Auto blogs, Scrapper sites, Splogs, call it whatever you like, they all does the same thing. Steal contents. Used mainly by people who wants to make money the fast and easy way, because all they have to do is to install the script, set the keywords they want their contents to be based upon, then sit back and let the automated script do the work. The script will pull in contents from all over the world, populating the site within hours with related contents. They can even back date the published posts a few years back in time to make the site look like an established one with fresh contents being added every day.
Favourite targets are sites related to Making Money Online, Blogging, SEO, Technology, Credit Cards and other highly searched niche. Try writing a post about Making Money Online and the next day, you will see a long list of trackbacks in your spam folder.
There is really no way to stop these fellows from stealing your contents. As RSS feeds are easily accessible to anyone, automated scripts can have a field day with your feeds. Some have resorted to putting a short warning note in their feeds header to thwart these thieves but I feel this will hardly do any good. Robots don’t understand threats.
I too have fiddled with scrapper sites, or at least Google considers them to be scrapped. Scripts like Build A Niche Store or BANs for short, scraps product listings from eBay depending on the products you want to promote in your site. If I set my keywords to Men’s Clothing for example, within minutes, I can have a full fledged site with hundreds of pages containing keyword rich listings on products related to Men’s Clothing.
Then there was another script that was even more powerful than the BANs script. The Niche Devil not only can populate the site with products from eBay, Amazon and even Clickbank, it can also scrap related images from Flicker, related videos from YouTube and best of all it can automatically and randomly generate articles related to your keywords on each refresh. All this is suppose to blind Google from seeing it as a scrapper site.
When we create these sites, very little time is needed in the creation period. The bulk of the time is spent on link building to get the site indexed and ranked in the Search Results. However, Google is smarter than we thought and it will take more than just automated contents to fool them. Within days after getting indexed, the whole site will get de-indexed to kingdom come with no chance whatsoever of appearing anymore in their Search Results, at least for the duration your mortal life span.
The 2 mentioned scripts are no more available The last I heard, BANs has been sold and Niche Devil, being too hot to handle, was taken off the shelf within weeks after it launched.
However, autoblogging scripts are still rampantly available and thousands are using it to make money from Adsense using contents ripped from others. Marketers selling these scripts screams out that you can make thousands of dollars per month without doing anything. There are even free WordPress pluginns that allows you to do this.
Do Google takes this practices kindly?
Someone asked Matt Cutts about it in a very non committal way.
And Matt Cutts tries to be very diplomatic in his answer. Maybe it is because Google is really having a tough time weeding out these Auto Blogging sites.
If you don’t quite get what is being asked, here is a comprehension of the question.
Q. I am running some autoblogging sites, will Google penalize me?
And here is the comprehension of the answer that Matt Cutts is trying so hard to cover up.
A. Yes we do! Once we find out your site is stealing or scrapping contents, you are doomed for life.
America’s Funniest Video…..? My big foot.