth a try to send a email to abuse@ (host) whenever you find a spam blog.
hari's last blog post..CGI scripts have always mystified me
I think it's a waste of time to go after sploggers who aggregate and publish excerpt feeds. You get a link back to your site and the content is too short to have any effect on duplicate content filtering. In fact, you can even turn their greedy laziness to your advantage by using plugins that generate keyword rich anchored links back to your site in the feeds.
Of course, those who steal the full content of your posts are a different story and need to be dealt with more strongly.
Frank C's last blog post..Niche Blog Content Ideas and Experiences
I'm sorry, I didn't mention full or partial feeds. I was talking about full feeds.
You are so smart RT. I actually understood the majority of this. I did the Google alerts because of a post you did a while back. It's amazing how often our blogs or posts are mentioned. Have a great day. :)
Comedy Plus's last blog post..Scotch With Two Drops of Water
Hi,
thanks for the eye-opening info.
I agree with what Frank C. suggests in his comment …
Michael
you are teh awesomes! :razz:
I went back to my google webmaster tools after seeing this post and found my sitemap to have an error and my site wasn't even verified! I also asked for a reconsideration of my drop from pr5 to pr4 on my main page.
many thanks for putting this information in an easy to read format…
Andy Bailey's last blog post..Updated code for Aqua game display
I aims to please. :mrgreen:
[...] is a fantastically useful site to visit, check out Richards excellent post about how to combat splogs and get your pagerank back after being penalized by [...]
One of my blogs went from 4 to 2 the other day. I have just submitted a reinclusion request. It worries me that Google are dropping pr in a somewhat random manner. I'm glad it's not just been that that's had the problem.
For some reason I thought splogging had something to do with um…"adult activities". I guess I was thinking of something else.
Ernie's last blog post..That Word Is Senseless
Hey RT,
Very useful article. I still give a full feed, but if/when my blog gets more popular, I may consider switching to partial. At this point, I'm just happy to have people reading my stuff. At least for the first few times, I think I'd probably feel a little "proud" if somebody deemed it fit to steal. :grin:
Todd Morris's last blog post..Striking the Right Balance Between Family and Business