Blogging today has become a very powerful medium of fast communication of information on the web. There are millions of blogs today on the web, thousands of blogs are being created every hour, and most of them are on on the free platforms, Blogspot being one of them. The popularity of blogspot originates from the fact that blogspot allows bloggers to modify the template and thus the blogger is in a position to serve Adsense and other ads on their blogs. And this is where the problem starts for the genuine bloggers.
Earning money online by serving ads on blogs seem to an easy solution, and so it lures many of them, who just copy the content created by others on these blogs, also sometimes synonymous with the term splogs, and try to make money. These splogs are sometimes able to make serious money, out of the content created by others.
This has two pronged effects on the genuine blog. First, it is depriving the original blogger from the benefits due to him, and more importantly, the process is also creating a web page, which has a duplicate content on the web. Google doesn’t like duplicate content. Although Google is smart enough to judge, which is duplicate and which is original, by the indexing dates and other methods, but still there are chances that the original content is downgraded by Google just because a rogue has copied and pasted it elsewhere.
So what do you do in such a case.
If the splog is a Blogspot blog, which is the case in most of the Splogs, Blogger provides a easy solution for that. Simply Flag the splog, on the navigation bar, which blogspot provides on the top of their blogs.
However, if the splog has hid the navigation bar, which requires a simple hack of the blogspot template, then you can report the splog to Blogger by following following link.
Blogger/Blogspot abuse reporter tool
It has been reported that although it takes some time to Blogger to take action, but action has been taken.
Lorelle, has written two excellent articles on applaud those who warn you your blog’s content theft and What Do You Do When Someone Steals Your Content. Check them out.
December 18th, 2007 at 9:29 pm
Reporting is a good method, but it takes time for blogger/Google to act on it.
December 19th, 2007 at 4:53 am
I don’t want to think my being content copied
..two weeks ago i had found 13 blogs copying 4-8 articles from my blog..i got rid of them .The neat way 
December 20th, 2007 at 3:19 am
how do you find who is copying — copyscape??
December 20th, 2007 at 3:30 am
@TechDune: How did you found those 13 blogs?
@TechBliss: Copyscape is good, but not perfect. and also its a limited edition. My advice is to be vigilant.
Keep checking for the incoming links, keep checking for the Technorati blog reactions. Keep checking on who is visiting your blogs. RSS Directories are a big source of content theft. Sometimes, your readers also give you clues.
What is your take ?
February 20th, 2008 at 4:03 pm
You can also email the infringing site and ask if they could simply write a summary and link back to your original (and even supply a trackback, if they want to go that far.)
February 26th, 2009 at 7:50 am
Thank you for sharing this. I only use Quotefinder and Copyscape. Now I know there’s a better deal. Thanks again.
January 23rd, 2010 at 8:11 pm
“Although Google is smart enough to judge, which is duplicate and which is original” I wouldn’t give Google that much credit. Most of the time you’re probably right, but I’ve personally gotten the shaft on this front. I don’t post daily on my blog, so it’s not indexed as quickly as other sites. I’ve had instances, where I spend weeks writing an article, only to see it getting indexed on a scrapper site before mine. When it get’s indexed on a different site first, Google thinks my original content is a copy and does not give me credit for it; very frustrating.