Mrs. Mecomber’s Scrapbook

Ever been “scraped”? It’s the name (oh no! another funky new name for something Internet related!) for a blogger whose content has been stolen and that content republished by another blogger. And without crediting the originator. These scrapers surf the blogosphere, looking for content for the specific purpose of stealing it to “create” their own blog or website. It’s a disgusting, heinous practice. Search engines like Google and Yahoo, penalize websites for “duplicate content.” Your website or blog has a decreased chance of getting indexed (and therefore visited by readers) if there is more than one copy of your work out there. So scrapers are the bottom of the pool of scumbags, worse than card-sharks at poker tables.

I came across a great website that tells bloggers how to fight back. Hurray! It may come in useful for you if you are a blogger. You can check it out here. There’s a downloadable pdf form, too. Many thanks to this blogger for bringing this to the forefront! Scrapers should — and now can– be stopped.