Make Money from Blogs » Copy

Cross-domain content duplication

ashish — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 16:40:49 +0000

It is pretty well known that content duplication is a problem in terms of search engine penalties. I used to search a lot about whether having the same content on multiple sites was a problem, and there was conflicting information on different sites about whether this is a problem or not. I initially read on some sites that this was not a problem, but then I read on Google’s blog that they did not really prefer to appreciate people who tried to hoodwink their search engines by having the same content appear on their search in different positions. In fact, if Google determined that this was done deliberately, then they would apply penalties. So, this would mean that if I placed my content on 2 sites and did so consistently, Google would consider that to be deliberate.
However, I read this post on the Google blog (link to post) where they explained how to make the cross-domain duplicate blog posting work, but for specific cases where the user may be trying to make the transition between one domain to another domain. This is still not a carte bache to merrily duplicate content across different sites. Some of the steps that are advised is that the user is advised to select the preferred domain, as well as handle the duplication of content within the site, and most importantly, use the 301 server side redirects.

Where possible, the most important step is often to use appropriate 301 redirects. These redirects send visitors and search engine crawlers to your preferred domain and make it very clear which URL should be indexed. This is generally the preferred method as it gives clear guidance to everyone who accesses the content. Keep in mind that in order for search engine crawlers to discover these redirects, none of the URLs in the redirect chain can be disallowed via a robots.txt file. Don’t forget to handle your www / non-www preference with appropriate redirects and in Webmaster Tools.
There are situations where it’s not easily possible to set up redirects. This could be the case when you need to move your website from a server that does not feature server-side redirects. In a situation like this, you can use the rel=”canonical” link element across domains to specify the exact URL of whichever domain is preferred for indexing. While the rel=”canonical” link element is seen as a hint and not an absolute directive, we do try to follow it where possible.

Detecting plagiarism on your WordPress blog – using the Tracer tool

ashish — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 19:09:36 +0000

The previous post talked about using this tool if you have a Blog hosted on Google’s Blogger, but what if you have a WordPress account ? Well, this tool works for blogs running on WordPress, and numerous others (Ning network, Typepad, WebsiteWorks.com). It is fairly easy to add this to your WordPress blog, since WordPress has a plugin structure that easily allows the addition of more functionality. You can refer the following site (link) for installation instructions. Basically, this functionality requires adding code to the template, and just before the tag.
So, go for it. The code is setup to add a small link back to your site when they copy your content so that when they add the content to their site, the link gets added. This link will eventually get caught and you can then detect that your content is being coped elsewhere, and then you can take further action to remove the stolen content.

Protect your Blogger post – Use Tracer to add your own link back to the copied content

ashish — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 19:56:18 +0000

It remains difficult to protect your content. You can take measures such as adding a Javascript that will prevent people from being able to right-click, or which will prevent people from being able to select content from your blog, but there are ways around that. Such controls do prevent some people from being able to take your content, but there will be people who are more technologically competent, and they will be able to beat your controls.
The method to be used is to detect when somebody is stealing your content, and then confront that person. The main point in this approach is to find out when somebody is stealing your content through the use of tools such as Google Alert, through some smart searching through using Google, and through some other plugins. However, if you have a blog on Google’s Blogger interface, it will get more difficult to use such measures. One such tool however that you can use is called Tracer, and can be downloaded from this link.
The way that this tool works is that you can set it up on your Blogger blog through a HTML/Javascript gadget, and then the tool will add a back link to your site when somebody selects content from your site and copies it. There will be always some people who will notice the back link, but for those where a tool is used to copy, or when somebody is not careful enough, the back link will let you easily detect when somebody has copied content from your site.

Protect your content: Report a spam blog to Google

ashish — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 19:05:58 +0000

The Google Search service provides a huge percentage of traffic to most sites, especially those of individuals. The position of a site in the Google search index is a big variable in the success or failure of a site, and the removal of a site from the Google index can reduce a site (especially spam blogs) to becoming almost useless. And this is one of the approaches you should take if a site is stealing your content. Again, as I have repeated earlier, it is almost impossible to really protect your content from being stolen, and what you should concentrate on is how to close down those sections of another site where your content is being used.
The Google site to report stolen content being hosted on another site is at this link. From the site:

Help us to make Blogger and Blog*Spot spam-free by reporting spam blogs below. Please submit each blog only once. While we don’t reply to individual reports, we will review every submission as soon as possible and take action as necessary.

Using WP CopyProtect to protect your content

ashish — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 17:03:43 +0000

Start with a fundamental fact. If somebody is determined to steal your content, no amount of protection will prevent them from being able to take your content. However, not everybody is so determined or technically aware that they can break your protection and copy your content. So if you want to save your content from those people who are looking for relevant content to copy, and are fine with a first level of protection that dissuades the casual blogger, then you should consider the use of this WordPress Plugin – ‘WP CopyProtect’. What this plugin does is to prevent people from being able to select sections of your content to copy, and also prevents people from using the Right-Click menu to do the copying.
Location of the site (link) for reading more and downloading:
From the site:

Many bloggers are facing the problem of content theft. Content theft is a really serious problem, and it must be dealt with. We bloggers write our posts using much effort, and “Copy Cats” simply copy our content without our permission, and without attribution.
That’s why I developed a simple, but powerful, plug-in which will protect your digitally-written work on your blogs. This plug-in is based on the technique of “Disabling right-click” and “No text selection” scripts.

The issues with this plugin:
1. Many people do not prefer sites to disable right-click and get irritated
2. These are basic levels of protection and can be circumvented