Last week I happened to notice one of my articlesbase articles appeared twice in the seach results for the designated keyword. I checked out the indented version, and despite being the same article, it was published by another author! I don't mean it was re-published either! Someone just picked up my exact article, stripped off all my links, and inserted their own. Obviously I contacted articlesbase right away, but I'm yet to get an answer on the issue. Also, I looked around that "author" archive and several of my articles seem to have been swiped. Along with someone else's articles. So, is that how it works nowadays? Can I just start swiping other people's hard work and profit on their expense? How would you deal / have you dealt with something like this?
Some days ago I experienced the same thing when someone copied my article from Ezine and submitted it to some other article directory with his own links. I contacted the site admin but no response. But here is is really wired that someone just copying articles and submitting this to the same article directory. Articlebase must have some filter about this type of duplicate submissions.
Hey, you may not gain anything by making this thread. You are doing nothing more than encouraging newbies to adopt this practice. I have seen this happen for few of my articles but there's nothing we can do. You can get the articles removed from AB but most other article directory admins will just ignore such complaints as it isn't worth their time. I do believe that you can get such persons banned from clickbank but that will require a lot of time & energy and that is the reason why most people will just ignore such incidents. If you do make some effort, you can get them banned from the article directory, clickbank (or whatever affiliate network), blogspot (or any other web 2.0 site) and even the hosting company (if they posted the copied articles on their website). I believe, such promotions should be accorded as spam by Clickbank and they should ban accounts right away or maybe implement a system of infractions?
I've had articles taken down by several of the directories that were plagiarized copies of ones I'd published elsewhere. Often they have you fill out information for a formal DMCA complaint, and the reputable directories will generally take the articles down right away. You can also contact Google directly and do it with them. It usually doesn't take that long to fill out the information. I hadn't thought about contacting Clickbank directly and reporting these offenders - but that's a very useful idea! For me, it really depends as to whether I have the energy at the moment to pursue the offender. You can catch a lot of these using google alerts for keywords you use in your article titles.
fill it with redirected affiliate links so it's harder to steal it. then just move on. The world is full of plagiarism. Most people haven't a clue how to do anything unique or of value.
Articlesbase do respond to such cases, only thing is you need to followup. When somebody has submitted spun version of my article they had removed the article with in 4 days.
OMG! Call the police and FBI. Article thieves at work again! You sound surprised this happened to you...but article "theft" happens all the time. Just contact AB (as you did) and they will probably take care of it.
@ Smitten did you get any response from AB, because I just noticed some of my articles have been swiped too...just the exact replica of my original
Sadly (not unpredictably)... no response from AB yet. I have been thinking about this issue, though. I will say that people who resort to article swiping are unlikely to go farther than making a handful of sales - if any at all. Mostly because: 1) They're basing their "campaigns" on duplicate content. I doubt such content will rank well. Further, A proper article should stem from good keyword research and be followed by consistent link building. Someone who goes around stealing articles from other people is unlikely to even grasp the concept of keyword research, and they probably won't exert themselves building links. 2) For a swiped article to surpass the original version, a solid work of backling-building would be required. Which generally calls for more time and effort than writing a proper article. As far as I can see, the only profit a link swiper would possibly get from stealing other people's articles would result from the initial views attained immediately following publication. Which nowadays (as result of the heavy proliferation of article marketing) are quite scarce, anyway. Sure, the people who steal my articles might get their website ranked over mine in the long haul. But again, I'd say that is unlikely. Why? 3) When properly done, articles are just the tip of the research/promotional iceberg. I can be wrong, of course! Any thoughts? edit: A simple way to test this theory just occurred to me. I have noted the affiliate ID from the creature i caught stealing my articles, and I'll tell the vendor what's going on and ask him to keep me in the loop, in case the swiping creature does make a sale eventually. @Jaykou: I suggest you (or anyone else who has experienced similar issues) do the same, so we can draw some actual conclusions here.
So what? The affiliate program wont care - as long as the sale itself isn't fraudulent, they wont care how their affiliates are writing articles. Just stop worrying about this and move on.
@semutbiz: I don't think vendors have direct access to the vendors emails :-/ @dlm: maybe my previous reply was too wordy, but had you read it you'd have noticed at this point I really aren't worried - just curious. I don't believe people who just copy someone else's articles can go too far in making sales, and I've come up with a way to know for sure. When I get news from that vendor concerning the affiliate who swiped my articles, I'll post here. Hopefully anyone who bothers doing the same will also post their results as well. But yeah it'll probably come down to... it's unlikely someone will get a decent amount of sales from swiping articles.
To be honest, that's not quite accurate in my experience. It seems to me, a large chunk of article rankings (besides backlinks) is just randomness. Some articles just seem to rank better than similar articles on the same website for no obvious reason. I could easily see one duplicate article outranking the original article on the same website without any extra work. I don't copy any of my articles, but I've done some research on why particular articles rank well and that's what I've found...
Hey Smitten, Thanks for getting back. I did report that person and AB took action within a day, (I don't know why they didn't get back to you till now) that person has been banned from AB. I don't know, if a person has an idea to rob someone else's article why can't they just rewrite in their own words instead of simple copy and paste. Lazy Bones! But I did notice he not only copied mine but so many others too, he used to publish 100 articles daily....!!!
@jaykou: Thanks for the heads up, I'll file another complaint just in case. I'm using the contact form (http://www.articlesbase.com/contact-us.php) and submitting under "content related questions". That is the right procedure, I hope? @dlm: I refuse believing that article ranks are decided randomly. Some variable must exist that we're not thinking of :-/ I think I'll start a thread later today promoting a think tank on this issue. Do come over, your input is valued.
@Smitten: That's exactly what I did. Probably if you do repost another message with all the original and copied links they should definitely get back. And your opinion on making sales, I think the person would have definitely made some nice sales with those copied articles. Because after he published the copied articles, I couldn't see mine but his. I did a lot of keyword research to find a profitable one and instantly he copied pasted and published and that's what annoyed me the most. Atleast if he would have rewritten the same article with those keywords, I probably considered not reporting to AB. I think this is a free world, everyone can make their own profits..and that's the power of IM but they should learn copy,paste and publish is not the way to do.
jaykou: Did you take note of the CB affiliate ID of the person stealing your articles? Maybe you can shoot an e-mail to the product's vendor, asking if that affiliate happens to have had any sales recently. I'm planning to do the same, I'll post here when I get an answer. Cheers, P