Recently I noticed that splogs have really taken a twist in a big way. First I had a few of my articles that I submitted to ezine articles used as contents for numerous Blogspot blogs, which I suspect originated from the same person. All these blogs has very “pornish” titles that are purposely given to attract Search Traffic and I don’t think I need to mention that there will be loads of Ads accompanying the post. Just look at a few of the URLs created for their evil purpose.
http://ianvortb.blogspot.com/
http://emailqiiibpa.blogspot.com/2007/10/art-of-writing-good-review.html
http://amateur-cum-shotmrxoni.blogspot.com/2007/10/your-blog-contents-effects-readership.html
Some bloggers have stated that this practise will put us, the victims, into the bad books for content duplication. I really don’t know how far that goes, but for sure, it leaves a very bad taste in my mouth. Maybe a few complains to Blogger will have those blogs terminated or maybe a complain to Google will have their Adsense account terminated and all that they have earned forfeited.
Lately, sploggers turned a little shrewder. Instead of ripping your complete post, they linkback to your articles, giving the original blogger all the credit and topping it up with some apple polishing of their own, writing something like ,”I found this fantastic article while…” or something of that nature. Most of the time, these pingbacks escapes the Akismet net and ends up as trackbacks to that post. You can see a good example in my previous post. I left it there on purpose so all of you can see a perfect example of the stupidity of these bloggers. What he plans to achieve other than making a few Adsense dollars is beyond my comprehension.
The same thing’s happened to my blog. This site would say something like “Larry has just posted a fantastic article…”, then put an excerpt of my post and add a link back to my blog. The entire site is filled with entries like these and loads of Google ads. I don’t think there will be a content duplication penalty because it’s linking back to us, hence, quoting us as the source.
There’s no way to deal with these splogs then?
Nothing is more frustrating than the sense of helplessness seeing these splogs go unpunished. ;-(
Helen: yes, there is actually – it just depends on if you want to take the trouble. When the splogs take an excerpt from your blog without permission, it constitutes an infringement and you can actually issue a takedown order to the blogger and their ISP. If they fail to do so after sufficient notice, you can sue them.