How to Put the Kibosh on Content Scrapers & Thieves

March 4, 2010 - Last Modified: July 13, 2010 by Gerald Weber 14,513

If you have been blogging for more than a few months, you have undoubtedly had to deal with content theft on more than occasion.

Since it has been a couple of years since I have written about online content theft, I felt it was the perfect time to write an up-to-date post outlining some of the ways you can catch someone stealing your content, as well as what you can do to protect the content have worked so hard to create.

How to find out if your content is being stolen?

Before I get into the steps you should take when you catch someone stealing your content, let me give you a few ways to find out if your content is being stolen:

The most common way that I have caught content thieves is through trackback notifications. As long as you are receiving trackback notifications via email, you should be able to catch the majority of content scrapers. Just be sure you click through all your pingbacks so that copied posts don’t go unnoticed.

Copyscape is an online service for detecting plagiarism. Their basic service is free for a limited number of searches per day, per domain. They also offer a more advanced paid services called Copyscape Premium and Copysentry. Their Copysentry service will automatically scan the Internet on a daily or weekly basis, and email you whenever new copies of your content are found.

You can also use search engines like Google to detect content theft. The best way to do this is to copy a unique excerpt from your post and paste it into a Google search. If it’s fairly unique, you can also copy your post’s title and paste it into a Google search. Using this technique is a simple but effective way to detect if someone has copied your post word for word.

What Can You Do When You Catch Someone Stealing Your Content?

In addition to several basic steps that you can immediately take, there are also a few extra tricks you can use to protect your content:

Contact the blog or website’s owner and politely ask them to remove the stolen content. 95% of the time, this has been the only step I’ve needed to take. You can use the Whois Lookup from Domain Tools to help you find the blog or website’s owner contact information. On the rare occasions when this isn’t successful, move on to the next steps.
Contact Google and file a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) complaint. In addition to Google giving your site credit for the original content, filing a DMCA complaint may result in Google completely removing a blog or website that is full of stolen content from their index. You can also file a Spam Report with Google to help fight back against content thieves.
Contact the blog or website’s hosting company and file a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) complaint. Hosting companies are required by law to shut down the blog or website until the stolen content is removed. Most reputable hosting companies already have procedures in place for lodging your DMCA complaints with their security or abuse departments. The key to successfully using this technique is that you will need to prove to the hosting company that you were the first one to publish the content. A simple and effective way to do this is by using the free Wayback Machine from Archive.org. This technique has worked for me on several occasions when a blog or website owner refused to remove the stolen content on their own.

Bonus Tips for Dealing with Content Thieves

Credit for this tip goes to my friend Ann Smarty – You can use a free script called Tynt to automatically create a link back to your blog whenever someone copies and pastes content directly from your blog. After you have installed this script on your blog, you can see how it works by copying and pasting a short paragraph from one of your blog posts into Notepad:

Change any hotlinked images to something crazy!

This one will provide you with a good laugh. Below is an example of an image I once used in a stolen post:

Keep in mind that this only works if the thief hotlinks the image from your server, rather than saving the image and uploading it to their own server. You can use this tip manually, but you also can automate the process by using .htaccess and mod rewrite. This short .htaccess tutorial will show you how to automatically change your hotlinked images to whatever alternate image you would like to display.

What strategies have you used to deal with content scrapers? Please share your experiences in the comments!

This post is part of our Guest Blogging contest, if you like it then why not sharing it with your friends by retweeting it? this will give credits to the author and a better chance to win one of our awesome prizes. By the way.. you also can participate in our contest, it’s not late!

About Gerald Weber

Follow @the_gman

Gerald is the President and Founder of Search Engine Marketing Group in Houston TX. He also maintains a Houston SEO blog.

{ 149 Responses }

Ehab Attia says:

Copyscape is Great tool for way to track the content theft from your blog. and try to protect your images also to don't make load to your hosting.
Nick says:

DMCA notifications are useful, though many scrapers and other copyright infringers are not in the US so copyright laws may not be enforceable. In those instances, Google has a DMCA reporting dashboard which makes it pretty easy. https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/dmca-dashboard It never fails to amaze me that some of these clowns will copy almost your entire site (including the parts about creating original content!), then say "prove it" when presented with a DMCA notification. Simple enough with copyscape, wayback, and I have even used things like Diigo or Delicious bookmarks to help prove original publication date.
Razeen Harris says:

I had to deal with content thieves very often and if you contact them asking to remove the links they never reply unless you give some monetary rewards in return. The best way is to file Dmca complaint and ask Google Adsense to ban their account in suspicion for plagiarism
Satrap says:

What a great post Gerald. I have seen my content stolen far too may times that I simply gave up. I mean most of these sites go out of business in a few months or so any way. Most of them are newbies who red on a forum or a blog about autobloggging and they think they can do it by stealing content. Of course, after a few months of not making a dime, they simply give up the site. Of course, its always a good idea to report these things. To be honest, I really didn't know who to turn to. So, I just didn't worry about it too much. I think contacting Google or the host is very good option. Thanks.
Mark says:

Great idea about changing graphics, Gerald. I am sure that people have done this and put up some pretty offensive pictures as a means to deliver a message to scrapers. Hilarious...:) Mark
Olawale Daniel says:

This is very serious. I don't even believe that people can be doing such a thing and still think they can taste success online. Thanks a lot for this awesome information.
Rae says:

This is really great. New things are explored. thanks for sharing this post.
Sietse says:

cool, hadn't heard about Copyscape before. Going to give it a try right away! Of course, that's only to find stuff that already has been copied from your blog. I'm definitely going to try out that Tynt plugin to make sure I get a link back when my articles are copied.
Maria Pavel says:

What can I do if the content is posted on some free webhosting service or blog like blogpost? It happened to me in the past and there was nothing I could do about it..though I am pretty sure these pages weren't stealing any traffic from my website with the copied content. Maria
- Gerald Weber says:
  
  If it is a free blogging platform like blogger, you can contact blogger and lodge a complaint. They have a tos and as far as I know posting unoriginal content is against their tos. In fct I have a friend that had that exact issue and blogger suspended the account of the offender.
  - Maria Pavel says:
    
    Thanks for the tips Gerald, makes a lot of sense to contact the owners of the platform. I recall contacting the owner of the blogger but he didn't bother removing the stolen content! Maria
Vijayraj Reddy says:

Copyscape is the ultimate way to track the content theft for our blog posts...
Navin says:

Thanks for the wonderful article, atcully every blogger need to work against content theft. thanks again.
Tony Smith says:

Thanks. I had now idea about the DMCA or how to deal with content thieves before I read this. Great info!
Tony Smith says:

Thanks for the great article! I had no idea how to deal with content thieves and I didn't know anything about the DMCA. (Okay, I've been living under a rock!) Seriously, thanks for posting this!!!
Rodger says:

Copyscape is a great way to ensure you are not being plagiarized. I did not know about the hotlinked images.
- Vijayraj Reddy says:
  
  Hi Rodger, you can protect the hotlinked images from your hosting account also...
Claire says:

I have know of a couple of other sites hotlinked the images on my site , its actually taking a lot of bandwidth but I don't know how to deal with it properly. I guess you gave me an awesome idea how to do it. Great share. Many thanks!
Justin Germino says:

I just recently purchased the 200 scans for $10 (.05 cents per scan) particularly to check for duplicate content from guest bloggers. I use a combination of copyscape and simple searches on google for my blog title or first 2 sentences to find content thieves on occasion. One good thing to do is put a copyright in your RSS feed by using something like RSS Footer for Wordpress, make it include a copyright statement and a link back to your site.
Tom says:

I'd never thought about changing images! That tip is absolute gold.
Abhimanyu Singhal says:

Thanks for this Copyscape. Although no one's copied my content yet, I will use it regularly in future to prevent plagiarism. Cheers! Abhimanyu
Murray says:

A lot of it comes down to how much am I going to be pissy vs. how much does it really matter - I'd say if a major blog ripped your stuff than yeah, go after it but when it's a scraper - do you really want to spend an hour or more trying to contact the person? Ehhh, just work on new content.
Keith says:

I use Copyscape for written content and Digimarc for images. I also give my image names a little unique tag at the end of the file name. I do not know if this damages my SEO or not, but it makes it much easier to find image thieves. I also occasionally include a unique phrase in text to search for.
Suresh Khanal says:

It is easily sensed that there has been great headache due to the content theft. I saw a few plugins implemented in some blogs that stops you from using copy command. Not only copy command but the whole context menu (the one you get by right clicking) is disabled. It appears a good solution to stop content piracy. But it has another side too: I was writing a post and wished to quote some lines from some other blog. I was not stealing content from any corner. But because the right click on the page was disabled, I had to retype the text in my post. I did it but was not much happy to retype. Has content piracy that trouble so that I should block the legitimate uses as well? I liked the concept of Tynt.
- Gerald Weber says:
  
  Yes Tynt is really cool. I tried one the of disable right clicks plugins (it seemed to sound like a good idea.) but some people like to copy and paste their comments in case something goes wrong. After several complaints I finally uninstalled the plugin.
John says:

Great information here. I love the photo you added for when people take your images. I have a question though. What if you have a blog and you think something is interesting on someone elses, is it ok to post it but give a link to their site to show where you got the information from.
- Gerald Weber says:
  
  I believe there is nothing wrong with writing about something due to being inspired by someone else's post. I do agree that it's good form to link to the post that inspired you. Also most bloggers appreciate when you throw them a link so it's also a great way to get noticed (and possibly make some new friends)
  - John says:
    
    Thanks I have really been wondering about it. I think I will write a post just for him and highlight his blog. There is one in particular that covers all the things I am interested in.
    - Gerald Weber says:
      
      As long as you aren't copying the post word for word. I think it's usually best to maybe cover a point or two not in the original post. (so you are adding something additional to the reader experience) Like I said most bloggers are really pleased when their article inspires another to write something. And this is especially trust if there is a link involved.
Trevor B. Reed says:

Awesome post! I didn't know about the ability to lodge formal complaints with Google and the hosting company. In the past we have just gone public on Twitter with anyone we caught stealing our content. It was RT'ed multiple times and the person took down the content out of shame. I have seen the picture trick and it gets funnier and funnier each time. I will definitely save this post for the next time our content is stolen.
Pritam says:

Yes trackback and Copyscape are both the good way to check if someone steals our contents. If someone copied your content you can simple ask the person to give the credit otherwise you can proceed to make a complain the way you suggested. In one of the article on Google's blog I read that its OK to copy the conetnts as long as you add some extra value to the contents. They don't generally penalize the people use the copied contents this way.
Deborah Schultz says:

Links are good, content scraping is bad, right? There are a lot of gurus out there teaching content scraping as a way to get fast content on a commercial site. As a writer I always thought this was not a good way to do posts, especially in light of duplicate content problems, so I was never tempted. Thanks for the heads up.
TJ McDowell says:

I've found that people who have stolen my content have changed out a few words and called it their own. After they changed the words, it completely didn't make sense. If I remember right, that's called spinning, right? Either way, it doesn't seem like it would be a smart way to build a website.
Nikki May says:

Great post, Gerald. I own several blogs and of late I have been having a problem with my content getting stolen. I have been looking around how for how I can solve this, and I came across your post. Your suggestion of contacting the web master or person concerned and asking them to remove my content is what I have been doing. But it got me wondering: there may be more people stealing some of my content from my other blogs. I am going to get the Tynt script by Ann Smarty you mentioned - I think that is what I need. Changing the hotlinked images to something crazy also sounds like it will teach people that steal content a lesson so that they won't do it again! Thanks again! Nikki M
Warner says:

I use the RSS Footer plugin. Then if they use rss to scrape my content they give me a link. So far I have been too lazy to search them down so I figure this way I at least get a link.
Paul says:

I haven't looked at Tynt, but on a site that had it NoScript prevented it from working - I tested by copy a few lines from the post and pasted them into notepad. No link was shown because the Tynt's JS file couldn't run. I have just added a footer to my RSS feed, that hopefully will help me track down those that scrape my content. After finding them, I will determine what course of action I will take.
Aaron says:

Hi Gerald. I just usually add a plugin that allows me to add a "signature" line to my RSS feed, where most content is stolen from. I just add a signature with the original article URL, main blog URL, and who wrote it. If they do decide to steal the content, at least I get a link back from it as well to the main blog URL :)
AIDY says:

As an up and coming "fierce" blogger myself--I steered myself away from one community owner that was doing just that: scraping content from naive writers like myself, excited about being 'noticed' and what not. This is a handy post, nothing is more aggravating than to see your hard earned content and images being lifted. As soon as I am up and running again, I will be certain to 'kibosh-a-tize' my site. :D
tonyknuckles says:

It doesn't bother me very much about others scraping anything off of my site. Not that big a deal.
Colleen says:

This is weird, but I cannot pull up the comment thread! I was notified via email there was a reply to my comment I left here, but I cannot pull it up. Anyway, just letting the powers in charge know there is a bug. You can delete this comment if and when there is a fix, or whenever ya want! :)
- Hesham says:
  
  You actually got a reply, but because we set the comments options to display 50 comments per page, it moves all comments to another page to avoid too much links on the original post! But you know?!.. This seems not so cool! I will take a look into the system to get more information about this as I think it should at least show something in here! Plz find the previous comments link under the post, it will take you to the comments page!
Colleen says:

We had an entire website plagiarized a few years ago. The only reason I found out was I have a Google alert for my name. When they copied the content they left my name in! Sadly, the website owner was an honest guy, but the website developer simply copied my content and charge the website owner. He removed the stolen content, but I've always wondered how that whole scenario played out between the owner and developer.
- Frank says:
  
  Colleen, many people deal with this unfortunate situation themselves, it can be a very painful and arduous process to have content removed. The company I work for focuses exclusively on doing DMCA Takedowns, we charge $99. to do the job. For people who just want it done it's a pretty good deal. We also offer a 100% money back guarantee though 99% of the time we are successful even if it takes a while. I also know many people do it themselves and that's fine too. We also have some DMCA logos/buttons to help deter thieves from stealing your content. They are at http://www.dmca.com/logos.aspx best frank
Frank says:

Gerald I know this is commercial evangelism but you did miss one option. For those who are not inclined to do it themselves they can simply visit dmca.com and get their stolen content removed for $99 or their money back. We do take-downs all day long and some of them are very time consuming, so $99 is a decent option for some people/companies.
Tola F. says:

Great post Gerald. Came across it for the awards thingy. I can see why you won it. This is a very good post. I've been having this problem now for a few weeks now, I recently installed Tynt, in fact I was going to suggest it if it you had, but Ann beat me too it. So far so good, I haven't had much problem since then. But just in case I'll still have a look at Copyscape and see what that brings. Thanks for the tips... .-= NEW from Tola F. @ SEO For Beginners´s last blog ..Guest Blogging Sites - Great for Bloggers =-.
Keith says:

I found out by happenstance that a site in my niche (owned by a guy I had talked with on the telephone!) had "reprinted" one of my articles word for word. An eBay listing had used a lot of it in the description and it sounded familiar to me so I checked my article. I told the eBayer that he could use it if he linked to my site. He told me that he had copied it from the other site and "thought it was ok". So I got a link from the eBay listing. Then I contacted the owner of the site that had actually copied it from me. Now I have a link from that site (PR5) and my article (on my site) still outranks my article on his site. I have since caught him (or his webmaster, I'm not sure who the actual culprit is, nor does it matter who) stealing content from others. I usually send those people an anonymous email giving them a heads up. These folks don't have to steal my content. I would write them a unique article for the link. In fact, I have a link that says so, all they have to do is ask! I really do not understand content theft, especially since the gains you would make are at best minimal. Great links here to help solve this problem. Thanks. .-= Keith@Norman Rockwell Art´s last blog ..Apr 5, Rosie the Riveter, Norman Rockwell Saturday Evening Post Cover 1943 =-.
- Gerald Weber says:
  
  Keith, You have given me inspiration for an additional way to deal with content theft before it happens. A disclaimer indicating something to the fact of
  "hey please don't copy this content if you want some great content for your blog simply ask me for a guest post."
  Brilliant idea! Thanks!
forlan says:

We should protect us. We can use copyscape. .-= forlan´s last blog ..Do not work as an e-mail maker =-.
chiw says:

thanks for this sooo helping post. ive share it on my facebook :)
- Gerald Weber says:
  
  You're very welcome and thanks for sharing it on Facebook. :-)
David says:

Great info. I hate people stealing my stuff
JD Rucker says:

I can't stand content thieves. With that said, I'll be reprinting this article automatically on several thousand blogs shortly. .-= JD Rucker´s last blog ..Sense and Socialbility =-.
- Gerald Weber says:
  
  LOL sure JD. :-)
Sarah Merion says:

I got scraped once. It was a really creepy and violating feeling. Thanks for writing this post.
- Gerald Weber says:
  
  Well said Sarah. Yes it is a very violating feeling. hehe.
timethief says:

I'm a paralegal who has gone after every content thief who has dared to steal from me and succeeded via DMCA complaints in having it removed from splogs. The motivator is of course money from advertising and one of the most effective means we can use to stop these thieves is hitting them where it hurts. Here's a quote from one of my posts on the subject: " Report the splog to Google adsense The motivation behind these content thefts can be summarized in one word – greed. No one blogging for money wants to be placed in bad standing with Google. And some bloggers discovered that making the DMCA complaint and also reporting the site to Google adsense has been extremely effective. ... " http://onecoolsitebloggingtips.com/2008/05/10/splog-off-dealing-with-content-theft/ .-= timethief´s last blog ..Basic Netiquette for Beginner Bloggers =-.
- Gerald Weber says:
  
  I'm glad to hear that you have also had similar success in dealing with content thieves. :-)
Ann Masters says:

and they say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery...Bloggers think otherwise.
- Gerald Weber says:
  
  Anna, There is a tremendous difference between imitation and copying a post word for word. In other words I have no problem with someone writing a similar article because they were inspired by one of my posts. I do have a problem when someone copies a post word for word.
  - Dennis Edell says:
    
    Even with "similar" if you were inspired by anothers post, a courtesy backlink should be done. .-= Dennis Edell´s last blog ..Theme Customization Part 3 – Banner Advertising NOT for Sale! =-.
  - Ann Masters says:
    
    Gerald Weber I'm kidding, really. Ripping off content is never fair. down with the ripper offers
    - Gerald Weber says:
      
      Yes down with them! hehe :-)
Kevin says:

I haven't had my content stolen (that I am aware of anyway) but I have had it taken and posted on various sites (with links). I guess I haven't hit the big time yet because nobody wants to steal my stuff! :) .-= Kevin@ShootingtheBreeze´s last blog ..3 principles to deal with conflict =-.
Deborah Smith says:

I'm getting this kind of stuff recently, practically every day. The blog post is "Easy Chicken Pot Pie Recipe" google alerts sends me an alert for my blog. What is this? http://www.annettebehrens.com/ijzks/xj.php?easy-chicken-pot-pie-recipe .-= Deborah Smith´s last blog ..Elysian Cafe in Hoboken =-.
- Gerald Weber says:
  
  Did you set up a Google alert for "Easy Chicken Pot Pie Recipe"?
  - Deborah Smith says:
    
    Yes, and when I follow the link sent I end up on an all text page like the one I linked to here. .-= Deborah Smith´s last blog ..Elysian Cafe in Hoboken =-.
- Gerald Weber says:
  
  There is a link directly on that page easy chick pot pie recipe So it's sending you that link because it has the words you indicated for your Google alert.
Blu says:

I'm on the same wavelength as with Gautam Hans when it comes to some sites. Watermarking your images works great in many cases. In others, I'd go for the humor and do the htaccess redirect to a funny, but telling "image thief" graphic. I first got taught a lesson in hotlinking almost a decade ago. Web hosting wasn't as inexpensive as it is today and I found my budget shared account suspended halfway through one month due to bandwidth use. Exploring the stats, I discovered a fairly busy website hotlinking one of my images. I so wish I had known half the things described here back then. You live and learn.
Mitch says:

I've recently had my content stolen by two different sites. One site removed all my posts, blaming it on a new WP plugin. The second never responded, so I wrote the hosting company, and they refused to do anything, saying it wasn't stolen, but was on a site like StumbleUpon in a weird area of the world I knew nothing about, British Commonwealth countries or something; domain ending in .io. Guess I've just lost on that one. I'm thinking about instituting a copyright message and notification at the bottom of each post letting those who visit the thieves sites know that if they're not reading it on my blog that it's stolen; not really sure how much that helps or not. .-= Mitch´s last blog ..Diabetic Depression =-.
- Gerald Weber says:
  
  The copyright message sounds like a great idea.
chandan says:

Very nice elaboration on stolen content, I also use copyspace or sometime use google for check the stolen content, If someone want to use other's content then its their responsibly to linkback to the original content. .-= chandan@work at home jobs´s last blog ..Few quality link can help you for get rank on search engine =-.
Garth O'Brien says:

The hotlinked image you use is much kinder than the one I use. Mine is quite vulgar and I have found almost immediately stops future theft from those not as technically inclined. :)
- Gerald Weber says:
  
  That's funny! I'd like to see it sometime. :-)
Mohan Arun L says:

This link might be useful if and when you detect another website totally copying your content off; DMCA 101 to know your rights and steps you can take to ensure you can take copycat sites down: http://brainz.org/dmca-takedown-101/. Also check out myfreecopyright.com and copyrightdeposit.com .-= Mohan Arun L´s last blog ..Mar-5-2010 =-.
- Gerald Weber says:
  
  Very cool! Thanks for the link. :-)
nellyconway says:

I don't think the submitter has to worry about anyone stealing his content, judging by his writing abilities at least.
Nile Flores says:

I usually take the same steps as I do for people who steal my graphics outright without credit. Copyscape free services do not always work well... in fact, I really hate them and I have had people come to me saying that someone reposted my content word-for-word without credit or even permission from me. The DMCA does work sometimes, but it might be also good to contact the user's webhost. In fact, I recommend it FIRST before filing anything with Google. A lot of them have policies and because their clients are responsible for their content, they CAN be held responsible and terminated. You are more than likely to stick it to someone for shutting their site off completely. .-= Nile Flores´s last blog ..Blogging And Plants – What’s The Connection? =-.
- Gerald Weber says:
  
  Yes one of the tips is to contact the plagiarists web host. I usually take that step after first attempting to contact the website owner or the person ripping off the content, because that seems to work most of the time and then it's less work than filling out a formal complaint with their web host. However I have been very successful the times that I have lodged complaints at the web host level. Most reputable hosting companies already have a system in place for handling such complaints.
JR says:

Great guide, this has happened to me in the past and I find it useful to add my copyright message with a link back to my own site in all feeds, this way the correct ownership is scraped as well. There is also Copygator that is free and sets up alerts based on your actual blog feed for any copied content. .-= JR @ Internet Marketing ´s last blog ..Make Money Online for Free: How-To Build Money Sites Quickly With Wordpress =-.
- Gerald Weber says:
  
  I've heard of a plugin where you can put your copyright info in your feed as you described. Do you know the name of the plugin or have a link perhaps?
  - JR says:
    
    Yes, I use RSS Feed Signature, very customizible, and looks nice, you can check it out at: http://www.smackfoo.com/plugins/sig2feed/, I tried several others, but I liked this one best. .-= JR @ Internet Marketing´s last blog ..Make Money Online for Free: How-To Build Money Sites Quickly With Wordpress =-.
    - Gerald Weber says:
      
      Thank you. I will be checking it out and implementing it.
      - JR says:
        
        You are very welcome, I am sure you will like it. .-= JR @ Internet Marketing´s last blog ..Make Money Online for Free: How-To Build Money Sites Quickly With Wordpress =-.
    - Gerald Weber says:
      
      JR, that link to the plugin seems to be broken. :-(
      - JR says:
        
        Try this: http://www.newsniche.com/sig2feed-rss-signature-wordpress-plugin.php .-= JR @ Internet Marketing´s last blog ..Make Money Online for Free: How-To Build Money Sites Quickly With Wordpress =-.
        
        JR says:
        
        Wait, it looks like it's no longer available from his site. Weird, still works on my site, wait give me a minute and I will do some research. .-= JR @ Internet Marketing´s last blog ..Make Money Online for Free: How-To Build Money Sites Quickly With Wordpress =-.
      - JR says:
        
        Okay, looks like that site is no longer available. Here are a couple of more options that do the same thing: 1. http://blog.taragana.com/index.php/archive/wordpress-plugin-to-automatically-add-copyright-message-to-your-rss-atom-feeds/2/#Download 2. http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/copyfeed/ 3. http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/simple-feed-copyright/ .-= JR @ Internet Marketing´s last blog ..Make Money Online for Free: How-To Build Money Sites Quickly With Wordpress =-.
Dennis Edell says:

You may also want to check out - http://www.embedarticle.com/, seems to work similar to Tynt. I found it on Shirley's review - http://shirleyszone.com/the-embed-article-wordpress-plugin-get-paid-for-your-copied-work/ Very cool stuff. :) .-= Dennis Edell´s last blog ..DEDC Updates – What the (Near) Future Holds for You and I! =-.
- Gerald Weber says:
  
  Haven't heard of that one Dennis. Thanks!
  - Dennis Edell says:
    
    Welcome! .-= Dennis Edell´s last blog ..$100 – 10 Winners – Comment Contest! ‘Till Months End… =-.
- Kristofer Minkstein says:
  
  Great suggestion Dennis ;) - Kris Founder @ Embed Article
  - Dennis Edell says:
    
    LOL Thanks Kris. .-= Dennis Edell´s last blog ..$100 – 10 Winners – Comment Contest! ‘Till Months End… =-.
Djerba says:

I like your the funny you are broadcasting this message :) By the way, I called Google for a plagiarism report, and they just disabled Adsense Ads on this website and they didn't made any indexing penalties ! Thank you and Ann for this helpful tips :)
SBA says:

I haven't had much trouble with wholesale content scraping. Most of articles copied from my blogspot blog have a link back to original post. My WP blog does not allow hotlinking to images so if the post is copied it often looks silly. We use internal links so that's another give away when posts are pinged from stolen article. I had one thief repeatedly copy posts, no credit and had the nerve to leave comments on other (less desirable? lol) posts! We did track him down with a "cease and desist." It's good to have this article as a resource when stronger action is needed. It's rather de-energizing though --- I used to use SPAM Cop for reporting emails sent under my business name, but that is very time consuming. It may have worked since I don't get irate emails from people I don't know asking me to stop spamming them... .-= SBA´s last blog ..Blockquote Blues! =-.
- Gerald Weber says:
  
  It can be rather time consuming always chasing down content thieves or plagiarists. Fortunately as I mentioned in the post 9 times out of 10 the website owner normally takes down the content in question when I contact them about it. So it's the small minority that requires further action for me.
Dustin Woodard says:

Don't forget cross linking within your articles/posts using absolute URLs. This way scraped content often ends up linking back to you (absolute URLs won't).
- Gerald Weber says:
  
  Yes this happens to me often which is what results in the trackback ping. Great point!
MIchael says:

Here's what happen to me. First off let me say I am not a content writer, nor do i write content for my clients sites, in any form or fashion. I have a small web design business as well as a full time job, so when i built my own site I hired a person to write the content for me. Well my site had been up for about 6 months and i recieve a email claiming that i had stolen the content on my site off of his blog. So i went to his site and sure enough it was word for word. So i imediately took the site offline, then I contacted him and told him the what had happen, and he understood. So I looked over site site real quick, and anything that look as if it come from his site at all I killed the links to the pages that had his content. then contacted another content writer. This cost me some money, but the content was his not mine, therefor it should not be on my site at all. Although I can imagine how it looked. And let me say i felt lower than dirt. So here's a tip: use a known content writer who has references. and contact one or two of those references.
- Gerald Weber says:
  
  That's a very good point. It's also important to know that Google intents to filter out the content that was not the original. Now I'm not saying that Google always does a good job of this but imagine the implications this could have for a client site that Google filters out all the content. This makes the situation much worse. Also your first point about having a trustworthy copywriter is also spot on!
Chris C says:

I linked here from Digg... Nice tips for a fellow Houstonian! :)
- Gerald Weber says:
  
  Thank you very much fellow Houstonian! ;-)
Web Design Dave says:

Thanks for the post! So far I've only used Google but there are some other great tools you have provided that I will definitely be looking up.
Bob Shnecke says:

I think most of the tools you cite are so-so at actually catching plagiarism, but it's still pretty good. I would say that a DMCA complaint is not reliable since, technically, public online content isn't really covered by it, and it only applies to folks in the USA. In fact, some people copying your work may legally entitled to do so (depending on the country). I'd point out too, that when folks plagiarize, they aren't "stealing" anything. They may be committing copyright infringement, but not theft. Theft is a crime, involves property, trespass, and deprivation of the property. Copyright infringement is a tort, involves exclusivity and contract rights, and the copyright holder isn't physically deprived of the work. The distinction is lost sometimes due to the efforts of US media companies, but it's very important. Copyrighted works, by definition, belong to the public. The author is merely granted certain exclusive rights to the copying and performance of the work for a limited duration.
- Gerald Weber says:
  
  While it's true that DMCA is under United States law. I tend to write that way because I'm in the US. However here is Google stance on the issue from their DMCA page
  "Regardless of whether we may be liable for such infringement under local country law or United States law, our response to these notices may include removing or disabling access to material claimed to be the subject of infringing activity and/or terminating subscribers"
  You might not have as much effectiveness at the web host level but you can still use the other tips here even if you are not in the US.
- element321 says:
  
  Bob, But copyright infringement is theft. Copyright infringement is considered intellectual theft and can be treated as physical theft. I consider this theft, and I will deal in any way that I can. .-= element321´s last blog ..Now You Can Have A Counter with Your Google Buzz Submitter =-.
eugene says:

wow you are the man! the tynt script and the image server is exactly what I was looking for. I also watermarke my images too! great post!
- Gerald Weber says:
  
  I'm glad you found it useful. :-)
Louie baur says:

Copyscape rocks!
Jack says:

Never knew about that Tynt trick! Will definitely give that a try. Thanks! .-= Jack@Online Marketing Blog´s last blog ..Darren Rowse Gives Us The Finger? =-.
- Gerald Weber says:
  
  I'm glad you found it useful! :-)
Eric Brantner says:

As someone who blogs for a living (I contribute to several different blogs), I've had more than my fair share of people stealing my content. Like you said, most times just contacting them is enough to rectify the situation. However, I've never tried steps 2 and 3 in your list before. I'll give them a shot next time someone won't remove my content when I ask.
- Gerald Weber says:
  
  Yes I rarely have to resorts to steps 2 and 3 but the times I did, I have been successful.
Jim Summer says:

Here is another resource that doesn't go away :~) http://www.archive.org/ meaning you can go back over time and see when your stuff was copied... even if they change it - it remains in the internet archive. I live in Jacksonville, FL and found a "web design seo" company (that belongs to the BBB by the way) had copied my home page content into 13 pages of their website and hidden it in a div with a display:none; - the look on their face was priceless when I stopped by their office with a cease and desist letter. I have also added bogus querystring variables into url anchor tags to see if my stuff was explicitly copied - funny to see when the querystring spells out "I stole this from..." - they say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery but out and out copying your stuff... well is not very flattering. Copyscape is a good start, and the Google search for unique sentences etc is a good way to check also. I like the hotlinked image swap too - I did that once with an outfit that was hotlinking a small image - I sent them an email asking them to just copy and save and put on their own server but got no repsonse... I noticed they had not defined the dims of the image in the html so I uploaded a new one that was about 1000x800 pixels that told users to go to my site... funny to see it blow their site apart for a few days haha - it was in like a 200px wide sidebar. Good post - good topic. Particularly when dealing with SEO - having your stuff copied is not good. There are some "higher up respected" seo folks on Twitter I have found that also copied my stuff but I am just letting sleeping dogs lie - still in place but difficult to prove. Do the right thing. ~ Jim
- Gerald Weber says:
  
  Jim, http://www.archive.org/ is also very helpful when you need to prove to someones hosting company who published the content first. This makes proving your case extremely simple. The story about the gigantic image is hilarious! The last time I changed out a hotlinked image with a skull and crossbones along with the crazy message, I swear I was laughing for an entire day straight.
Gerri Elder says:

Great tips. I'm glad you mentioned contacting the site owner first, rather than going nuclear as soon as you find stolen content. Like you, an email has taken care of the problem for me in most cases. .-= Gerri Elder´s last blog ..absolutelytrue: RT @the_gman @FamousBloggers: Online content theft - Find out if your content is being stolen http://ow.ly/1e9Tr =-.
- Gerald Weber says:
  
  Yes and that way you don't have to spend as much time on it every time it happens.
Ms. Freeman says:

This has happened once or twice to me on another blog and the only thing I thought to do was contact the scrapper, but they obviously either didn't have a contact form or didn't bother to end their ways. I am definitely going to get copy-scape in play. .-= Ms. Freeman´s last blog ..New!!! Guest Blogger Create-a-Post =-.
- Gerald Weber says:
  
  You can use the whois function of Domain Tools to sometimes find the contact information if it's a self hosted blog or website. Also even if their info is private, you might be able to find out who the host is by looking at the name servers and then you can proceed to lodge a complaint at the host level.
Suresh Khanal says:

Would there be any way to trace if the copier posts the content without any link on his post? I think this would be much more troubling than copying and pasting the posts directly. Most probably the images are more in content theft and how serious you have been when your image is displayed on other's posts? Thanks for the suggestions of steps if a thief is caught. Now I remember why it was so. One of my friend in Twitter was grumbling that all of his posts are indexed in google immediately but they are not displayed on search engine even when title is searched. Now I believe this should be because somebody complained of him if he had copied some post in his blog. He was really desperate. If Google alone blocks the posts from appearing on its search result, it is the best punishment for any so called 'bloggers'. .-= Suresh Khanal @ promote blogs´s last blog ..First Aid for Broken Links in WordPress Blog =-.
- Gerald Weber says:
  
  Yes the way to trace if someone copies without linking back will be both Copyscape and Google. Regarding the images it's quite easy to deal with if the person stealing them is hotlinking them. If they copy the images and upload them to their server then it will be a bit more challenging.
  - Gautam Hans says:
    
    For images that are downloaded and then uploaded, the only solution is using watermarks. So even if one uses it, then everybody knows where the image came from :) .-= Gautam Hans´s last blog ..Guest Blogging – A win-win situation =-.
    - Gerald Weber says:
      
      I personally would still contact the thief, but great point, a watermark would let everyone know where they stole it from. :-)
Jan Husdal says:

Thanks for the reminder, as from time to time I do use Copyscape or Google to search for my own content. Another tool worth mentioning is Copygator, which works along the same lines as Copyscape. I also find installing the Tynt Tracer helpful, and although it doesn't tell you what content is being copied where to, it shows you what content that is copied, allowing you to identify your most "popular" content. .-= Jan Husdal´s last blog ..Risk Disablers =-.
- Gerald Weber says:
  
  I haven't previously heard about Copygator, thanks for mentioning it. The purpose of the Tynt is to get a link back to your post when someone copies and pastes it to their blog. This way you are at least getting a link back to your original content.
  - Jan Husdal says:
    
    The linkback is how Tynt is supposed to work, that is if the copier leaves the linkback with the copied passage. Content thieves, however, couldn't care less. Still, Tynt tells me what is sought after most, an then I can look for that in Google...easier than using s random phrase from a random post. .-= Jan Husdal´s last blog ..Risk Disablers =-.
    - Gerald Weber says:
      
      Gotcha. Smart thinking!
Anne says:

In my experience, contacting the host or at least cc'ing them works like a charm... I don't always bother though, to be honest. Got tired of chasing scrapers and unless I see them instead of my own sites high up on the SERP's I just don't bother. .-= Anne @ b6s.net´s last blog ..February 2010 Post Roundup =-.
- Gerald Weber says:
  
  It can get somewhat time consuming, especially if this is happening all the time. However, I've gotten so used to it, so it doesn't usually take me much time to go through the steps. It is true that most of these scraping sites don't have much authority and thus they don't tend to rank very highly in the SERPs. .-= Gerald Weber´s last blog ..6 Google Search Query Tips =-.

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Change any hotlinked images to something crazy!

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