Question
I'm a little confused about all the strange shopping directory sites I have found linking to me.
Many of them have little or no actual new text they just cut and paste random bits of text from all other sites??
what is the good of this?
is this what is refered to as scraper sites?
Answer
Yes.
If you have the energy to do so, email the webmasters of each of those sites and ask that your site be removed. Some of the sites can actually harm your site via the "duplicate content" penalty. (Those that take chunks of your text to "advertise" your site, then redirect to your site - from their site.)
I have one site that a bunch of those scrappers decided to hit, and went from #3 all the way down to 650'ish at Google. The site is slowing working it's way back up. Slowly being the operative word.
Good luck.
Answer
I took the time to email webmasters and for the most part got hardy har har whatcha gonna do about it emails in response.
After the first of the year, I'm going to take the time to do it again. Now I just don't have the time. I have quite a few pages/sites that this is being done with.
The worst was when I was linked to a horny housewives webcam site...<blech> How embarrassing!
Lemme know if it works,
Donna
Answer
Originally Posted by Suthrnjewl
I took the time to email webmasters and for the most part got hardy har har whatcha gonna do about it emails in response.
After the first of the year, I'm going to take the time to do it again. Now I just don't have the time. I have quite a few pages/sites that this is being done with.
The worst was when I was linked to a horny housewives webcam site...<blech> How embarrassing!
Lemme know if it works,
Donna
I know how frustrating it is.
In fact, I can honestly say that only ONE nasty site removed the link to my site. NONE of the others did. I gave up. (Yes, I admit it, I actually let this go!) Instead, I'm working on getting quality links TO my site FROM excellent websites, in hopes that Google will eventually rid themselves of the crapper - I mean scrapper sites. There really isn't anything else you can do.
Well, there sortof is, but it's more of an act of excercise - ie., you won't necessarily see results, and that's to report them to Google, but in my opinion, there's no one on 'the other end' (Google) who actually READS or ACTS on the reports. But it can temporarily make you feel better that you're doing SOMETHING about it - even if its sending emails to file 13.
Work on your site, getting quality links and try not to fret about the loosers linking to your site.
Answer
Originally Posted by Suthrnjewl
I took the time to email webmasters and for the most part got hardy har har whatcha gonna do about it emails in response.
Donna,
There's an easy way to get them to take down your content - hit their host (do a whois lookup to find their details) with a DCMA take down notice. Costs nothing but usually will result in the offender's website being pulled pending administrative review. The host doesn't want to be legally responsible for infringing on your copyrighted material.
Answer
Originally Posted by agitprop
Donna,
There's an easy way to get them to take down your content - hit their host (do a whois lookup to find their details) with a DCMA take down notice. Costs nothing but usually will result in the offender's website being pulled pending administrative review. The host doesn't want to be legally responsible for infringing on your copyrighted material.
Thanks for that tip!
I'd send an abuse*fillinthehostname.com but some of them never even responded. I'll do the WHOIS search and get them.
Luckily the last person I found that did this (had my name, MY NAME, linked to a site looking for underage boys for fun <swoooon>) I was so mad and emailed the webmaster. Evidently some poooo hit the fan and they took my link off. The site wais still going...minus my link.
What was bad is this...he had my link the same color as the background so it didn't even show up. I had to view source. Then it showed me where my link was...grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!
That's just sorry...doncha think?
Thanks so much for taking the time to post the answer.
Peace,
Donna