What the Heck is a Scraper and Why are they Stealing My Content?

Scrapers!  In the old days, they called them plagiarists.  In the old, old days, they called them train robbers!  Scrapers are websites that steal content from websites that publish original content.  They are associated with SPAM and rightly so, since they are practically stealing your content and your traffic, rather than directing attention to your page, which is the polite thing to do.

Some scrapers are classy about it…they may only copy part of your article and give you a link and credit.  (This may or may not upset you, depending on your SEO strategy)  Others, however, may steal your entire article and not list your name or link to you at all!  It’s hard to combat this form of virtual thievery because you’re usually not dealing with a plagiarist author who can be easily identified and reached.  You’re dealing with SPAM litterers and they could be halfway across the world for all you know.

They make money by advertising and usually do so with AdSense.  Though they are technically illegal, it may be hard to contact anyone at the site who is willing to respond.  Your options for remedying the situation are as follows:  You can try to contact the webmaster or comment publically on their blog stating copyright violation (but be carefully about using your own email address in case you get put on the SPAM list).  Or, you can state on all of your posts that you enforce copyright law and hope to scare scrapers away.

Here’s another option:  Access the Robots.txt file in your file directory to “disallow” searches from certain robots.  Disallow a specific file and then record all traffic, the ones who continue to visit it (since major search engine robots respect the Robots file) are probably spam searchers.  Now you can trace the IP address and all other unauthorized referrers and user agents and block them all.  (Or have some fun, by sending them to a custom page or redirecting them to themselves…and crash!)

The good news is that major search engines are fighting against scrapers, as they have tools for detecting duplicate articles, and always strive to put the first published article higher on the list than repeats.  Search engines, manned by robots as well as human editors, can tell the difference between scraper sites, original blogs, and re-published blogs on article directories.

However, it is good to know, for reference, what to do about these modern day train robbers!