If you wouldn’t mind, could you all go to http : // legendaryportfolios . blogspot . com (sorry, no link… I don’t want search engines to find them through me!), and look at the bar at the top, and click “Flag” to flag it as objectionable content? It’s not hard to see that this site is trying to rip me off by putting my content up with their ads. Luckily, I think their adsense account has been terminated, since their ads do not appear right now.
It seems I can fax some DMCA complaint forms to google and try to get them to take the site down, but it would be nicer and easier if they noticed it themselves via a whole bunch of “flags” on the site. In the very least they might keep the site from being indexed… since multiple sites with identical content hurts my search rankings, etc…
I found the site because I was getting periodic traffic from it… if any of you notice other sites with copies of my material (hopefully less blatant than this!) I’m always interested in knowing about it. Thanks!
[EDIT: I've added some code to redirect hotlinked images to a spam warning... let me know if I overdid it, and you see the warning image on this site!]
January 13th, 2007 at 4:19 am
Richard,
As I am relatively new to this blogging thing, what does “Hurts your search rankings” mean?
TIA
January 13th, 2007 at 4:28 am
You’re up early! (or, maybe you’re up late!)
google in particular frowns on it when they find pages with nearly identical content across domains. their algorithms penalize (sometimes to the point of de-listing) those sites because they assume it is probably spam.
http://www.pandia.com/features/banned.html
http://www.pandia.com/sw-2004/40-hijack.html
January 13th, 2007 at 5:01 am
Done.
There are a few of these type of sites, not on blogspot, which consistently copy my content over in an automatic way. I almost gave up on doing anything about it. They normally don’t copy the entire site look and feel though like this person did.
January 13th, 2007 at 5:14 am
thanks. I’ve found a couple here and there that were running the text of my RSS feed, which is why I switched to the abbreviated version (rather than having the full text of the articles). It’s aggravating!
January 13th, 2007 at 7:17 am
Done. Flagged it.
This is ridiculous, this guy basically steals the entire main page from you.
btw, are you sure the site was not created by yourself while you were a little tipsy? lol..
January 13th, 2007 at 7:35 am
This is the first time I hear of such unethical acts, bad bad bad!
Have flagged it as well. Hope it helps
January 13th, 2007 at 7:35 am
I also found mustseestocks blogspot which is a copy of fly on wallst by the same people (the changed adsense id’s match). Crazy.
January 13th, 2007 at 7:49 am
I’ve seen sites that try to copy content, but this is the first time that I’ve seen a site clone the original ! Pretty blatant. Is there a way to extract the blogger ID from that blog and report it to google ?
January 13th, 2007 at 8:13 am
@phileo: it’s not especially easy to go through google to take the site down. You have to basically threaten to sue them via the DMCA. I’m glad it’s so difficult, actually. If it were easy, then people would abuse the system to have sites they don’t like taken down. In an extreme case, it could be done, though.
thanks again, everyone, for your help.
January 13th, 2007 at 9:40 am
I just flagged them. I’ve seen plenty of sites hijack RSS feeds, including my own damn near weekly, but this is the first time I’ve seen an entire site jacked. It looks to me like they’ve just copying the entire source of your site.
January 13th, 2007 at 9:43 am
… also, it’s interesting that they left your ads in place. So on the bright side, you’re getting more ad impressions! :-)
Also, good job on stopping the hot linking. If you really want to be hard core do this — http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/000278.html
January 13th, 2007 at 11:05 am
@Mike: yeah, if even my RSS feed gets hijacked sometimes, I can imagine yours is everywhere. And no, I’m not ready to be that hard core about it!
January 13th, 2007 at 11:28 am
I can’t flag the site. Every time I move my mouse over the “flag” button, the button disappears.
January 13th, 2007 at 11:32 am
Thanks for trying, anyway! They do some kind of pop-up box that tries to explain to you what flagging is all about. The pop-up is probably incompatible with your browser setup.
January 13th, 2007 at 2:38 pm
Flagged it. Didn’t even know stuff like this is going on.
January 13th, 2007 at 3:15 pm
Flagged. You asked if you were over the top? No way! I would have hit a lot harder than you did in your redirect…
January 13th, 2007 at 5:24 pm
flagged it. Your hot linked image is great. it is not over the top, i would even add more to it to explain that the site is STEALING the content.
January 13th, 2007 at 6:03 pm
Thanks!
Oh, I didn’t mean over the top with the image… I meant if I was too strict on the redirect rules, causing you to see the redirected image on this site.
January 13th, 2007 at 6:32 pm
Richard,
The redirect might not be working as expected. When I go to the Nov 29/06 articles on your website, I get the same redirect image. You’re not unauthorized to serve your own images, right?
Also, I would have said, “These jokers are unauthorized to serve …….”
January 13th, 2007 at 6:59 pm
@Phileo: it’s because of your browser cache. Unfortunately, it thinks it already has the right image (from when you viewed the spam site) so it doesn’t bother to reload it when you view it here.
I don’t know anything I can do about that… but it happens to me as well. I guess I could add a note about that to the redirect image.
January 13th, 2007 at 7:31 pm
Thank you for explaining that to me, Richard. :)
January 13th, 2007 at 8:37 pm
You’re welcome, TG!
January 14th, 2007 at 7:03 pm
Happy Sunday!
January 14th, 2007 at 7:12 pm
Are you busy?
Wanna play a game of backgammon?
January 14th, 2007 at 7:16 pm
LOL am all tied up at the moment, but would love to play with you some other time.
January 14th, 2007 at 7:20 pm
Tied up!
Wow! I didn’t realize you were into “that”!
Want me to get you some scissors? LOL!
O.K. Look me up sometime.