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[gsimerlink]

Today while looking at our Google alerts I noticed something odd. Many of the results for our brand were mentioned on blogspot posts. I clicked in hoping they were articles etc. However, what I found was a blog consisting of one item a day being scraped straight from Amazon with even the image of the product being hotlinked from Amazon. Not just our products, but many of our competitors too.

I found over 10 of these on a quick look, each focusing in on a specific niche area. They all have different layouts, but are basically the same which makes me suspect that somebody is selling a "package" of how to get rich online. From what I can tell they are signed up to an affiliate program with Amazon and will earn money based on those commissions. I suspect this due to every link on their blog eading straight to an Amazon page.

Other than wondering if anybody else has noticed this I was curious if anything can be done to counter it. I just hate to see the SERPS get clogged up this way.

Thanks

[Randy]

Spam blogs. Aren't they wonderful?

I don't do any Amazon affiliate stuff, but last I heard they still didn't have a streamlined process for reporting such silliness. This was as of approximately 6 months ago.

I have heard of a few folks having some success by reporting it via their DMCA process, being careful to make it crystal clear that you're reporting an affiliate and not something housed on Amazon.com itself. Other than this about your only other recourse it to figure out who the host of the lifted content is and filing a DMCA complaint directly with them to get the content removed. Of course this latter option wouldn't get the affiliate account pulled.