83 replies to this topic

[St0n3y]

Not just funding it. They profit from it.

It is a bit hypocritical of them isn't it. If the algorithm team was so concerned about spam, you'd think they'd be beating down the doors of the Adsens team telling them to quit funding spam. But then Google probably uses the Adsense spam money to fund further development of anti-spam algorithms, so it's probably a good relationship for them.

So does this mean that Google is only in favor of spam which they don't profit from?

[copywriter]

Maybe I shouldn't have used the word "spam." Technically, as far as engine criteria goes, this is not spam. It's not a tactic of any sort specifically designed to deceive the search engines. It is "spammy" in my opinion, however because it is a tactic designed to deceive people, to get something for nothing and to profit from other's hard work by taking what is rightfully theirs.

I'll switch from "spam" to "sham." How about that?

Now, with that said, the people who knowingly use this type of product to produce regurgitated artice sites and run AdSense on them are spammy.

[Hyperformance]

Hi Jill, Karon and Gang -

I thought this applied to the topic and thought I would throw it out and see what you think...

Like many of you, I have some successful articles "out there" which have been awesome for traffic, links, recognition, etc.

The problem is what is being discussed here - others making money from my article content with the ONLY intention being the ads and the money, not the consumer at all... these "mini-directories", and "Ad Pages" are getting so rampant it is sick. I also believe the engines can fix this shortly -

Anyway, with each article I make available for re-publish, it is required that the user leave my name, copyright and "live" link to my site in order to use my content under my own free use restrictions.

My question is this; If I added to my copyright statement making it unlawful to use my content for these type of "Ad Pages" - would it make a difference?

This is my statement as the copyright Author of the material. That it is forbidden to use this content on any web page that is quite simply "surrounded" by Google Ads - showing the purpose to be commercialization and profit.

It is quite a bit different than just requiring "my cut"? -
(Oh, I see... they can make money "off" of me, but not pony up for the content? - or even offer? )

I do have the right to say that. I am not saying it would work anywhere near 100%, nor could I possibly police it - but I did make the statement (right there with the article and the right to use it), and it would show the offending company breaking guidelines (yeah, big deal they don't care), and I would have a leg to stand on in asking any site to remove my copyrighted material as they have not followed the Authors guidelines for use of that content.

O.K., go ahead and say it - "Scott, you are too far out there - "

It would show an effort by this Author that we (I) do not promote or condone this type of profit activity from someone else's content.... and yes, I know there is a lot more content better than mine to be had, but if enough Authors began enforcing this - or even addressing it - I believe it could be cut back and become less profitable for the evil doers.

Thanks for your input, and letting me share -

- Scott

[train99]

Scott, It won't make any difference at all what terms you append to your articles.

These are fly-by-night "something for nothing" operators who aren't going to pay any attention to the rules. Most of them are using software to strip the articles anyway.

I think this is actually less of a problem than it seems. While there are a lot of these sites due to new fad, most of them were set up by idiots who quickly gave up and went back to buying lottery tickets.

The reason we see so many of them is there is a constant stream of new "something for nothing" idiots buying into the software seller's hype.

Right now as fast as one person exits, two or three new people jump onto the bandwagon.

The product lifecycle of a fad like this is short. Within six to nine months the whole thing will be over.

I read something with Matt Cutts about fingerprinting articles in order to determine originality. The owner of a large article directory also claims to have this fingerprinting technology in place on his site to screen out copied crap.

Think about my sites. There are peculiarities to the way I present ideas that are unique to me. I use specific words, phrases, and structure with my written content.

A search engine looking at a few hundred pages on my site could easily identify these fingerprints if it was told what to look for. If the search engine sees my fingerprints on another site, it can then decide if it's another site owned by me, or someone using my material.

A site owned by me would probably come up as a suplemental result if at all. A site not owned by me would be dropped.

Take it a step farther.

Some of the scarper sites - the Cutts article I read used that word which I thought was a mispelling, but think about it. When you go fishing for bass and hook a carp, you throw it back. When you go to a scarper site and see it's worthless, you back up. Good analogy.

Anyway, scarper sites have fingerprints of many people on a single article or across pages. Once the fingerprinting technology is refined, the sites with poor fingerprints will fall away.

Once that happens people will move onto the next thing. Maybe building fake forums? That's not a bad idea. Scrape content from the web and post it within a forum structure. Make it look like there is a discussion going on. Each post would have it's own fingerprints anyway, and the site would grow in a natural way.

Search engines would figure it out quickly, but it would probably work for a short period time because the system would have to have a hole for discussion boards. Once people started explioting the hole, the hole would be tightened.

Terry

[Christian_SEO]

One person's SPAM is another person's syndication. With all the sites that I own or manage I've seen no problems with duplication content, and perhaps this is because I don't abuse the practice. Duplicate sites, yes, but the level at which you can have content duplicated across sites is quite high. I made about 12 copies of this site, [link removed per [url=http://www.highrankings.com/forum/index.php?act=boardrules]Forum Rules[/url]] (mine) and added it to a number of sites that I own. I did change the template to match each site, but the content including the metags was the same. It worked quite well and the only reason I stopped was I could not make enough time to keep all the copies updated.

This scrapping and stealing stuff does work, and without human reviewers, I don't see it being caught and removed.

The other question after you find that it's happened to you is what to do about it. I have a site that has about 9 million expired domain names in HTML (really!) and is updated daily. About a year ago I did a search for some domain and discovered a few other sites with the same content. One of them seemed to be very much like the format I use. So I "seeded" the content for a while. Sure enough, some bogus domains turned up on this guy's site. I tried contacting him... no response. I found his other sites and tried contacting him, no response.

I'm too stubborn to give up, I mean, I wouldn't have minded, but the jerk would not talk to me. All I wanted was a link to my site, ok? So what I did is figured out what his IP address was from my logs. I saw his pattern for visiting my site. Once I knew his "habits", I started updating my site everyday with "poisoned" content. The first 50 or so domains or so were good records, but the bulk of the pages had extra random characters inserted. I took domains like this:


site-computers.net


and injected some characters to make them look like this:

siteh-computers.net

[Removed examples]

When you look at a list of a few thousand domain names, this small change gets hard to spot unless you are checking the names. There are so many that are misspelled or foreign that it's really easy to miss.

So after the lists were up for a day or two, I would check the logs and see that they were downloaded by him. Then I would replace the lists with the correct ones. This went on for a couple of months and he never caught on and had nearly worthless lists, because I had ruined most English language words in the first part of the domains.

After a while I got tired of this and just blocked his IP from my site.

Now I have coded markers in my data. If I find one of them on another site, I can quickly pin-point when the file was downloaded and get their IP address, but this has not happened again so far.

Finding ways to effectively code your data to have proof that it is yours and that it was taken directly by a specific person is crucial in my opinion, if you really want to protect yourself and have documentation to confront someone with, or contact their ISP.

Thanks!

Edited by Jill, 10 March 2006 - 12:11 AM.

[copywriter]

I've seen no problems with duplication content

It's not duplicate content. They aren't taking entire articles. For instance, if you type in the keyphrase "blue three-ring binders" they will deliver blurbs of articles and site content... one sentence, maybe a whole paragraph. Then you get the option of keeping or dumping the segments on the list. The segments you choose to keep are then sorted and arranged into a supposedly new article.

A single "new" article could consist of pieces of 20 different author's work.

[Hyperformance]

Thanks for the feedback...

Hey Terry, Christian - I agree with some things from both of you and disagree on others...

"Scott, It won't make any difference at all what terms you append to your articles."

I think it would make the 'humans' think twice (because there is so much content available), but automated software compiling bogus content is for someone else to figure out...

I also recognize they are fly-by-night (in mentality), but I'm not so sure this will be short lived? I do however hope that you are right... I do see it quite a bit, maybe it's somewhat skewed only because I have looked on occasion and get so darn discouraged that I can't waste my time putting a stop to all the individuals and places I see it happening.(?)

Oh, and I completely understand the fingerprint technology and can see it in my own writing, but - well, hmmm (mass use?). And the fake forum idea - someone named Pinky is working hard on that right now towards complete World Domination!

Christian - I know they are making it work, especially when multiplied, but I do hope it gets "caught" and "removed" - it only clogs up the engines, and with their ideal being a great "search" - why would they want to point to another "micro" directory of their own (mostly duplicate) links?

Also, as you've shown, it's not exactly an efficient use of time to trace, track and then somehow prosecute these offenders. -

Karon - A lot more defined work for Copyscape... Hmmm, sounds like a new business opportunity to me?


- S

[copywriter]

I think it would make the 'humans' think twice

*If* the humans see them. Many times articles are reproduced from sites that have reprinted them legally, but that don't post your reprint specifications. Others who pull it from one site and move it to another would never see your regulations.

It's become as though *any* article online is assumed to be free reprint for whatever purpose any other person deems valid. That's not the case. If you see an article online that you want to reproduce, I can bet you the author has reprint specifications s/he requires to be followed. In fact, a lot of authors are now stopping the practice of free reprint articles for this very reason. When they find their stuff on other's sites, they have a clear path to claim copyright violation because nobody is allowed to reprint their material without prior, written consent.

I can't predict the future, but if this situation follows the same scenario as most other things online, it will get to the point where all free reprint articles are absolute junk and nobody wants them.

Free articles started out as a great thing. The idea has grown and flourished, doing a lot of people a lot of good (readers and authors). Now, it's to the point (just like META tags, free ebooks, and email marketing) where it's being abused. It wouldn't surprise me if soon everybody has had enough and the scammers have ruined yet another good thing for all of us. We'll likely see Marshall Law enforced with articles and everybody will have to email written waivers back and forth before reprinting anything. The 'Net seems to follow that line: good idea, great benefit to others, abuse, rampant abuse, bad idea, why did we ever do that?

[St0n3y]

The discussion on free reprint articles is a bit different than copywriter's original rant, but along the same vein when we are talking about theft. I frequently find my articles (intact) reprinted in other places, but they leave out the bio or the links. I don't think the problem is with the content distributors, but it will be their responsibility to help fix the situation. Most of the time the sites that run these reprints have no contact information so you can't even ask them to pull your article or put in the correct bio. Those are the pure spam sites using your content for their gain, and cutting you out completely. That is what needs to stop ASAP.

[torka]

When you find a spam site with a reprint of an article of yours minus the attribution, and they have no webmaster contact info or they don't respond when you do contact them:

If you can find out who their hosting company is (check whois), file a DMCA complaint with the host and with Google. There are several folks here who've had success in getting entire sites taken down and/or removed from Google's results for copyright infringement in just those sorts of situations.

--Torka

[Scottie]

The software owner asked me to post this reply, as I pointed out this thread to him:

I registered to the forum but coudn't publish my reply
- would you publish it in my name?

I'm a new guy in this neighborhood.
I'm not a SEO.
I just invented this search engine that you all enjoy
so much to attack here. You sound so aggressive. Your
emails are the rudest I ever got in my life. You
publish my private emails without asking my permission
and without notifying me about it. I feel like
entering a lions cage here.

You judge without looking at the issue from all its
sides. Quoting is not always bad. My search engine is
tested now in the Center for Visually Impaired
students in the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Blinds
and dyslectics can now HEAR the results for their
queries with less irrelevant information. 
I believe SEO's can promote educational and moral
issues better with my search engine than without it.
Why is Google snippets right and my excerpts wrong? is
it a matter of length? is stealing one sentence better
than stealing 10? Where is the border line? Do you
want to investigate or to curse?

Thanks

Zeev

[Scottie]

Zeev, you are arguing about a search engine you have, but your original spam mail that you sent to quite a few of us said nothing about an educational search engine.

This is the spam mail you sent which has made us so hostile:

snip for Search Engine Optimization
Time Saving - it is a well known fact that many search
engine optimizers pay students tens of dollars for
each article, and that many search engine optimizers
need many of those articles each month. snip saves
them these expenses: Search engine optimizers enter
their search terms, which fit the needed keywords, and
get an article which contains these desired keywords
in each paragraph. If the length of the article is not
enough there's always the possibility to add keywords
and get more paragraphs.
For the time being snip is a free service.

Quality - Search engine optimizers can write many
quality articles in a very short time. The articles
will increase the traffic to their sites, because
people are attracted to good fresh and surprising
content.

White Hat - snip serves White Hat Optimization
because it prepares Web pages for humans to read – not
for machines.

Placement – After using snip for half a year I
presume that some of the good placements of my
articles in different search engines are due to the
quality of snip retrievals.

No duplicates – snip retrievals are unique: even if
one makes the same query twice a few days later he'll
probably get other results.

Fair Use- snip obeys the rules of Fair Use :
"You may use short, direct quotations without the need
to obtain written permission from the copyright holder
provided that you give proper credit to the author and
sources. We define 'fair use' as excerpts under 400
words (or a series of excerpts totaling fewer than 800
words as long as no single excerpt is longer than 300
words) from one work."

Your "fair use" statement in particular has us very upset with you as what you are promoting your software for is NOT fair use, but commercial use.

No one said you were an SEO, however you are attempting to promote your service specifically FOR SEO purposes.

I'm sure you do great work for the blind and it's a huge help to them, but maybe that's where your focus should remain.

You weren't promoting a search engine that helps blind people when you started emailing SEO's about using your service that is designed to steal other people's content and call it "fair use" and "white hat optimization". It is neither.

And you don't appear to be trying to learn why this is so wrong, you seem more interested in justifying your actions.

[Hyperformance]

Thanks Scottie - I found their input enlightening, to say the least.

I would like to inquire though...

Zeev - Fair Use- snip obeys the rules of Fair Use :
"You may use short, direct quotations without the need
to obtain written permission from the copyright holder
provided that you give proper credit to the author and
sources. We define 'fair use' as excerpts under 400
words (or a series of excerpts totaling fewer than 800
words as long as no single excerpt is longer than 300
words) from one work."

Who's Fair Use? Not the Authors? Oh, I see... "We define" - Who are WE? A software developer (?) and their team?

Just to cover some responsibility; Is it impossible for the user of this software to publish these "excerpts" without providing (proper credit) the Author name and link information? And why wouldn't that be built in? I think there is only one logical reason, but that's my opinion.

I do however like that you used snippets of what they wrote in defense of a fair use product such as this - after all, you stayed within the 800 word limit?

- Scott

[Jill]

It wouldn't surprise me if soon everybody has had enough and the scammers have ruined yet another good thing for all of us.

Personally, I think it's been ruined ages ago. It's been a least a good year now.

[copywriter]

You stated in your email

provided that you give proper credit to the author and
sources.

But also, in your email, you're encouraging SEOs to pull snippets of other's articles for use in new articles of their own, so they don't have to pay for the "new" articles.

Yes, IF people using your search engine want to give full credit - citing my name, my copyright of the material and a link to my site - I would be very glad for them to use the material they find in your engine. This is what journalists do. They give full credit to their sources. However, this is not what you are promoting. At least, it is not what you are communicating in your emails.

Just as you did not like to have your email published without your knowledge, how do you think all of us feel knowing your engine allows - and you encourage - others to take our material and publish it without our knowledge or without providing credit to the source?

Google does not send out emails asking others to come use their site to take advantage of other people.