How To Copy The Blog Posts of Others
Someone copied my Pacquiao vs Hatton Pacquiao Fight Results Predictions post and posted word-for-word the whole thing in his website. My misspelled Pacquaio was not edited and damn he is even ahead of me at Google’s SERP.
I don’t really mind if we had the same title, as I know that mine is so generic and bland. What I am furious about is that he copied the whole thing, even the headers and the bold words and phrases. He could have restructured, rephrased, rewrite, add or subtract something in that post. It would only take a few brain nerves and muscles to do that.
In my curiosity, I made my own investigation. It led me to some searches. The URL was masked but I found more and more info as I dug the html codes. My investigation even led me to the plagiarist’s full name, email, address and contact number. Oh boy, what am I going to do with it?
Could this be about the autoblog content Bloggista mentioned before? As I noticed in the trackbacks, these scrapers only post a few lines then they link back to your post. I can tolerate that. But this one is actually my whole post, a product of sweat and blood.
So, how do you copy the blog posts of others without irking the original author?
1. DO NOT COPY – If you copied in your school exams, would you still be doing it in the blogosphere? How do you feel if someone copies your whole post?
2. RESEARCH – Don’t just get ideas from one source. You’ll get the ire from the original author and a possible lawsuit if you copy verbatim. There are so many articles in the internet about similar subjects. Combine them. Add your own personal twists, metaphors, similes and other maneuvers.
3. CITE THE SOURCE – If you really have to copy a few lines, it is better to cite the source or perhaps a link to the original article, unless you are sure that such is general information. Most often, if we see that same info in many websites, citing the sources are no longer practical. But if you are a large site, you can cite all your sources just like that of wikipedia.
4. REVISE – Don’t just replace words with synonyms. Rewrite the whole thing in your own words and in your own style. Sometimes, in our copy pasting while doing a draft, we leave out some paragraphs as is (as in verbatim). Just be careful when you publish it.
As of this writing, my anger has subsided already, unlike that of yesterday when I first made my draft. Plagiarism or just plain copying is common in the worldwide web because it is easy to do and you can also make money out it. But it is wrong.
Friends, please check it out if your post is in someone else’s website. I’ve read rants before and I could not imagine it happening to me.
Update: There is another one who copied my post using free wordpress. He substituted some words but it’s obviously 95% mine. To check it, just type: “Pacquiao vs Hatton fight prediction results” in the google search bar. We’re all in page 1.
Popularity: 9% [?]
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Tags: Plagiarism Posted in
Ceblogger is a CPA trapped in his cubicle while his mind wanders outside watching the world, and exploring possibilities his mind conceived.
January 14th, 2009 at 7:20 am
It’s not suprising. There are many content scrapers now on the Internet. One website even copied my sports article on Bleacher Report. Good thing the owner cooperated and gave the proper credit to me.
January 15th, 2009 at 12:40 pm
I really hate this kind of bloggers. Instead of giving you credit for the work, they make your hardly created work their own. And worst, instead of you enjoy the pleasure provided by search engines, they even take it from you.
January 15th, 2009 at 2:28 pm
It happened to me many times! Sometimes mga spam blogs ang gumagawa nyan. I remember nung minsan nakakita ako ng active blogger na pinost yung buong post ko. Sabi ko irereport kita sa google as spam blog. Natakot at nag sorry. Some bloggers do copy contents and rephrase the whole article, still i don’t like the idea.
January 15th, 2009 at 8:18 pm
Bro,
You’re not alone in this dilemma. My articles have been copied one too many times. Minsan yun ang dahilan kumbakit tinatamad akong magsulat. Spamming or scraping other people’s good content is one practice many bloggers do to get higher ranks in the SERPs. Daming Pinoy na spammers, FYI.
January 16th, 2009 at 5:55 am
if he’s using Google Adsense, report them. Just click the “Ads by Google” link on their site, you’ll see at the bottom a link that says, “Send Google your thoughts on the site or the ads you just saw”. Click that and you’ll see an option to report a violation. Select “The site is hosting/distributing my copyrighted content” and add more details.
January 16th, 2009 at 12:04 pm
loy, good thing he gives you recognition.
i agree josh, the only work they do is copy and paste. it’s a shame.
ambo, two other blogs are now carrying that same post of mine. one is on free wordpress. ma contact ko nga later.
January 16th, 2009 at 2:30 pm
jessie, a recognition to the original author, or perhaps a statement that the article is not theirs, would be the least that they should do.
marhgil, ads are plastered all over his sites. and his footer is full of links too. obviously a spam blog. i’ll do that if he’ll continue with his post next week. at this far, i’ll try to improve my SERP position.
January 17th, 2009 at 10:27 pm
I must say that #2 is the one I adhere to a lot. I do my research and then add some bits of information (usually personal recollections) that people have told me about a particular topic. I start with the basic facts about a topic and then I branch out to what its personal significance is to me.
I try to write a lot about what I feel towards a certain topic. I believe that by doing that, I am effectively staying away from plagiarizing other people’s work.
January 18th, 2009 at 4:06 pm
This is really a big problem especially with the autoblogging tools, one can easily copy contents from other sites. But at least for these plugins, they give you backlinks, even put a link to your site as a source.
I have seen lots of sites copying my posts as well – word for word, and this is usually done manually I guess. Worse, most of these people are fellow countrymen.
Nothing much we can this time – maybe someone can think of a good idea avoiding your posts to be copied somewhere else. Disabling your RSS feed may work however, you’ll lose more if you don’t have an RSS feed.
January 20th, 2009 at 6:45 am
think of it as a milestone nalang. may nanggagaya na ng post mo hehehe ^^
January 24th, 2009 at 11:09 am
I’m interesting in looking at the copied post. And that’s a compliment I think, unless he’s doing posts just for Adsense.
January 24th, 2009 at 11:57 am
sunjun/cy, it’s clearly a post after adsense ads. go check it out, but don’t click on his ads.
February 4th, 2009 at 12:21 pm
My pinay celebrity scandal post was reposted by scrappers at their blog without changing the links.
At first was embarrassed but then when they redirected hundreds of traffic to my posts linked from that article, my embarrassment was relieved.
So, the lesson is:
In your post, make sure you established links to your other posts. Then make sure that your RSS is in Full so that scrappers will copy all the content of your post including the links.
When google spidered both the original and the scrapper, Google would know which is the original through the links.
February 4th, 2009 at 2:19 pm
selaplana, great idea! the power of internal linking can do wonders to counter the adverse effect of scraping.
February 6th, 2009 at 8:05 am
If you try to put an image with everything you do then sometimes they are stupid enough to hotlink directly to your source file. Then you can change out the source file for something gross with PLAGIARISM written across it and it will update in their article.
Is a brilliant revenge because these black-hat seo people never go back and check their old work — given it was probably scraped automatically.
February 15th, 2009 at 6:35 am
hi, i feel bad for this. i am newbie in this blogging thing, makes it really scary to copy and be copied. well, the truth will always be prevail and justice will always favor the good, so let’s just continue doing what is good.
February 15th, 2009 at 7:44 am
matthew, i think i came across with a post that details how I can get back at hotlinking plagiarist. May try it soon.
vin, scrapers will be penalized one day.
March 1st, 2009 at 3:49 am
tsk3x. irresponsible blogging. anyone knows you should always cite your sources and even ask permission from the original author. that’s what I do with the recipes and articles I use in my site.