Thread: Google on Content Scrapers

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CosWAVLCZg"]YouTube - Can you benefit from content scraped from your site?[/ame]

Biz from the USA asks:
"Is there a way to benefit from content scraped from your site?"

Matt says that you should try and make sure your content links back to yourself, because that way, in best case scenario, the scraper will actually end up linking back to you, which he says can't hurt, but has the potential to do some good. Otherwise, he recommends that we don't worry about it, because scraped content will very rarely rank higher than the original, legitimate content.

If the content scraper is using spam techniques, and you want to help remove it:
Google Report a Spam Result

You may also file a Digital Millennium Copyright Act Infringement Notification.
A good example is here: Example DMCA Notice of Copyright Infringement - FutureQuest, Inc.

Finally, here is Will Spencer's post on Blocking Content Scrapers:
Block Web Content Scrapers and Downloaders

So what are your thoughts on content scraping?

Google seems to be anti-scraping, yet they rank shopping comparison sites highly in the SERPs for product searches. The comparison engines are scrapers and offer no real value to the end user. They are nothing more than "thin affiliate sites" that Google hates. Yet, they somehow make their way to the top of the SERPs.

On the matter of scraped content "very rarely" ranking higher than the original source, it happens more often than Google likes to admit, and it's happened to me (as in, someone stole my content and outranked it).

Another breed of scrapers are PPC spy tools like SpyFu, Keyword Spy, Ispionage, etc. that scrape PPC ads from the SERPs, as well as people's landing pages. There's a great article by Wes Mahler for how to deal with that...

How to Prevent Spy Bots from Snooping Around Your PPC Campaigns

Nice vid. Obviously those people who are scraping content is wasting their own time.

Sometimes your competitors scrape content to devalue your links.

Originally Posted by sturat

Sometimes your competitors scrape content to devalue your links.

Could you elaborate on this, please?

I don't really bother with scrapers as they're there and the fact that scraping my sites are pointless anyways.

Scrapers are unfortunately using your site in different ways. Some are just duplicating your site on theirs, and others use your site as a affiliated little search engine with tags to make a few bucks with adsenses.

I will not pay attention too much of these sites, because Google will caught them. The main thing to pay attention are people stealing your contents from your articles, descriptions, and terms, etc for their own sites.

That's why I like the related posts plugin for WP for ensuring links back to the site content when scraped.

Originally Posted by javanx3d

That's why I like the related posts plugin for WP for ensuring links back to the site content when scraped.

Very good point..

For the most part, adding links to the content or using the Related Posts plugin is pointless. Most scrapers can and probably do easily remove all hyperlinks using using PHPs strip_tags or an equivalent HTML stripper.

The menus in WordPress also contain links back to the site, but a scraper would eliminate those from the code and only concentrate on the page content.

Sorry, but adding links gives a false sense of security.