Confessions of a Six Figure Professional Blogger

How To Deal With Sites That Steal Your Blog Content

View Comments | Posted In Blogging by David

Once your blog gets a little bit of popularity, it is practically inevitable that somebody out there is going to rip off your content. What do you do about it?

I recently had this happen for this site. I’m not going to bless them with my link love, so I’ll just say the site is a rip-off site. The guy takes content from other blog RSS feeds and republishes in whole on his own blog. I won’t say he doesn’t link back. He does. The related articles and everything from this blog end up on his blog. But, he is still republishing my entire post without permission and that is a HUGE blogger no-no.

One way of looking at it is that it is a sign of success. Perhaps I should be flattered. But, I’m not. :)

The other way of looking at it, though, is the one I prefer: It is theft. The purpose of it is simply to build up quick Google love so that he can translate it into Adsense or affiliate income. I will say that the site has “Traffic Geyser” in the name of it. They are not related to the folks at Traffic Geyser in ANY way, but I suspect this psuedo-blogger is looking to promote Traffic Geyser eventually.

Alright, so what can you do about it?

  1. Contact the blogger directly. Many times the blogger will simply remove the stuff out of embarrassment for getting caught. However, not always do they provide a method of contact.
  2. Contact their web host. Most hosts will provide a way to contact them to report abuses of their service. Most reputable hosts don’t take kindly to people using their systems to do anything shady. So, run a WHOIS lookup on the blog’s domain, find out who their host is, and pay them a visit. Report abuse. The only thing you might have to deal with is some legal hoops that the host puts you through. I think it is utterly ridiculous that they do that, but they do.
  3. If the blogger is using Adsense or some other affiliate network, contact the ad network and report the abuse of copyright. You can have the blog’s revenue cut off this way.
  4. Publicly embarrass them. I’m not going to go on a limb and recommend this option to you, but I will admit that I’ve done it before. I’m just saying. ;)
  5. Nothing. In all honesty, sometimes the fish is so small that it just isn’t worth worrying about.
  6. If you have internal control of your RSS feed (i.e. not via an external service like Feedburner), you might be able to set up a domain block to keep that single domain from having access to your RSS feed. If you use Feedburner, this isn’t possible.

In this current case, I simply contacted their web host and reported abuse. I don’t know what will come of it, but it is worth a try as it only took me two minutes. I have successfully had sites taken off the Internet before.

Have you dealt with this before? How did you handle it?

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  • I did the same thing for a website that was lifting entire articles (without a link back) from my parenting blog. Got their WHOIS and hosting information and reported them to the host's legal department. Sure enough the host took them down.
  • I think it's important to try to contact the blogger directly first. To be honest some people really don't know. I've reposted an item before and linked to another bloggers website (I didn't post the entire article) but I have said "Hey readers I really like this article here's a taste and here is a link to the original author." So in somecases it could be an unintended foul.

  • Dave I agree 100% on people stealing content via RSS. But is that not what RSS syndication is for? The reason i ask this is because I follow many bloggers like yourself who I admire, and learn from. I want to pass this knowledge to my readership, so I like to use excerpts from well known bloggers, and refer my readers back to the originator of the post. Correct me if I wrong here but is there really any truly original ideas or thoughts online or expansion, or different interpretations of that info by others. thx/lew
  • This happened to me a few times when I first started blogging. Sure, I got a couple of links out of it. But I worked hard on those posts and they belong on the site where I published them.
  • I read this post when you first published it, then not even three weeks later I have someone skimming an entire post from me without attribution or linking back.

    I'm not too worried about it, but I just thought it was a weird coincidence. I'm doing #5, unless they make a habit of it. Then I'll send in Rambo.
  • embarrassed
    I know I was not the person you were referring to but... Mr. Risley I am embarrassed to admit that I have on one occasion used one of your articles on my website but not for the purpose of ripping you off or stealing from you, and maybe that is my naivety showing through. One of your articles was so spot on that I just could not hold myself back from having my readers see it, no matter how few they may have been. I surely didn't think that your article would propel my site into the traffic blogesphere because your article was already out there, by you, and so what could I gain with the search engines by duplicating it. When I placed your article on my website I made sure to include your name and website for readers to be able to follow up on it, thinking that because I was such a big fan why shouldn't others have the same opportunity.
    In doing so it was not done with any malice or with a purpose of gaining anything from it, I'm small time and not even your article will raise my traffic through the roof or even bump it up a notch or two. But believe me when I say I did not use it for personal gain, just in a belief of what you had to say. I guess I went about it the wrong way, chalk it up to another lesson learned. But I do not think everyone uses an article because they want to enhance their site, some of us do so (did so) because we believed in something the author had to say and thought by making all the references to that author and including the links would have sufficed. Sorry for my stupidity. But just out of curiosity the question beggs to be asked, had I asked to use your article, would you have said, yes? And if not, how would you rather I have approached this in the first place?
    Thanks - it won't happen again.
  • I have had this problem, many times. But I have just let it go. It really makes no difference, as barely anyone visits those blogs.
  • Maybe it's potentially a good thing if your business needs to spread a bit in order to establish a foothold in the market though?
  • why didn't u just create a signature on your feed? so if someone scrapped of your feed the reader would know the original sources is
  • I'm trying to get permission from a blogger to quote her but she's not answering my email. Is it okay to just quote someone without their permission, if you give them full credit and a link?
  • As Mike said, as long as I get a linkback, I would not really worry about it.
  • This totally happened to me last week! I didn't know what to do. I was on this person's blog that I knew growing up (she found me through Facebook) and saw that she re-posted one of my entries in full! I couldn't believe it. I'm somewhat new to blogging and definitely an amateur so I didn't say anything. I know if I embarrassed her by commenting she would take it down. I just thought it was weird. She did post a link to my site as well, but geez! It really felt like someone had ripped me off. And I'm glad that you think so too. If it happens again, I'm totally going to say something. Thanks for your help!
  • I had this last week, and I picked it up through a Google alert on my name. The site had copied my whole post, and it was credited as an "unedited guest post by Mike CJ" properly linked to my site.
    I asked for advice on Twitter, and the consensus was "Don't worry about it as long as you get a link back."
    I didn't feel comfortable about it at the time, and your advice confirms that feeling. I'm going to email the "blogger" in question now.
    Thanks for the post!
  • This has happened to me six times in the last four months. I've found the best way to get someone to stop stealing your content is, as you suggested, contacting them directly. I contact the person(s) directly and include in my communication that I can and will contact their host. So far it has worked every time.

    I haven't had to do this yet, but I talked to another blogger who has had her lawyer send letters to the offending party. While expensive, she says it works every time.
  • This just happened to me last week, for the first time, and it came about through a comment left on the blog. I contacted them directly and asked them to take the content down, or at least properly credit me as the author with a partial content re-publishing and a link over to the complete article.
  • Hey! This post was ripped off from my blog.....Just playin'!.

    Thanks for the suggestions, I'm having problems with theft of my photos and others hotlinking to my photos without permission. I'll be sure to give some of these a try.
  • I think your suggestions with your rss feed is really clever and one I had not thought of. I find it annoying when people steal my content and don't award me for my work. I would never do it to someone else so people shouldn't steal my content, I do take it as a complement that my work is good and thats why they have lifted it. Its just a shame that your content helps them make money and not you.
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