It’s hard to believe after Google’s recent updates, but there are still active scraper sites. A scraper site takes your content, usually from your feed, and uses it for content on their blog. In this post, I will show to report these sites that are infringing your copyright to Google and, hopefully, get them removed from the search index.
NOTE: This post is meant as a helpful guide, not legal advice. I am not an attorney and I am not recommending or suggesting any action, or lack of action, for any situation you may have. In other words, don’t sue me. 🙂
First, Try to Make Contact
Table of Contents
I would recommend you first attempt to contact the site owner. It’s not always easy to obtain contact information for a scraper site and that could be because they do not want to be found. That’s not a problem, we don’t need this information to report the blog stealing our content, it’s just a good idea to make that attempt.
If You Can Contact The Scraper Site
If you can find contact information, you have a couple of different approaches you can take;
- You could simply send an email showing exactly what content is infringing your copyright and requesting it be removed. You will also need to insist all further reproduction of your copyrighted content be stopped.
- The second option you have is to send a Cease & Desist notice to the scraper. I found this free generic sample Cease & Desist letter that can be used as a template, should you decide to write your own. Alternatively, you can, and probably should, seek the advice of an attorney.
Reporting The Scraper Site To Google
Google wants to know if your content is being scraped, especially if it is being indexed by them. Google has a simple process that takes you through a few step-by-step form to issue the request and launch an investigation. You can find the initial form here: Removing Content From Google
Just to save you a little time and get you started, I checked the following first three options on the form to report a content scraper for copyright infringement.
- Web Search
- I have a legal issue that is not mentioned above
- I have found content that may violate my copyright
Once your request has been accepted by Google, you can check the status in the section of your Webmasters Tools account: Removal Dashboard – Web Search
Don’t Stop At Google
If you know the site is a real scraper site and someone wasn’t simply making a mistake, you may want to report them to their web hosting company and their domain registrar. You can often obtain this information in a “Who Is” search for the domain. Many scraper sites use a third party privacy service to hide from such actions.
Your Thoughts?
Do you still see content scraping sites out there? Have you ever contacted someone violating your copyright? Have you ever found your content being indexed and ranked in the SERPs for a content scraper website or blog?
About Brian D. Hawkins
Good point that google is not the only game in town. They account for 66% of search traffic. So you still have 34% to to deal with. I have a similar issue. Where my site was scrapped. With photos of my site. So they do appear in the web search but in image search. With US laws the way they are it is hard to get Google t act. I filed letters with Chilling Effects along with my Cease and Deist notices I sent to the ISP and author of the content. Google will react to court orders and that is about it. I have been going round and round with Google for months. Yet I am not going to go away quietly with Google. Just keep sending it over and over. It is US laws that protect them so dearly. That even these scrap sites can appear higher in search results.
It’s rough Tim, no doubt. I’ve had pretty decent luck with Google but we have to understand that it’s just a company, not a government agency. Most businesses wouldn’t bother at all with abuse of their products other than to reduce liability. Business is business.
This is a great post Brian, and yes I still see scrapers ranking thanks to some of my posts. I usually try to contact them first in order to have them link back to my blog or remove my content, Usually that doesn’t work, and now I installed tynt for wordrpress which adds link back to my blog every time someone tries to copy text. And since the scrapres usually attack our rss feed it’s good to add a link back to your website inside the rss feed.
This helped a lot in my case, thanks for sharing 🙂
I’ve seen that plugin James but haven’t tried it. Thanks for bringing it up. 🙂
HI Brian
Great Post!
Thanks to the scraper-friendly laws here in India, the only option left is to request the person to remove the content. The last option – Google, which is there to sort that out but how google works on these issues, no idea.
Thanks for sharing this.
Sapna
All these different laws from various parts of the World make things pretty complicated Sapna. Even here in the US things vary from state to state. Hopefully Google’s reporting option will work anywhere.
Content scraping still happens, quite a lot actually. I actually have a couple of friends with autoblogs. The only way to make them stop is to take legal action and scare them or making Google take their content down on their own. Either way they won’t last long, as far as I know as they also use blackhat SEO methods and eventually get penalized.
Donno how exactly they generate profit but the apparently do.
It’s a disgusting behavior Christian but I know a lot of people see nothing wrong with it.
I’ve never gone the Google route, instead first sending a cease & desist and then going immediately to the DMCA and having the site shut down. That’s worked wonders except for once, where the location of the host was unknown; that was weird.
Thanks Mitch. Are you paying for the DCMA like we see here? http://www.dmca.com
No… first I’ve seen of anything like that.
Maybe I am confused, but define a scraper site?
I do get links back from content that have used from me and they all seem like “legit” blogs.
Maybe they are not scraper sites but blogs that link and use other content which seems fine to me.
It is almost like natural link building.
Hi Brian, I’ve seen more people using that plug-in to avoid any copying of their words or images from their website. I think that’s a great measure to go forward with. I haven’t noticed any yet but I will have to check it out more. I know they are site you can input your URL and it will tell you if anyone has copied your content.
Many newbies are not aware of this being wrong. I know I used to think if it was on the web and it didn’t say copyright that it was for public usage.
gr8 article brian.. i see that many people using script so that no one copy there words. i thnk that is also gud for bloggers. very usefull article
I had someone do that to me last year. When I noticed my entire post, they did credit it back to me and I was fine with it, but it would have been nice to be asked. I think it boils down to this: give credit where its due. Plain and simple. Thanks for this information because I didn’t know you could report them to Google.
People seem not to know that they can fight against Scrapers. It is still illegal to publish copyrighted material without explicit permission from the author. There is way to quickly find scrapers, put some content in your feed that is unique. Often a scrapers publish your feeds as is and this snippet of text will appear. Makes it searchable and also acts as a digital fingerprint that identifies your original content.
Nice write up Brian. I use Plagiarisma to detect any copies of my webpage online. It analyses text by text and searches for each paragraph on Google and other SEs. Most of the sites which I noticed, copy a part of the article and add a link to the original article…..
so what about the blogger community websites like, technorati, bloggers.com, and other websites which publish your blog feed, do they count in scrapper sites.
Nice post! I got a lot of blogger friends who also has a big with this scraper sites. I guess reporting it to google is really the best option to stop them.