Hi, I posted a while back about scraper sites and we had a pretty good discussion on the subject. However can't find the thread. Since then I've noticed some peculiar details. For one, scraper sites seem to be increasing and aggregation seems to be the rage for some (i.e. BlogBurst - we declined their offer), also on some of our content we've found that links from scraper sites actually rank higher in some Google searches. This isn't common, but occurs enough to be a concern and for some big stories. Also, I'm aware that Google will penalise for duplicate content. Is this the case? What are your experiences, and is there any technical way to stop scraping if we chose to? Cheers
Google doesn't "penalize" per se, but they will filter out some duplicate results. I say some because some of the results do indeed stay in the SERPs. Just get more backlinks than the scraper websites. Shouldn't be hard, no one links to scraper websites really. Once Google recognizes your website as an authority resource, you won't even have to build many backlinks. You can always try inserting a blank image to your post, which gets picked up by scrapers. Then once you see it was copied change the blank image to a huge sign that says "This content was stolen- visit us at YourURL.com to read the original source" - this is always fun. I've never really dealt with scrapers though. I few people tried stealing my content once and I sent them a DMCA notice, they took it down. Most of them are high school kids looking to make it big on the Internet. One little mention of law breaking and they crumble.
LOL, I used a similar method when I found a rival internet store hotlinking my graphics for a product. I just changed the graphic to read "Buy this and more VVVVV brand products at www.mysite.com" Took them two days to notice, but it made me feel much better in the mean time.
Most of the scrapers I've ran into ignore images :\ Would've been a great thing to try out for fun if they didn't though!