RSS Feeds: One Bad Scraper Foiled – Success with Google
After receiving a Google Alert with my domain name on it (for link:www.untwistedvortex.com), I found a website that had scraped 40 of my articles from my full feed, in their entirety, and put them up exactly as retrieved. The website in question, elanso.com, is based in China so it's not like I could get my point across even if I did find out who owned the site. Last week, I reported the site to Google and a day later, found they had 39 more articles than what I found before (for a total of 79).
A few minutes ago, I entered "site:elanso.com untwistedvortex.com" into my Google search box and found they were still there, but with this under each post title link: This site may harm your computer.
In my opinion, de-indexing the site would have been enough, but this is like icing on the cake. Anyone arriving at the site using Google's search engine will think twice seriously before bypassing the warning. In this case, I didn't even need to use the free and easy way to defeat the scraper.
Whoever says that Google doesn't act on spam notifications will change their tune when they see something like this.
(Update 2008-08-22: The success was short-lived. The pages are still there and that message is gone. I sent an email message to the contact address but I don't expect cooperation since the site is in China.)
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I just tried the elanso.com untwistedvortex.com Cool!
I have a blogging buddy that this has happened to. I'm sending her the link to this post. Thanks RT. Have a great day.
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Wow, that is excellent news. Someone from India scraped by site recently and I was wondering how to stop him especially since he did not respond to my cease and desist order. It looks like you provide the solution — I owe you my gratitude. Thank you.
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I am wondering, why people do so even knowing that what would be the end. I am amazed that they can do it even better and very well instead of copying all that content. I think they are not honest with their business and such persons should be penalized.
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Good for you! I just worry sometimes that Big G might get too loose with the penalties without really investigating. I would hate for this to become a way your competitor could get you slapped. But in your case, it sounds righteous.
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I'm sure Google maintains a list of competitors that pull that stunt after you request reconsideration more than once.
Wow, I've had plenty of my stuff stolen and I've reported it to the G, but I've never seen them do anything. Congratulations!
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Good to hear that Google takes this seriously. People who steal content need to be smacked down.