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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hey RT, AWESOME! Score one for the good guys! ~ Steve
Wow… that's pretty awesome….. though wouldnt you want the backlinks from them?
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They were complete posts and I'd hate be considered the duplicate content instead of them. Besides, I don't want them to make money on my effort.
So that's why I can see that warning on different blogs? I think it is pretty good penalty to those who break into blogs. I am using Google alerts for many keyword but i haven't used it in that way. That's another tip for me and thanks for that.
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This is good news indeed among all the google bashing that has been doing the rounds for a while. Thank you for this information.
Since Google flooded the world with Made For Adsence spam websites, and they just introduced KNOLs to overflow the world with More spam, its good they did something to block a spam site… did you see any "ads by Google" there by any chance?
No, I didn't see any AdSense ads on those pages.
By the way, Google created a revenue stream with AdSense, they didn't create the MFA spam sites. That's like saying the people who made movies created movie pirates. There will always be people to take advantage of something as it wasn't intended.
Wow that was a fast post RT. Google did not create MFA sites but they paid millions and actually hundreds of millions of dollars in impression revenue to garbage sites when they could have easily turned their ads to public service announcements… which is what they did 2 years after the fact. THey knew immediately that they were paying people to create MFA sites and they took a long time to stop it. That is exactly how SPAM works. WHen you send 10,000 emails selling a worthless piece of junk, several people will actually buy it.
If scrapper take all of the content, it's absolutely can give the original writer a negative effect.
How about scrapper take one sentence then make a backlink, what the effect of this ?
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Your post confused me, will you tell me something more that what are you talking about? Is it Skyscraper on the side bar.
Great to hear! I'm still waiting to hear back from Google about my previous complaint, and I've since sent in another one for the same reason. Still haven't heard back.
Are you using the webmaster tools to report it, or am I dense and not doing the reporting correctly?
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Glad to hear G is clamping down on this kind of thing.
It's nice to know that they do listen and act on user input
Hopefully they have removed your content as this warning message is no longer showing in G
Try site:elanso.com untwistedvortex.com
I just did and the warnings are still there for my duplicated pages.
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.