NOT a Guru!
Keeping it simple, without the hype. PC tips and Internet advice for mom and pop businesses.
Keeping it simple, without the hype. PC tips and Internet advice for mom and pop businesses.
A few years ago, someone asked me to build a website for him. He was selling a new form of skin care product. There was very little information available from the fledgling manufacturer, so I spent dozens of hours drafting content, interviewing people, finding images and so on. My client paid for some of this work and I wrote off a lot of my time and expenses in exchange for commissions.
They say that imitation is the greatest form of flattery. Well, when people are outright stealing your work, it doesn’t feel like much of a compliment.
Customers of my client’s website discovered other websites that looked exactly the same as ours. The customers were confused, as the other sites were posting different sales prices … but otherwise were exactly the same. Back then, I had never given a thought about checking to see if other people were stealing content. I was a trusting soul who thought people operated with integrity.
I now know better.
To quickly find out if your unique content is being stolen, go to Copyscape and type in your URLs. This doesn’t apply to articles you have submitted; it has to do with your content that is explicitly yours and used on your sites. You might be surprised to see what’s been scraped.
The Copyscape site has some excellent tips about what to do if your content has been plagiarized.
It also has a number of banners that you can use on your website. Here is an example.
Popularity: 1% [?]
Sphere: Related Content
It can’t be helped, there are really people who would steal or try at least to steal the content for your site and use the idea that they get to their own sites.
I supposed in a way it’s a form of flattery that someone thinks your content is good enough to steal! It is irritating, however, when all of it is stolen and there is no attribution to the source.