How to Close the Websites/Weblogs that Steal Your Website Content

Why is this article written?

As a webmaster and blogger, I am always worried about my sites’ content. I spend lots of time to feed my sites with fresh, unique and distinct content but always there are people who like to steal and use them in their sites.

Why do they dare do that? Maybe because we were not strict and tough enough about our content. We have to learn to report and close stealer sites. If we all learn to do that, after a while we will not have to be worried about content stealing because nobody will dare to steal our content any more. Do you agree?

Let’s get started:

When something is valuable, some people who always like “to gain without any pain” try to steal it.

What is the most valuable thing in the internet world? Yes, information is the most valuable thing. Information gives value to your website and weblog. Information makes the content of your website/weblog and it is valuable when it is unique, distinct and fresh.

When it is valuable, others try to steal it for their websites/weblogs. Of course these people are stupid because they don’t know that a second-hand information can not give the same value to their websites but this doesn’t mean that you should not prevent them.

If you have a website/weblog that has unique content and if you spend a lot of time to write articles for your website everyday and give more value to it, you should be careful about the content stealing. Unfortunately search engines have not become progressed enough to know what information was post on a website for the first time and that website is the real owner of it and so if the same information can be found on any other website without linking to the original website, it means it is stolen and the stealer website should be penalized.

This is so hard to do automatically and algorithmically and without human supervision. This is what that search engines can not do perfectly yet.

I am sure you don’t like even one paragraph of your articles to be stolen and used on other websites. It makes me mad when I see someone has done it. It seems there are some scripts that steal the other websites content automatically and post it on the spam blogs (also known as splogs). The spam bloggers install these scripts on their weblogs and give some keywords to them. The scripts check the blog search engines for the new posts related to the given keywords. When they find any post, extract one or two of its paragraphs and post them on the splogs that the scripts are installed on them.

Even some of these scripts are able to mix different parts of different posts from different weblogs. They think that they can make unique content for their splogs through this method but they are wrong.

As soon as I post an article about Google, Yahoo, Adsense, AdWords and … to my weblog, I can see some part of my article on other weblogs. It happens as soon as Google Weblog search engine indexes my post that can not take more then few minutes after publishing.

Anyway, how can you prevent this? Is it possible to stop all the splogs?

You can never prevent this completely and it is impossible to stop all the splogs. It needs a lot of time that you will never have. BUT if each of us takes care of our posts and then acts to close the stealer websites, after a while spammers will give up and think about something else to steal. Maybe they will become realized that it is easier and more profitable to rob the banks than stealing the websites content.

You can keep the track of your content in other websites easily and then report the stealers. I will also let you know how and where they should be reported.

It is a little different to track the stealer weblogs and websites. You can track the stealer weblogs in blog search engines and stealer websites in ordinary search engines.

Weblogs:

As I explained, when you have a weblog, it is highly possible that splogs steal your posts or some parts of them. When they do that they send ping to blog search engines and so the pages that your article is posted on them will be indexed by the blog search engines. So you can check the blog search engines to find out if your posts are stolen by any splog or not.

Of course most of the splogs become banned by the blog search engines after a while and so they will not be indexed by them. So you will have to check the ordinary web page search engines (not blog search engines) to see if your weblog content can be seen on any other weblog/website or not. Sometimes it takes more than a few weeks to become able to find the stealer websites in search engines. So you have to spend some time every week to keep the track of your website content in other websites.

Additionally, many of the splogs are stupid enough to ping back to your weblog when they steal your content because some of the content stealing scripts link to your article permalink to pretend that they are legitimate and so your weblog software will receive the ping and will let you know.

Do not be happy when a splog links to your posts. Those links can improve your weblog ranking in Technorati temporarily but will not have any effect in log term. Also they will not send any traffic to your weblog. Those that don’t send any ping and don’t link to your article can be easily detected through the weblog search engines and also other search engines.

So how to track your weblog content in splogs?

1- Wait about one day after you publish a new article on your weblog and then go to http://blogsearch.google.com/ and search for it. I recommend the Google blog search because it is smarter and stronger than all other blog search engines.

Choose some parts of your article as the search terms and enter them to the search box. You have to put the search terms inside quotes. The search term you use should be as big as 10 to 15 words because it guarantees that it can not be found on any other website but yours. For example if I wanted to track this article that you are reading, I would enter the below phrase as one of the search terms:

“Choose some parts of your article that you are sure that are unique and enter to the search box as the search term”

Repeat this a few times with different parts of your article and check the weblogs that the search terms is found in them. Make sure that they have stolen your article before you make any action against them. If they have stolen your article, list the URL of the pages that your article is posted on them in a notepad file. List all the stealer weblogs/websites URLs. I will let you know what to do with them.

It is also possible that non-blog websites steal your weblogs articles. To find these websites, you have to wait for more than a few weeks after publishing a new article on your weblog and then search for it in Google (not Google blog search). Use the same method to find the stealer websites in Google and list the URL of the pages that your article in posted on them. Do not use any other search engine if you want to find the stealer websites. Google is the best to find them.

Websites:

When you post an article on a website (and not a weblog), it will not be indexed by blog search engines but will be listed in the ordinary search engines that index the web pages. This may take more time, sometimes a few weeks and sometimes more.

It is possible that your website content and articles to be stolen by weblogs and also ordinary websites. To find the stealer weblogs, use the above method to find them in Google blog search and to find the stealer websites, use the same method in Google and collect the URLs.

This is what that you have to do whenever you have time. Always keep the track of your articles and content on other websites and weblogs and find the stealers because if you find and stop a stealer today, your content can still be stolen by another stealer tomorrow. So you have to keep your eyes always open.

You collected the stealer websites URLs. What next?

After finding the stealer websites/weblogs, you have to act and stop them:

1- Contact the website/weblog owners and ask them to remove your article or content. Give them 3 days to do that and if they didn’t reply your email and let you know that they have removed your content, or their email was undeliverable and returned to you or nobody replied in three days, then you should go to the next step.

Splogs and also most of the stealer websites have no contact form or deliverable email address on their websites and so you can not contact them at all. If you want to give them a chance to remove your content, you can check their domain whois info and find the admin and technical contact email address or phone number but this doesn’t mean that these contact info are accurate and correct. So you will not be able to contact them.

So what should you do?

You should contact the domain registration and hosting company, inform them that their client has stolen your website content and ask them to close their client’s website. You should warn them that if they don’t do that, you will complain against their company and they will be in trouble. They never like to get into trouble because of a website that makes a few tens of dollars for them per year. So they will act and close the website and you are done.

How to find the domain registration and hosting company?

It is very easy and can be done in few seconds. In most cases the domain registration and hosting company are the same.

To do that just go to DomainTools and enter the domain name. DomainTools returns a lot of information. Scroll down and find the “Server Data”. Find the IP address and click on the W in front of it. You will see the hosting company contact information. Collect all the emails specially the “RAbuseEmail” emails.

Return to the previous page using the back button. Find the “Registry Data” and so the domain registrar company website address. Go to their website and find their contact info but you can always send an email to abuse@registrar-company-url.com.

So now you have the contact information of the hosting and domain registration companies. You should send an email to all the email address you have found. They should be informed that you have emailed both of the companies. So you can have the domain registration company emails in the “to” field and the hosting company emails in the “Cc” field of the email.

Here is the email template I use:

Hello,

The below website, hosted/registered by you, has stolen my website content:
<the stealer website URL>

For example the content of the below page:
<the URL of the page where your content is posted on the stealer website>

is stolen from one of my website pages at
<the URL of your stolen article or content>

Please inform the website owner to remove my content otherwise I will have to act against your company.I will be waiting for three days and then will be forced to contact my attorney if I don’t hear from you.

Best regards,
<your name here>

In most cases the domain registration company will suspend the domain in less than a few days. If they didn’t act, you will have to call them and send them an official letter.

Sometimes it becomes a big problem specially when you have spent lots of time and money on your website content and it is stolen by the others. When you contact the hosting and domain companies and they don’t act, if the content they have stolen from you is so important and will affect your online business, you will have to consult a lawyer and ask him/her to solve the problem. But if you convince the domain registration and hosting companies that your website content is stolen by one of their clients, in 99% of the cases they will act immediately and close the website.

Note:
Please make sure that your website content is really stolen before you act against any website.

Let the search engines know too:

In case that a website keeps on stealing your website content and you are waiting for the domain registration and hosting company to act and let you know, you may need to inform search engines about this problem and they will remove the stealer website from their index.

I don’t know about Yahoo and MSN but I do know that Google will do it. You will have to file a DMCA request and inform Google that you are the owner of the content and they know how to deal with the stealer website.

Bottom line:
If your website/weblog content is unique and so valuable, you have to protect it from being stolen. You need to keep the track of your website content on other websites through the Google blog search and ordinary search from time to time and if you found out that any part of your website content is stolen, you should complain to the domain registration and hosting company to close the website. If all the legitimate webmaster and bloggers do this, content stealers will have to find another job.

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