Last week, when I looked at my stats, I noticed a couple of hits from a site that seemed somewhat odd to me. Because of the workload last week, I didn’t have time to investigate it further.
But today I did. And upon going to that site, I was upset to see that they had copied entire posts from my blog, without my permission, and posted them on their site — but peppered with ads. It seems a scraper has found me. But it’s not just my blog — I also saw posts from some of the blogs which I read regularly on there. They too were peppered with ads. I have written to the scraper’s web host and to Google asking that the offending posts from my blog on the scraper site be taken down, but upon doing some research today I was horrified to find out this is becoming more and more common.
What these scrapers do is take our content. We spend the time writing the posts, taking the photos and editing them, checking them over before we hit that “publish” button. What do the scrapers do? Nothing. They just swoop in, copy our content, paste it on their site, pepper our content with ads and sit back and make money. It’s clearly copyright violation run amok! I am not giving out the offending site address as I don’t want to drive any more traffic their way than they’re already getting.
And that explains why I’ve noticed a few of my favourite blogs are now truncating their posts so that all that’s seen in the blog reader are the first few lines or a short excerpt from their blog post. I swore I’d never do that, but now I’m having second thoughts.
You can read a great post about these scrapers here. And another here. And yet another here.
And now I find myself thinking seriously about truncating my blog posts. I would hate to lose readers as a result of taking that step, but I’m also not happy to find my photos and content copied onto other sites without permission.
So starting tomorrow morning I’m going to try out truncating my posts somewhat. I hope you’ll stick around and click through to read and comment.
Quilt Obsession 
I read your blog from my mail, so I don;t think it would affect me at all. I hope to still read and enjoy your posts!
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Cathi….. Love your blog and hate this is happening to you. Something similar is happening on Facebook. Someone is posting on fb pages acting as if they were the person the page belongs to. I love the net and blogs. I have learned so very much and hate this is happening. Guess you will have to send Baxter on a search missio n……..Sandi
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ABSOLUTLY truncate! Please protect your intellectual property! As someone who is new to Inklingo, I really appreciate your inspirational posts. I’m also in love with Baxter, especially as my dear Snicklefritz is ending her twilight years. I’ll continue to follow your posts no matter what you decide to do.
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Wow…..I hadn’t heard of this practice! Unfortunately there are far too many unscrupulous people out there, making things difficult for the honest ones.
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Well, this is awful! No matter what you do, I will still read your blogs. They are a bright start to most of my days! Sending hugs!
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Thanks for the heads-up!
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this has been going on for awhile with blog also – I have seen some of my posts on these sites but didn’t know if there was anything I could do about it.
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Wow – this is awful. I say do the truncate thing. I look forward to a few words from you and Baxter each day
as well as seeing what block you have worked on. An extra click will certainly not bother me if it will stop these
people from doing this to you.
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Sad part is unless you file a suit against them they know they have one. Pictures I have taken and placed on my blog are visible on Google. Nothing is private or safe anymore. Good Luck with all of it. I just don’t get involved with Adsense and Pinning at all.
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I just did it a few days ago so go ahead and truncate your blog because your readers will understand.
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Gosh Cathi, this is awful… but it’s not going to stop.
Try the abbreviations and see how it works… I am sure your readers will click and read your post. 😀
Thanks too from me… didn’t know about this 😦
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I will … always love your pictures and words…smile!
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Though I don’t post often and my little blog is new, one thing I learned recently is that you may want to also put a watermark or sign each and every photo you post on your blog, as this also “seems” to keep the scrapers from stealing your blog posts. I’m off to read the links you posted – thank you!
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Oh Cathi! This is disgraceful!! (the copying not you truncating) It’s mind blowing the depths that some folk will sink. It doesn’t say a lot about those that are advertising on these blogs. Do what you need to, to protect yourself from such thievery.
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Oh Cathi, how sad that people are doing this!!! So many of us dearly love your blog…and will understand/follow where ever you lead!
Hugs!
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It is a sad state of affairs that many popular blogs have to resort to truncating, but do what you need to do to protect yourself. I don’t mind clicking over to see the whole post. You have a lovely blog that is inspirational [and fun!] to many. Good luck to trying this new procedure. Sure hope it works. Hugs to you, Baxter and Mr. O!
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Oh what will they think of next? If only folks like this spent as much time working for good rather than how to take from others . . . . imagine what they could accomplish! I totally understand and may just have to look into this myself *rats* I’d rather be stitchin’!
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I think its pretty rotten for people to be lifting your content!…I don’t know if it has happened to me….but I do know that my photos get pinned all over the pinterest world….I am glad people like the pictures but not so much that they dont get credited….I might ty to figure out how to watermark the pictures…..I hope your truncating solution works out
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I don’t think truncating the reader view is likely to help with this problem. If a human can follow the link and view it, so can the scraper. The usual reason to give the RSS feed a smaller view is to use a little less bandwidth – only clients who care to click get the images, rather than them being downloaded and rendered to readers who are scrolling past quickly.
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Hiya Cathi,
I read this post & I was blown away. I did not know people did this. And that it happens instantaneously as you publish it!!!
I went to some of your links & read that information also. It is really rather frightening, because I am building a website with SiteBuildIt, and am just starting off on this journey… oh, well.
I started to write you a reply from my ThinkPad, which is like a laptop, but I am just learning it, and it has Word 2010, whereas my PC has Word 2007. My PC man just showed me the Snip-it Tool, which belongs to Word 2010, and is a recent addition. I have been looking for a tool like this for years.
For me, I cannot see that a truncated post would put me off.
I subscribe to an SEO who provides regular and up-to-date newsletters. http://ezseonews.com/ He has just written a very good book. I am not trying to educate you. Please realize that I know very little about computers, etc, and I think that you probably know lots more. But I feel that the more information we have from honest people, the better.
Cheers,
Lou
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