When I write a blog post, I always want it to be big in terms of popularity. However, I never imagined someone would give one of my post's a dose of Viagra to enhance it's performance. What do you get when you combine a hijacked post, Viagra and a song? No more Mr. Nice Guy (gal)!
I wrote a blog post elsewhere called "Spare Your Advertising Coin During This Tough Economy". I received a Google Alert that led me to another blog and to my surprise, I saw the exact same blog post (picture and all) I wrote but with a twist. The words were a bit scrambled so that it didn't really make sense anymore. The somewhat funny part is that the "blogger" turned it into an advertisement for Viagra! Check it out!
I left a comment there letting the other "blogger" know that I did not appreciate the pirating of my content. Wouldn't you know it, my comment was not published! Honestly, it is probably not a big deal yet I find myself irritated at the situation anyway. Why do people start blogs just to steal content, scramble the words and pass it off as a blog post? Do they actually get any traffic or profit from doing this?
I decided to take Alice Cooper's cue and am taking the road of "No More Mr. Nice Guy" by calling this "blogger" out. Even though it won't really accomplish anything, it gave me a great excuse to play a song! (To tell you the truth, nothing really ruffles my feathers for very long. I am still Ms. Nice Gal, just don't steal my content
!)
9 comments:
Technically you're not dealing with a "blogger" but a scraper. They don't produce any original content of their own, but steal content from feeds they subscribe to. Some use software which automatically replaces words with synonyms to make the theft less obvious. It also has the effect of making the content garbled gibberish.
I've had the same thing happen to me, and I'm sure the scraper has no shame in what they're doing. Their purpose is only to draw eyes to their spam site to get the ad revenue. One thing you can do to protect yourself a bit is to make sure you include some kind of link back to your blog. I try to refer back to at least one other blog post I've done on a related subject, hoping that the reader will click through back to the original source.
Look who's talking. You just hijacked your Dad's theme song.
Yes, but I can get away with most anything because I am Daddy's little girl :)
Hey Kelly
I bet I have a totally opposite view then most of course but here are some facts according to Matt Cutts himself,until just prior to the last update that may of affected you.Google is always doing whats best for them. Google is able to track and identify the original source of any material and changed the algorithm to disregard this penalty.
More importantly to me is I realize that being American the chances of me going hungry are zero.But 3/4 of the people on this planet are not in that situation.I try to think it's some person that is desperately trying to eat and feed their children.Maybe I'm wrong but if someone is stealing to survive and eat I'm not going to stop them.
As far as Moon Zappa sneaking on here and leaving that comment tell her she needs to call me so we can hook up again;)
Thanks so much for being a real person and exhibiting all the makings of a real friend.Many people said to me last night,Hey I'm here because I'm a friend of Kelly's and I had the chance thanks to you to meet some new cool people Thanks
Where's your Buzz button? I mentioned to a tech blogger last night he played stupid and 10 minutes later I see he wrote a post about it like he was on the cutting edge do I have to say something to him about it and how shady he is NOPE;) I already knew that;)Thanks for everything.
People like you keep me motivated.
I will start posting profiles for Bloganese tonight Thanks for always being supportive.
I looked at the site and I actually had something similar to this happen to my site.
I'm not sure how to avoid it apart from contacting the fool who did it to begin with. I don't know what people gain from doing this but my guess is it's not someone "starving" as John suggests. It has to be some sort of spam bot. The same kind that sends spam comments to my blog each day.
Good luch though, Kelly and don't worry, we got your back.
~JB@TheLaunchingPad
"luck" I type too fast sometimes...
thats tough. it seems like you have little to no recourse. there should be some type of directory you can submit copied content websites into, to devalue their seo.
There are legal reports you can file. I've had this sort of thing happen to me 3x now. The first just as you decribed and the last one was a true hijacking on my entire blog from post one to the last. The process of putting the thief out of business is long and arduous - but worth it. My advice would be to back up your blog often and be aware of what's going on - especially strange links and comments left on your blog.
Good for you for calling them out.
That is crazy. There should be something that can be done to blogs/sites that copy stuff like that. Why would advertisers let people get away with it?
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