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Sploggers Stole My Blog!
By djelliott999 | February 16, 2008
Last night, I wrote about the importance of having good web exposure if you are involved in the Big Canoe real estate market (as well as any real estate market). In that blog article I discussed how it involves work to create content for web sites. So, this afernoon, I am searching a variety of search engines to see how IBA Mountain Homes is ranking, and I happen upon the exact article I wrote last night in its entirety on another blog. To add insult to injury, there was no link back to the original blog or any mention of the author. Digging further through this “blog”, I found several of IBA Mountain Homes recent articles stolen off our site. The worst part was that a search engine had actually indexed some of these pages and given credit to the offending site!
This is a classic example of ‘I never thought it would happen to me!’ I had read about sploggers, but I always thought they would target something more juicy than North Georgia real estate. I was wrong. So for those of you not sure what sploggers are, let me provide a bit more clarification. The site that stole our content is named Supelog. They use automated programs to scrape other sites for their content. In other words, they go onto other people’s sites, take the articles, and re-post them on their site. To quote directly from the entry on sploggers in wikipedia.com:
The purpose of a splog can be to increase the PageRank or backlink portfolio of affiliate websites, to artificially inflate paid ad impressions from visitors, and/or use the blog as a link outlet to get new sites indexed.
So, the bottom line is these guys steal other people’s work to line their own pockets. As I mentioned earlier, there is additional insult in that sometimes the splogger actually receives credit for your work! But wait! That’s not all! You can actually be penalized by some search engines for having “duplicate content” on your site. So you write the original conent, some schmuck like Suplelog steals it off your site, Suplelog gets the credit for it, and you get penalized. Now isn’t that just dandy?
You’ll noice that I used the name of the splogger, Supelog, numerous times in my blog. They have stolen almosy every one of my blog entries over the past couple weeks. It’ll be interesting to see if they steal this one as well. While I did try to contact them regarding the stolen content, the site appears to be out of some former Eastern Bloc country, so I doubt my efforts at contacting them will yield anything. I will also be investigating some ways to deter these leeches from stealing my content, and I will follow up on that in a different article. Hopefully Supelog the Thief will have moved on to greener pastures by then.
http://ibamountainhomes.com
Life in Big Canoe, Real Estate in the Mountains
Topics: All Posts, Real Estate Marketing |
February 17th, 2008 at 10:17 am
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February 17th, 2008 at 11:15 am
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February 17th, 2008 at 2:10 pm
Hi Dan,
Just read your blog about the Sploggers. I’m with you a thousand percent and I’m hopping mad! Your blogs are probably being targeted by these scumbags because yours and Karin’s blogs are creative, interesting and always very well written. I’ll be venting our feelings about what’s happening today on our blog page on MountainHomeResales.com. We’ll help and support you in any way we can to try to find who’s doing it and ways of stopping them.
Margo and Peter Vallone
February 17th, 2008 at 2:19 pm
Thanks Margo! They still haven’t taken the second offering of bait yet….time will tell!
February 17th, 2008 at 2:23 pm
Dan,
I totally agree with you! It’s unfortunate there are schmucks in this world who would steal blog content from others. I too will support you and help in any way possible to put a halt to splogger parasites.
Don’t let them deter you from your and Karin’s very interesting and informative blogs!
Peter and Margo Vallone