Make Money from Blogs » Warning

Prevent plagiarism: Add a legal warning to the blog

ashish — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 17:36:16 +0000

For the past few posts, I have been trying to identify some measures that can be taken to try and prevent ongoing plagiarism of a blog. In short, the workflow of plagiarism and the steps that need to be taken are:
1. Detect whether your blog has been copied. You can do this by:
- Searching in search engines for specific strings from your content
- Detecting content copying through Google Alerts
- Using tools such as CopyScape
2. Once you detect any such plagiarism, then you can take the following steps
- Write to the owner of the blog to ask that this plagiarism be ended
- Leave comments in the blog to similar effect
- If no comment, highlight to the host of the blog about this copyright
- If the other blog is added to Adsense, then highlight this content copying
- Take futher legal actions

However, there is a simple step that you can take that will atleast warn off a number of people who get scared of legal implications, and that step is to add a statement to your blog that you do not tolerate your blog being copied, and you will take whatever legal action is required. Add one or two examples from other blogs where they have taken such steps.

Read more about what is happening in Adsense – refer the Adsense Blog

ashish — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 18:43:38 +0000

This post is relevant for most people, whether they be experienced bloggers of newbies who do not know much about the Adsense program (they can copy the Adsense code, but do not know too much more about what the terms and conditions of the Adsense program are, and other such details). The Adsense Program is a dynamic program, with terms and conditions changing from time to time. So, it is fine if the change makes the program more liberal, but sometimes the condition changes such that the Adsense Program forbids something that used to be allowed earlier. If you are now violating these terms in your new posts, and Google blacklists you, taking the defence that you did not know about these changed terms may not work (and trust me, you do not want to get into a situation where Google may be thinking about terminating your Adsense Program).
So, what can you do ? Well, you can add a feed to the Adsense Blog (link). The Adsense Blog offers tips on how to improve your earnings from Adsense (including the way to add Videos and make ad money from them, the announcement of the removal of the Ad referral program, and also the change in terms that prohibit a certain amount of closeness of words next to an Adsense ad, all of these were announced on the blog). So if you are not reading the Blog and are using Adsense, then I would submit that you are making a mistake.

Avoiding getting a warning from Google Search

ashish — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 18:34:19 +0000

As the previous post stated, if you get your blog or site appearing on Google Search with a warning below it stating that this site could harm your computer, all the effort that you may have put in to make your blog popular will go down the train. Your traffic levels will reduce significantly, and this kind of slump will be difficult to overcome. How do you find out whether your site has gone into Google’s security doghouse ? Well, checking your Google Webmaster Tools page listing is one useful step, and the other step that you can take is to visit the FAQ page at the StopBadWare site, as well as check out whether your page is listed.

1. You need to visit the Page Checking tool at this link http://www.stopbadware.org/home/reportsearch

2. Review the FAQ located at this page and make sure that you read all the steps and warnings carefully.
Some extracts from the page:
When people search for my site on Google, the search engine result instead links to a Google webpage that says there might be badware on my site. What does this mean?
Google has placed warnings in its search results for websites that its testing has determined to host or distribute badware. If a Google user searches for a site that Google has determined to be potentially dangerous, they will see a warning in the search results.
Currently, many sites that are the subject of Google’s warnings have been the victims of a malicious hacking attack, in which code linking directly to badware through exploits was inserted onto an otherwise innocent, but poorly secured, website. In other cases, a website with no intention to distribute badware hosts content (such as ads or hit counters) provided by a third party, and can inadvertently distribute badware through that content. If you are confused about why your site has a Google warning, then there are strong odds that your site has experienced one of the above situations.

3. If you feel that your page is safe and meets all the conditions listed in the FAQ, ask for a review at this link, http://www.stopbadware.org/home/reviewinfo

Google blocking your site

ashish — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 18:11:12 +0000

Most people have found over a period of time that Google Search drives a large amount of traffic to your sites. If you take an estimate for the number of people visiting sites outside of large corporate or media sites, you would find that Google generates more than 50% of the visits to your site. Now think: Have you ever seen in searches a small line of text below a search result (“This site may be harmful to your computer”). Google does not allow a person to go through to the site easily (you have to copy the link and put it in the address bar of the browser). This is potentially suicidal for the success of the site since your traffic may drop significantly.
When this happens and you find your own site behaving in this manner, you need to find out what is going wrong. You need to click on the search result link, and you will get to a warning page where you will find a small report on the problem, and a section at the bottom for people who may be the owners of the affected page. There will be a link in this section, and you can use that link to get to a diagnostic page. Once there, look at the problem in more detail. It will also tell you that more details are available at the Google Webmasters Tools page. In order to find more details about the kind of problems typically indicated, use these 2 pages for more details:
1. Google Help Page on Malware
2. StopBadWare.org’s tips for cleaning and securing your website
(You get a lot of details on what kind of phishing, malware, bad ads, and other such problems that could get your site in problems. You also learn more about the review process that could help in getting the Google warning lifted)

There are three basic steps to maintaining a clean site:
1. Identifying badware on your site
2. Removing badware from your site
3. Preventing badware in the future
Once you are at #2, you can request a review.