Aral Balkan

I just added Joost de Valk's RSS Footer plugin to my blog after reading his post Make the scrapers work for you!

I like scrapers about as much as I like spammers so anything I can do to thwart their efforts is a win in my book! :)

Update: Actually, after some thought, I'm wondering if this plugin is such a good idea after all. At least some scraped sites no doubt will be hosted on sites designated by the various search engines as "bad neighborhoods". Is having incoming links from these areas to your sites really a good thing?

How do you guys deal with scrapers?

Update: I've disabled the RSS Footer plugin for now. Instead, I'm displaying a Creative Commons license on blog posts and I've added the license to the feed also. More here.

Comments

• Hey Aral, though I can understand your thoughts, I would not worry to much about that, if anything, these links will help search engines to acknowledge the right version of the article.

  by Joost de Valk on 2008-01-12 15:25:48

• "Is having incoming links from these areas to your sites really a good thing?" It won't be a bad thing for your site. If Google penalises the linked site, then SEOers could attack well-respected sites by linking to it from dubious sources. Now if _you_ link to the bad neighbourhood, that would be something penalisable. Whether there's any good - I think Joost above nails it. If a bad neighbourhood links to your post, that must mean your post existed first, therefore should have a higher 'original author' score.

  by Isofarro on 2008-01-13 10:49:21

• [...] Arial Balkan notes today that he is using Joost de Valk’s Wordpress RSS Footer plugin, which is what i’ve been using since i restarted my blog. Scrapers use to bother me, but less now. Getting used to it, especially after I added “Copyright © 2007 - David Bisset (davidbisset.com) ID#DAVIDBISSET1701″ at the end of each feed which allows me to easily track via a google search where the scrapers are (in case you were wondering, if you are reading this in your RSS reader). Arial uses a link back, and he questions it - I had the same questions myself. On the safe side for now, I stick with a copyright. How many real human beings are reading the scrapers I wonder? Tags: Plugins, RSS, Scrapers, Wordpress [...]

  by Dealing With Blog Scrapers With Wordpress | David Bisset: Web Designer, Coder, Wordpress Guru on 2008-01-12 18:29:19

• One can also include a lot of links to your other stories (e.g. as we discussed in xxx), such that if they just drop it in as a whole you may get traffic coming in via your copies.

  by Michael Long on 2008-01-12 18:50:14

• I write a blog that nobody cares about. That's how I deal with scrapers! :-P

  by Ara Pehlivanian on 2008-01-13 17:15:39