Some of you are still grumbling about finding your blog posts, articles and other material on junk websites, junk blogs and other stange-looking web pages that don’t seem to have a common theme or reason for being there.
People who steal your material are called sploggers. A splog (spam blog) is a fake blog created solely to promote affiliated websites, with the intent of skewing search results and artificially boosting traffic.
Some splogs are written like long-winded ads for the websites they promote. Others have no original content, featuring either nonsense or content stolen from authentic websites like yours. Splogs include huge numbers of links to the websites in question to fool programs that search the Web for sites to index.
The first question people ask me is, “How get I get my material off those sites?”
When I find my content at these sites, I ignore it and concentrate instead on all the other things I can do to bring even more traffic to my website. (See “Special Report #17: Powerful Ways to Promote Your Website to Draw Traffic & Boost Sales”). Instead of wasting hours of your time trying to get these sites closed down, you should ignore it too. Here’s why:
—These sites can pull traffic back to your own website or blog. One top Internet marketer I know checks his web stats and estimates that up to 5 percent of his traffic comes from these junk sites.
—Most sploggers keep links intact. About nine of every 10 sploggers who steal my content by subscribing to my RSS feed at this blog, or at “The Publicity Hound’s Tips of the Week” archives, include the links to products and services I promote at my website, and to the links of other people’s products and services I sell for a commission.
—It could take you days to get one of these sites closed down. As soon as you do, they’ll be back up, using another server.
When some of my content started showing up at porn sites, which are also splogs, I almost got sick to my stomach. I quickly consulted with other Internet marketers I respect and they all told me to ignore the problem. Those sites, they pointed out, might be bringing traffic, too. And some of that traffic might include buyers.
Even more reason to ignore it.
Thanks for the info. My first thought was, ‘what’s a splogger?’ I guess this is why you sometimes see a blog about ‘my content is copyrighted, so write your own stuff.’ I find Google is fairly quick to pare down things like this, so I agree with ignoring it. They have the assets to weed out the irrelevant and abusive. It lets the rest of us get on with the business of growing our hard earned credibility.
Fantastic blog, Joan! I wrote about you in my blog too. Thanks for addressing this!