Blogging Tip: Combating Content Theft

Writing by Brick Marketing on Friday, 22 of February , 2008 at 7:11 am

Content theft is now rife within the blogging community and this blogging tip will help you combat some of the content thieves. One of the most irksome trends now is to find a blog that is ‘parked’, filled either with every post that you have written or filled with a variety of posts, some of which are yours and others you recognize from fellow bloggers. Not only that, these ‘parked domains’ are optimized to the hilt with income earning ads, generally but not limited to, Adsense.

How do you combat this type of activity? Once you identify a site that has ’stolen’ your content you should try to follow these blogging tips:

1. If possible, notify the domain owner that the content is yours and that you want it removed.
2. If the domain owner does not respond or if you cannot identify the owner then contact the domain host and advise them of the content theft - or being politically correct, breach of copyright.
3. If Adsense ad units are being used then notify Google - provide them with as much detail as possible - the domain’s URL, the URL of the post with copyrighted content, your URL and contact details and the URL of your original post.
4. While you are at it, request a ban from the search engines. These guys rely on getting referrals from the search engines to get their traffic.

These are quick and easy blogging tips to follow. However it is still a pain in the butt to have to go through these processes particularly if you are busy. The question is, how do you prevent them. There are a couple of blogging tips I can suggest which, whilst it may not stop them, will reduce the damage that stolen content can do. These blogging tips include:

1. Adding your own details to the foot of each post - your blogs name, your blogs URL and the URL of the post (you will need to publish - determine the URL and then edit the post to add it in). Content thieves often don’t actually read all of what they take, they just step in and copy and paste. With your details in the foot of the post you will at least get a link back to your post and of course it is advertising the source. It also makes it easier when you report it to advertisers such as Google. If enabled, this link will also send a trackback when published on another site.
2. Some content thieves are smart enough to remove the footer so also use links within the post that link to other posts on your own blog - it is good SEO practice anyway. Again you will at least have links back and of course some proof of the origin of the post. Again, if enabled, these links will send trackbacks when published elsewhere.
3. If your content is being regularly taken, try to determine when. If you post at the same time everyday, change your routine. Post your article and then keep watching the site. You can bet if your content is being regularly taken then they are watching at the same time each day.
4. This tip is a sneaky tip. If you notice that your content is being taken within 15 to 30 minutes of posting - post a dummy post. You can get cheeky and just write a dummy post that says very little except that it has been stolen from your site. Wait until it has been posted on the thief’s site then delete it from yours and post your normal article. I read one blogger who actually filled the bogus post with totally unacceptable content, waited for it to be posted and then reported them to the domain host. It doesn’t always work, and in the meantime you may get reported - interesting concept though.

My main blogging tip is to act quickly. Report them to Google. Report them to their domain host. With luck they will be closed down before they can do to much damage.

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Category: Blogging Tips

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