Another Blog Is Stealing all My Content

[genuwine4532]

Another blog is stealing every one of my posts word for word, they have stolen over 15 of them to date and continuing daily.

Now from one perspective they are leaving all the links intact and I do a lot of internal linking within my posts and they give me the credit for the posts, they are an older blog and have a PR2 and my blog is a PR3, but I still have concern as to how this can affect my blog and since many of my posts are now on page 1 for their keywords and the home page as well, I just wonder if there might be any issues, and really it's just an uncomfortable feeling.

What do you guys think?

[Linda Buquet]

I've had this happen lots of times. Many times there were no links or attribution at all, just pure content stealing. One of them even replaced me in Google blog search. You'd see a headline about the NY tax issue and there would be my blog post at fwuxiz.com or whatever.

I email them and tell them to take it down or I'll contact their host to take their blog down for copyright violation.

They don't usually respond or remove content. Then I email host showing proof and CC the site owner. My content is usually removed by the next day. I don't know if the host made them or when they saw I CCed host it made the owner know I was serious.

[kbhuffaker]

genuwine4532, this is concerning to me also. How did you find out that your articles were being stolen? I have several articles on Google's #1 page also and I'd like to check to see if any of mine are being stolen. Thanks for your help.

[genuwine4532]

I found out because all the links within the posts are sending trackbacks to my blog, this only works with a blog, however, I also have Google Alerts set up for all my URL's and I get an email alert whenever one of them shows up as a link on other sites.

[genuwine4532]

Linda,

How did you find out who the host was for those blogs stealing your content?

[Linda Buquet]

Sometimes you can tell via Whois.

This particular Whois tells you the hosting company. Just plug in the domain name.
WHOIS and Reverse IP Service

Hope this helps and best of luck!

Probably that 1st email if you say "the next email I send is going to XYZ hosting", it may carry more weight when they realize you figured out who their host is.

[genuwine4532]

Thanks Linda, that helps. I also just sent him a nasty email demanding he remove the posts from his blog. I doubt he will respond, but we'll see.

kbhuffaker
You may be interested in this:

I found out this is being content is being stolen via feed so I found several great WP plug-ins that may prevent this from happening again:

1. AntiLeech - Red Alt -
THIS ONE IS CLASSIC! - AntiLeech does not prevent the splogger bots from accessing your site. It produces a fake set of content especially for them that includes links back to your site and sends it only to them. Has lots of options.

2. rss signature › smackfoo.com -
This one is cool, it adds a personalized message into the feed for copyright and anything else you may want to say and also you can put in your url to link back to the original source. So when these thieves steal you feed content this message will also appear at the end of the content.

3.
WordPress Plugin to Automatically add Copyright Message to your RSS / ATOM Feeds - Angsuman’s Feed Copyrighter Plugin -
Another Copyright Plug-In with lots of features.

4. WordPress Plugin: Digital Fingerprint — detecting content theft -- MaxPower
Adds a digital fingerprint to your blog to detect content thieves.

You don't need all of them, as some of them do the same thing, but browse them all and see which ones fit your needs

[kbhuffaker]

Thanks genuwine4532 for this list. I really appreciate your up front work. I will check these out and see how I can use them.

Thanks again.

[fitnfree]

"I also just sent him a nasty email demanding he remove the posts from his blog."

Just a friendly suggestion from experience... I wouldn't go the 'nasty' route; just firm but still polite. You know that old saying, "you catch more flies with honey" and besides, you don't want someone out there on the WWW spreading it about that you're a major *#(*$ ! And do always remember that your words in an e-mail can always, ALWAYS come back to haunt you.

Trust me on this - years ago I had to learn the hard way and it took quite a while to recover and redeem myself from one foolish, hot-headed moment.

[kbhuffaker]

Thank for the advice fitnfree. It sounds like you have some wisdom under those words I always appreciate good sound advice.

Thanks.