I recently went to the web and was flabergasted to find my content on another website.
The nerve. Hell, its not an insult, its a damned crime. That's what it is. But what can I do about it?
Yep, there is Houseblogger totally housed on this other website.
Okay, I mention this only tongue in cheek to contrast a recent post about what is an ethical issue, perhaps a legal issue, and a marketing issue.
Now, we all know that Google and the other engines crawl/scrape our pages and sites to list them in the search engine index. That makes us happy, and is a large source of my clients and my income.
However, a recent post by the Phoenix Real Estate Guy about a splog (spam blog) post made me pause and reflect. The gist of his post was that a site scraped several posts off the Phoenix site and listed it on their site as a post. This is very common. However, other than the name itself, their was no link back to the Phoenix site.
Now, I started off bashing Google as doing the same thing to create a contrast. This is the inherant challenge with the web. Just like drug addicts,we are cool that the engines copy and do what they will with our sites.
Webmasters trade not just their copyright, but even personal information and datamining for possible leads. We are willing participants in what would amount to copyright infringement in the old world. However, we accept their intrusions for that sweet elixir called traffic. While the splog in affect does the same thing, and we call that criminal.
It is a complicated issue that a small post cannot answer, but I at least wanted to contrast from the "Phoenix' posting.
Tim - checking for understanding here. You're saying that Google caching my site is the same thing as a spammer taking my content without permission, removing the links, providing no attribution to the original author, and doing this so they generate ad revenue??
Sure Google provides me a service (in the form of delivering traffic). What service does the splogger provide?
Google make no effort to hide, mask and deceive the reader as to who the actual author is. The splog in question made many efforts to hide, mask and deceive.
Google uses my content to deliver traffic to me. The splogger uses my content for their own self-serving purposes.
I don't remotely understand the comparison or similarity between the two.
Posted by: Jay Thompson | July 11, 2007 at 10:58 PM
Jay-
Thanks for your commentary.
When comparing your event and Google spidering, I even said that I am speaking tongue in cheek.
However, the point was to illustrate the inherant problems on the web when it comes to enforcing ethical or legal copyright.
You never asked Google to scrape your site. They just do.
You never asked the splogger to, he just did.
The splogger is gaining much less than Google is off your "data". The splogger does give some retribution as your name is there. Sure they are not giving you a link. So if he gave you a link would it be OK?
Google uses your data not just for its index but to datamine the hell out of you and everyone else. While, this splogger makes a few cents a day off Adsense (Google owned ironically),Google makes gajillions (thats a new bill by the way with President Carter mug on it) mining the web.
But thats cool because at least we get retribution (translate that to TRAFFIC) for our data. Really, what about the clueless agent who blogs and is buried on page 899 of the SERPS? She has her blog fully indexed. Or worse the cat that gets 301 highjacked and loses a $10,000 a month business? (it happens).
But let's look at the "sploggees" and "spiderees".
We on our corporate sites are pristine right? But the comment you write below has a link to your site. Yipee you get a link. Well, no you don't. Unless you count Yahoo,and MSN. Google will not count the link. Yet, people all day long hit my site, and I am sure yours with the intent and belief of getting a link. They write something smart or something lame like "Hey man great idea!" with the hopes of the link. They in fact have bots that do all the work.Am I deceptive because I offer this opportunity to comment and link back?
So I am not defending Google or the Blogger, but nor am I incriminating them. This web is.... well, a web. Thusly it is a mess with issues that are better spent IMHO on doing the business of business than trying to pick out some bad guy. Because, we can all point to a site or company that is doing stuff with data that we may not like. And in that case I would rather pick on "big brother" Google than some guy making a few pennies indirectly supported by Google. I worry much more about what the big G is doing while it spiders sites, often conveniently ignoring disallowed areas of robots.txt.
Handing out free spyware (I mean software) that sticks a thermometer right up our private lives in order to datamine the web to make a better experience (for us or them?).Google analytics, Gmail, Desktop. They got it all.
The theme of my post is not to say you are wrong or the splogger is wrong. I just think people should think about this. As it really is a mess. And to make ethical sense out of it is difficult for most to get their arm around. If this post can get people to think about all this in total and not as a piece of the puzzle, we can get to a much better discussion.
But the biggest challenge is that most have no idea what a splogger is, let alone a blog. Tons of people still type in a URL into a search enigne query instead of the address bar.
Posted by: Tim O'Keefe | July 12, 2007 at 08:39 AM
Thanks Tim, I see where you're coming from a little clearer now.
I've said before, half-jokingly, that Google is going to rule the planet one day. Half-jokingly also implies half-seriously...
I think in many ways I DID ask G to scrape my site. At least they have implicit permission. I *know* they are going to do it, and I *want* to rank well. Mr. Splogger has no such permission, implied or actual. This particular splog gave zero attribution. If my name/URL was imbedded in a post, this guy wasn't bright enough to remove it. But in posts with no internal linkage to any blogs/sites of mine, there was nothing...
I felt more "violated" by the splogger than I do from G. No question though that G has the most to gain. And the three hours or so I spent getting th splog off-line were more than likely a complete waste of time, though there was some satisfaction gained -- which has some value. :)
I take it you're not a fan of the Google Toolbar. *Loved* the "Handing out free spyware (I mean software) that sticks a thermometer right up our private lives in order to datamine the web to make a better experience" statement.
Keep up the great work here!
Posted by: Jay Thompson | July 12, 2007 at 09:01 PM
Jay--
hee hee, thanks for getting my humor :-)
Tim
Posted by: SEO Tim | July 12, 2007 at 09:42 PM
Shouldn't you be flattered that people respect your words enough to put what you think on their blog and give you a link that improves your traffic? If you do not want your words STOLEN, than maybe you should make your website so that no one can steal it, or make it private so that only who you choose can read your sacred words. And with the stealing content POST we are to assume that everything you have written on your blog is "original content" from your own mind and that no words here were taken from news or any other source than you personally, Is that Really True.
Posted by: Crystal L. Cox | July 16, 2007 at 02:53 PM
Tim,
The next step is to get all of the real estate bloggers out there to protect their data from others ever finding it and splogging by putting this code into their robot.txt file.
User-agent: *
Disallow: /
That would do the trick... lol...
Tom
PS If you are reading this post and do not understand the robot.txt file, please do not put this in it. It effectively bans search engines from scanning your site and knocks you out of Google et al...
Posted by: Tom | July 16, 2007 at 05:01 PM
Ouch Tom that would hurt. I guess de-splogging yourself could be dangerous work.
I can see a whole new specialty:
DSO-de splog optimization ;-)
Glad you explained your joke to the newbies. We could have had some really p'off webmasters.
Posted by: SEO Tim | July 16, 2007 at 05:33 PM
Tim, This happened to me today: I was solicited today to be a "featured agent" on a website that caters to investors. While we were on the phone, he suggested I go to their website and check it out. Holy Moly... right there on their website in the commentary about our town was content stolen from one of my blog articles! How ironic is that? I told him I wanted credit for my content. Not sure yet what they're going to do.
Posted by: Carol Williams | July 18, 2007 at 09:21 PM
Crystal Cox wrote:
"Shouldn't you be flattered that people respect your words enough to put what you think on their blog and give you a link that improves your traffic?"
The problem is, many of these sploggers do NOT link back, They steal content and make it look like their own.
"If you do not want your words STOLEN, than maybe you should make your website so that no one can steal it, or make it private so that only who you choose can read your sacred words."
It's virtually impossible to make a public site "theft proof".
And I never claimed my words were "sacred". But they are my words, and my work. Why should someone else profit from them? Is it OK to steal software, books, movies, music, etc?
"And with the stealing content POST we are to assume that everything you have written on your blog is "original content" from your own mind and that no words here were taken from news or any other source than you personally, Is that Really True."
That's a very safe assumption. Of course I've taken "snippets" of other things, properly cited of course. But I don't steal content from anyone.
Posted by: Jay Thompson | July 21, 2007 at 12:40 AM
Well, I am not sure what you mean by this slogging. or such, but if someone is stealing what you write about. I would have to say, that is someone is doing that, they really must like what you have to say, and be flatterd that they are interested in what you have to say.. I would never steal what you have to say word by word but.. I did get some pretty good ideas. and you should feel flatterd that I did.
Hope that helps..
Posted by: anita lewicki | July 21, 2007 at 05:26 AM