One reader asked:
I’ve begun to do some article marketing with EzineArticles, GoArticles and ArticlesBase. I’ve found that my articles are often picked up by scrapers who don’t include the links and/or spin the article. I even saw one site where they included the first paragraph or so and that was it — no link back to the full article or anything.
Should I spend time tracking these down and asking them to comply with the terms of use? I’ve had some success with that in the instances where I was able to contact the blog owner, and in one case I had to contact the hosting provider who ended up taking the site down. But I wonder if this is a waste of time?
Here’s my video response
{ 14 comments… read them below or add one }
You're kidding me. I'm staggered that this happens.
I'd hunt them down to try and stop it happening, but we've all probably got better things to do.
Hey Nick, I too have had spammers and article thief hijack my articles from those Article directories you mentioned , but I decided that i would be just chasing down people that wouldn't care in the first place. Overall Article submitting is a long term strategy and has helped with my SEO and I still do get people that use these article directories the way they're intended to be used. Your 1:44 Video nails it. Just keep doing.
thanks
Mike Alter
Thanks Nick. You've confirmed what I was thinking. I suspect the only thing that would make it worthwhile would be something that automated the process.
Keep up the great work!
I think you gave a good answer Nick. I do run a site that automatically grabs content with permission from some article sites. It always post a link back but if it didn't and the post owner asked me to take it down or post a link, I would gladly do so. I also run a social bookmarking site which has a slot for the link back to the original site but if someone posted it without the link I would surly take it down.
Nick your answer was bob on. But, couldn't stop thinking about it since it seems so unfair.
Wondered if the article directories themselves have any policies on this and whether they would pursue this kind of thing as part of the protection of their business? If a site is hosting your article, there's a good chance it's hosting many others too…
Many of these article directories have hundreds of thousands of articles. I'm not sure they have the bandwidth and time to go search for people posting these articles and violating their terms of use.
They actually are quite clear in the terms that it is the responsibility of the article writer (as the copyright holder) to pursue violations. I suppose that if it gets bad enough that people stop posting quality articles then they'll step in, but at this point they are not hurting.
The sites I've found my articles abused on always have many articles from the article directories on them. Given that EzineArticles in particular limits you to 25/year/blog, these sites go over that in a day!
If people go above the limit of 25 specified EzineArticles and the people posting the articles give a link back to the author than the author benefits. The more the author benefits the more articles he's going to write new articles and submit them to EzineArticles.
The benefit to the writer disappears if the scrapers remove the links (which many of them do). It can also cause problems with page ranking as the scraped sites often end up higher in the search listings.
I've already experienced this but the plagiarist at least cited my name.
I was content in just mentioning the person's misdeed online. That would be
enough punishment when word spreads around.
It would be great if word would spread. The trouble is most of us (like 99%) don't have the reach or influence to really spread much.
I suppose that we could always report these sites to Google. Some of them are built to provide paid backlinks and others are just AdSense sites. Either way, if Google started to slap them down it could reduce the number of them out there.
Reporting sites to Google and getting Google to actually penalizes sites are two different things.
But even if you succeed in penalizing the sites, what have you actually accomplished? It is of course emotionally satisfying but you could've spent your time doing more productive things.
Google is about providing users with appropriate search results. Most scraper sites are not really that good as they just scrape anything and everything to be able to build massive link farms or AdSense income.
If they get a few people reporting a site then they'll check it out. I don't know if they care much about the copyright violation issue, but if the site isn't really appropriate for them to send their users to then I believe it will make them move. That is the angle you need to use with them.
But the flip side, as you've mentioned, is whether it is worth your time or not. I guess it comes down to how much this behaviour impacts your ability to be productive.