Creative Commons License and Copyright, fight against plagiarism

Yes, there are Plugins that do stop splogs and scrapers, once they are identified. Try Owen Winkler’s AntiLeech WordPress Plugin.

As a new blogger, give up now on PageRank before you become addicted. It means nothing any more, honestly. Focus on content and writing keyword rich content and let nature take it’s course. Spread the word by becoming involved on the web, not by watching Google judge your blog. I know some bloggers with zip for page rank and they have 5,000 to 20,000 visitors a day. And others with a page rank over 7 and they get less than 500 a day. Go figure. It’s like watching water boil.

If you are using ads that judge you based upon page rank, then don’t use them. Wait for six months to a year for your site to grow naturally. Focus totally on providing original and interesting content. Write for your readers and fans, not Google.

As for feeds, it’s up to you and your blog’s content and style. It doesn’t stop scraping, just what they can scrap. Some people scream that they won’t read blogs with partial feeds. Yet, it doesn’t stop them tracking CNN and BBC and others popular sites with less than partial feeds. Some of the top bloggers around have summary or partial feeds. It’s up to you. It won’t hurt you one way or the other if you write with excerpts and feed length in mind.

Again, who cares about Alexa ranking? Stop it. See this article for some new ways of thinking about marketing yourself. Staring at your statistics doesn’t get you new readers.

In 18 months, you will thank me for that advice. See also The Art of the Artist Web Design Collaboration for tips on creating a fan-base.

As a beginning blogger, we just got our content scraped for the first time by an “Abraham Lincon wrote an interesting post” variety. To be honest, it was kind of exciting: we’re new on the grid, there was an incoming link, it improved our technorati rank from 8 million to 4 million. And, it opened our eyes to the issue.

When I look at the plugins that deal with this issue, most of them focus around the idea of adding a copyright disclaimer, or including links to your own site. I presume the logic of the disclaimer is to raise awareness to other bloggers that the content was taken from another site. I imagine the trackback link plus Google Alerts helps you to become aware when scrapping is occurring so that you can take action.

But, the plugins themselves don’t stop the practice of scraping – just raise awareness of the issue to other conscientious bloggers and to yourself so you can take action.

Two questions:
1. As a new blog who is trying to gain ground, I’m kind’ve torn because I like the linkbacks. Won’t I get PR points for the link from within an article (it’s not like a comment where nofollow is turned on by default). Plus, there’s the benefits of technorati links and improved rating. Do these things matter, or should I be worried about the content theft.

2. How do you feel about using exerpts only in a RSS feed. Then readers have to click the link to get the entire article. I’ve met some people in the blogosphere who hate exerpts – but doesn’t the exerpt RSS feed bring interested readers onto your site to finish the article, thus improving your Alexa rank and potentially monetizing your site through ad clicks?

You’ve given me a lot to think about. Thanks for your insights.

Another professor who got fed up with his students plagiarizing did a study that showed rarely are six words identical in two pieces of writing. If it’s out there on the internet, I usually find it. Maybe this would work for spotting plagiarized content too.

And thank you for the marvelous post and leaving the breadcrumbs that tracked back to YOU not the copy cat.

Like Barbara, I also take advantage of Google Alerts and also Yahoo Alerts to gather information on where my name and subject matter appears.

Who has time to do such work manually?

Shirley Frazier

Regarding the plagiarism, so glad you found it out ahead of time. It must have been extremely draining to deal with it. Your posting also compelled me to learn more about signatures – I’m off to include that now.

Best wishes,

Barbara

Thanks, Jonathan. The signature isn’t the point. :D It’s the “blog signature” that leaves a trackback trail that is the most critical aspect of “signing” your blog. If the links are in there and the abuser has trackbacks enabled – PING! Knock, knock, here’s copy cat!

Jeremy Steele Yes, there were links, but they were all diverse external links. Having a few links that consistently link to your blog within the text, such as a link in general text rather than pointing to a specific site as mentioned, can be indicative, of the fact that the post is not hosted by the original author. The links in this case were mostly to other blogs, not a single one in particular.

As for how you were supposed to know, you weren’t. There is no way you could have. Even I occasionally get duped by spam blogs and/or plagiarists.

One tool that I’ve found to be useful though is, if you have any suspicions, use the Mahalo Plagiarism Checker Tool:

http://www.mahalo.com/Plagiarism

It’s a fast and easy way to search for potential plagiarism on a Web page.

Also, great advice on the feed. It’s worth noting, for us FeedBurner users, that you can get the same functionality through Feed Flare. It works best on sites that either don’t run WP or can’t use plugins, such as WordPress.com sites.

I like the idea of the signature, but if you saw my handwritting, you’d understand why my site is sticks to the text links…