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I would like everybody to view this thread as an opportunity to learn something from somebody who is very knowledgable about SEO – Janet.
Never heard of janet in any SEO circle, sorry janet nothing personal. Maybe he/she goes by another name in the SEO world.
I was into SEO long before there was SEO. Just google my nick… I been in there with all the big SEO boys and I don’t agree with Janet, stealing is still stealing no matter how you want to spin it. Stealing a sentence from one of my pages is still stealing… Stealing several sentences and using a script to join them all together is still stealing. You see its the intent… a scraper intends to steal…
I do agree that for most of the sites targeted by this 888 moron will not be effected as they are mostly “trusted” hub sites.
what the scrappers in my mind are doing can be compared right now in the legal system to something like tax planning.
I think Axl’s first post in this thread was right.
888 is not the topic here at all, if you think so – you missed quite a bit from the information discussed here
it is just like saying in the context of a discussion on fighting cancer that i do not think that a public ban on a specific movie where the actors smoke cigaretes from a certain brand, is somthing i would do since the movie itself has a very good script and background music and i enjoyed seeing it.
the issue of the discussion is the phanomena of BH using scraped content to build their sites, it’s REAL affect on us all and what we can do to stay ahead in this game, my basic message is that if you will do a half decent work in SEO on your sites, and taking care of proper link promotion you will surly beat the hell out of the scrappers , this IMHO should be the long term strategy, you can not fight scrapper site by complaining since ‘00000 more of them where created while i was writing this post, you can not catch and complain, this is a war to lose, the other avenue is fighting the money flow where is you will read my prev. posts on this thread is again IMHO not realistic since PPC anagines compete on listings in other PPC engaines and we all compete there and also the vendors so the flow of money will be there
the issue of teh discussion is not even if scrapping is legit or not in the eyes of the law, i belive it is legit looking at what the law says , you say not, it is OK, take it to the court and let it decides, if you feel you are right, based on the things i said before i think you will lose.
now here is what i am trying to repeat over and over again:
the only long term strategy is to do a proper work, if you want google and other SE traffic you will need to invest more into undestanding and implementing SEO, if you do not want to do that, look for other evenues to bring visitors to your site.that is all, let’s continue the discussion if you disagree to my last point, for therest we all know where each one stands
this thread will surly not resolve it
Janet, I respect the attempt at positive PR here, but you likely bit off more than anyone can chew with this thread.
I doubt anyone could convince this communty of hardworking webmasters that other people feeding off their work are ok. It’s not going to happen, because really, laws or no laws, it is not ok and it is theft and it does hurt people and it needs to be brought under control.
It’s the blackhatters that need to adjust their business model, not us.
And, unfortunately, as long as there are malicious blackhat attacks on white hat sites by 888 paid entities, every discussion of this subject will revert to 888.
This thread has a better chance of growing into a useful exchange once 888 reels in it’s rogue blackhatter.
Quote:my basic message is that if you will do a half decent work in SEO on your sites, and taking care of proper link promotion you will surly beat the hell out of the scrappersThen where is the problem?
If just a little basic SEO can make you immune to the scrapers ill effects, there is no problem at all as far as I can see.
Every SEO, Designer, or Web Promoter worth their salt has been saying the same thing for years, build a good site for the users and you will rise in the SERP… So why should we make a fuss about a few Webmasters that have not been following this advice and have left their sites open to attack (for lack of a better word) from scrapers?
But the fact is, that if your site is not a “trusted” site, the scrapers can and will hurt your site.
See I don’t agree with this, just build good sites and you will be OK. I have seen too many good sites get destroyed by creeps like this. So I like to take a more active roll when someone attacks me or mine.
I think someone once said the best defense is a good offense, I agree with that.
so enlighten us , what is your strategy to fight back, this is what we all want to get a clear understanding of, starting from the 1st post on this thread.
my plan is for you to show me a strategy, i will take a real life example and explain why it will not work, you will debate it and we may at the end get into an effectrive way to do it.
i am sure that for the people who will read this thread it will be a VERY intresting expirence just to see the debate, sort of being a fly on the wall at 2:00 AM in pubconfs meetings or in the panelist backroom betwen lecturing sessions (which i hardly miss any of these places during the year)
now this will b educational to everyone.Sure are a lot of edited posts here
Janet – There are smaller sites that get bumped down the SERPS quite a bit by fairly useless scrapers. It is quite obvious that many of the scrapers are using linkspam to rank higher as well – guestbooks, blogspam, and many, many others. As a younger WH site, it is not possible to compete. By competing, you must spam links in order to rank quickly. Doing this means spaming places that are NOT related to the industry. AND – if you do this, eventually, when the SE’s finally get it fixed – your little ole WH site will also get the shaft.
So – how can it be fixed? How does one re-gain SERPS when the sites beating them have tens of thousands of links?
I guess I just want to re-gain what I have had in the past on many of my sites, but it can be difficult when this is what you are up against.
yep, this is exactly why I am waiting for lots0 reply on what his suggested strategy, so we will all be able to fight back with the scrappers.
With the exception of malicious retaliation (which is a definite possibility and the form of this should not be discussed in public in any case), the only way to stop it is to cut off the money supply.
That means enlisting the support of the affiliate programs, and many are supporting us already.
If no one pays scrapers, they will not scrape.
Correct, at least in our own industry for keywords that we recognize. For the millions of other bottom feeding keywords, we would never find the sites and they would keep on living because the affiliate managers are not going to go searching for them. It would be a 24/7 job!
In other industries, there is adsense dollars to be gained, CJ, and a bunch of other stuff that will keep them alive. They will always try to traverse into our niche due to the aggressive marketing of affiliate programs.
I don’t see a way to stop any but the largest, most dominant of them.
dom,
i suggest you take a look again on the last example we discussed in PM, they are sending their traffic to a small PPC engaine which sells advertisment to many affiliates here, some vendors and other ppc engaines along with ebay and other directory sites.
i do not see the fact that they will go into other industries since there is no adsense PPC money in this industry, there are many many other PPC publishers that do work in the gambling industry and will be mor ethen willing to take the traffic , there are ‘000 of them.
and since everyone (including the other PPC engines) are buying PPC traffic and clicks from all of the othert PPc engaines you as a buyer of the final PPC click have no idea where the traffic really was originated, it may have started from a scraper, the click was sent to a small PPC engaine which a larger site like ebay bought traffic on, where ebat presented some overture PPC feed whicj you bought traffic on .I would love to understand how do you stop the money flowing here, i am clueless
Hehe,
one more “PPC” in that paragraph and I would have been completely lost.
Nope, can’t stop the money flow there.
In that case one has to fight fire with fire.
Janet, I like your style, I think I will enjoy the attempted thrashing by you
But you know, I think it would very cool if you were to answer my question first.
“What is the problem?”
If like you said,
Quote:“…my basic message is that if you will do a half decent work in SEO on your sites, and taking care of proper link promotion you will surly beat the hell out of the scrappers…”Then every honest hard working Webmaster would be beating the hell out of the scrapers and no one would have any problems with scraping… But we all know that is not the case.
Janet I do not disagree with you about building good sites, it really is the only way to go. I just disagree that building a good site is ALL you can do to protect yourself.
As for my plan of action. Well… I do not intend to sit around and cry about someone stealing my content or attacking my site (well actually I will whine and bitch about it a lot and I do mean a lot… I just can’t help myself). But I also intend to continue to take whatever actions I can to protect my property from attack and theft.
BTW – Make no mistake, the current scraping attempt by 888 on all the sites that blacklisted them is an attack and not just some lame attempted theft.
Simple things like blocking all but known and approved bots from your site and block any browsers that act like a bot. There is no one single solution, a combination of actions are required. Protect your site first, then there are things you can do like reporting the scrapers to the affiliate programs, search engines, their ISP or their Host if they are using a Hosting company and report phony domain registrations. These things are all a pain in the ass and they take time and some effort but they do work when used in concert… most of the time. There are also several places like CAP where these scumbags and their actions can be brought to public attention and people can work together to stomp out these parasites (kinda like we are doing now).
Then if all these actions fail… I personally like to turn down the lights and take the gloves off… and no I am not going to discuss what I mean by that.
lots0 wrote:Janet I do not disagree with you about building good sites, it really is the only way to go. I just disagree that building a good site is ALL you can do to protect yourself.if this is what you understood then, i was not explaining my self right, building good sites is only a small part of the solution to be done by the webmaster, doing SEO is much more then this, linkage, directories and all of the text book stuff, I fully agree with you on this point.
lots0 wrote:As for my plan of action. Well… I do not intend to sit around and cry about someone stealing my content or attacking my site (well actually I will whine and bitch about it a lot and I do mean a lot… I just can’t help myself). But I also intend to continue to take whatever actions I can to protect my property from attack and theft.I like this, i am trying to learn from you here what can be done since i have the same attitute
lots0 wrote:BTW – Make no mistake, the current scraping attempt by 888 on all the sites that blacklisted them is an attack and not just some lame attempted theft.I never looked into it this way but if you say so i am sure you can back it up, since it is not the issue of the thread i will not dig here into it but would love you or someone who has knowladge about this to open up another thread and discuss this there, i think from the educational prespective it can be very educating for a lot of people and can drive some hard reactions if what you are saying is right, I am simply the sort of person that usually do not jump into conclousions and the fact that there is FUD that someone spread is not a fact, i am always looking for the fact (I think most of the good SEO take the same way of thinking since so much fake info is out there where people speculated and after the speculation being posted a few times other readers see this as a fact)
now let’s get into the real meat here:
lots0 wrote:Simple things like blocking all but known and approved bots from your site and block any browsers that act like a bot.no, they will either go to the google cache or the internet archive or simply take the snippets from the SERPs, unless you want to block google :popcorn:
lots0 wrote:There is no one single solution, a combination of actions are required. Protect your site firsttrue, this is a good strategy , but how, blocking the spiders will not do it6 since your content is published in the SE and other services (even cashe devices of ISPs which is scraped
lots0 wrote:then there are things you can do like reporting the scrapers to the affiliate programs, search engines, their ISP or their Host if they are using a Hosting company and report phony domain registrations. These things are all a pain in the ass and they take time and some effort but they do work when used in concert… most of the time.all true, but lets get a reality check , we all know that in the race between creatng scraper sites and reporting them, there is no way you can catch up. they will win the race, some of their sites will be banned most of them not.
lots0 wrote:There are also several places like CAP where these scumbags and their actions can be brought to public attention and people can work together to stomp out these parasites (kinda like we are doing now).ok, work together doing what, this is what we are trying to nail down, how do you fight, in a menner that you have a chance
lots0 wrote:Then if all these actions fail… I personally like to turn down the lights and take the gloves off… and no I am not going to discuss what I mean by that.
yep, I do read you load and clear, but how may people here have the capability of doing it , or even to intention to get into something which meight put them in gail
In regard to your “revenge” or “wanted dead or alive” scenario, there is an old adage that states: “every time you seek revenge, bring two shovels.” Not only will you dig a grave for the one you seek, but you will dig one for yourself as well. Revenge does not work!
what does work, i do not know, as i see it we are still trying to find this out, so please everyone IDEAS … we can expand the discussion, the more people thinking about the subject the better chances are that we will find a solution
(or not :banger: )Janet wrote:Take a deep breath, re-read it and think before you comment.
The bulk of posts are revealing that not many are re-reading and thinking before commenting.I’m hoping that we can dig into this and come up with some good information as to how we can attempt to solve the scraping issue. Hard to do when so many insist on missunderstanding the original post.
In no way did I read in that that anybody was condoning scraping. Did I miss something? I don’t think so.
Janet’s first post said, to cut a long story short, that most of the scrapers are taking such little bits of content that we’d have a very hard time finding justice through the usual channels. That it wouldn’t be considered by the courts or by the search engines to be copyright infringement.
He went on to say that perhaps only google etal can ever do anything to correct this issue.
He told us that, in his investigations, he found that many of the scraper sites were not directly affiliated with the programs – but were doing some kind of ppc thing that’s over my head. (I kinda get it, but not entirely)
This thread is an invitation for all of us to put our heads together and figure out if there is anything concrete that can be done about the thousands of scraper sites going up daily.
Also said was that all those scraper sites masquerading as directories that are linking to the sites they’ve taking scraps of content from were actually helping us out in the serps. That’s an interesting thought and I would like to know more about this.
I hope I have the facts right, correct me if I’m wrong, please.
One question that I thought was a good one, was what can we do to compete against the sites when they have obtained so many backlinks via blog spam?
:drunk2:
