Hello Blogosphere! Just wondering... This happened to me a few time. I write a post, publish it, and next thing you know, some weird blog would link to it. Let's say with this post: Things I learned in 2007 I got the following trackback, on this blog: The weird trackback Or even with this post: The other side of the story Where the words "skin cancer" were picked up somehow (although my post isn't on this subject at all) and linked to a blog displaying all the "skin cancer" terms: The weird blog here 1) What's the point of that? These blogs have no personal content whatsoever, they just display parts of other bloggers' posts. They all have basic template, with default everything (i.e "about me"). Should I worry about this kind of trackback? I don't publish them on my blog anyway... Can it hurt my SEO? Is this "legal"?Technically, they don't display the whole post. Yet, what are they trying to do? I'm more than happy if anyone quote me or link to me, as long as there is a content and a purpose... I have no way to contact the owner of these blogs as far as I know. Thanks!
Some of my blogs get this kind of trackbacks too. What I do before anything gets worse is that I BLOCK the domain and any IP associated with the domain from accessing any of my blogs using .htaccess. Try a whois check at http://whois.sc and see whether you can get their email and contact them
Yeah... whats up with these "scraper" blogs. What's the point ? What are they trying to do ? I just got my first comment posted yesterday to my new blog and its the same shit. The linking blog is overloaded with only an excerpt pulled from maybe thousands of blogs on a daily basis. The comment I found is posted on the other guy's blog here: http://www.my-web-hosting-site.com/?p=5097 and my original is here: http://www.scoopy.us/news/4 My guess is that someone is just looking for a free ride on Adsense... an easy way to fake a website for the sole purpose of being able to post some ads on it. I am also guessing that these links won't be of benefit to us original posters and probably the best bet is to block them like ibnuasad has suggested.
So I followed your advice and blocked these scrapers, thanks to WP-ban. It helped a bit... If anyone has other ideas, don't hesitate!
@Stallion, Askimet. Sadly, these scraper blogs are very profitable. You will find that a lot of users on DP have these sorts of sites. They are on the fringe of legality, and they could be sued for stealing your content.