Blog Scraping – have you been a victim?

You own a blog. You publish a nice post. Then you suddenly receive a trackback. Then you smile… thinking that someone got interested in your post. Then you visit the site that linked to you. Then you frown…

You see your entry mixed with other entries in one post. Your nice post now sounded illogical. Worst, your name becomes an alien name..

You’ve just been a victim of Blog Scrapers. I have my own stories to tell.

See the pic below, it says the one who wrote the article was Thomas Ricker.. But i was the one who wrote it! hmpf!

In the next examples, you’ll see that my articles were mixed with another blogger’s article.

And for the last example, it shows again that my article was written by another person. I became Danielle Torres and Jummy! Hahhahah Jummy!

This is Blog Scraping.

Blog scraping, is the process where automated software scans hundreds of thousands of blogs per day, searching for and copying content. The process is sometimes referenced by the name given the software or individuals responsible for the action, “blog scrapers.”

“Scraping” essentially stands for copying, or in the case of copyrighted material, stealing content off a blog that is not owned by the individual initiating the scraping process. The scraped content is often used on Spam blogs or splogs. – source: Wikipedia

Hmmm.. so what can we do to prevent this from happening? Maybe by putting a blog post signature. Put your name at the bottom of the post. Since most blog scraping activities uses a program to lift your article, then it would be able to lift the name of the author as well. You could also put a blog post signature on your feeds.

MiGs
migs.wordpress.com