Protect Your Blog Copyrights
A few days ago one of my customers have submitted the ticket with questions that go beyond normal product support we offer. And while I have provided a simple answer – I have to admit that on second review of my answer – I wasn’t happy with it!
That answer wasn’t exactly what my customer was looking for and not something I was personally satisfied with. My apologies to Xavier and since “Identifying Content Uniqueness” is rather common question – I want to give detailed answer in form of post.
Blog Content Copyrights And Uniqueness
While there are some tools that will help you find if your content unique or not and if it was taken and used by someone else – Copyscape is undoubted leader. Using it is extremely simple, just enter full direct URL to your post and you will get results back:
In image above I simply entered full url to my blog post “Triple “P” Of Total WordPress Security” and it provided me with several results.
Problem is – FREE version of the tool is limited to number of results returned and if you test it – you will find that many times you get a lot of false positives. If you are working a lot with PLR content or purchasing content from elsewhere – I recommend you look at Premium account options they offer to take advantage of their technology.
If you are looking to simply watch your blog to make sure that your content is not stolen and reused by scrapers elsewhere I want to share a great free tool with you that I learned about from “Stop Scrapers and Spammers Fast” blog post on Darren Rowse blog – CopyGator!
While it is not same in functionality as Copyscape it does well what it does, and FREE!
Interestingly enough it provided me with a better results than Copyscape as far as my content concerned and a lot more accurate!
While they offer you a nice badge to place on your blog as “Option 1″ that actually turns red when your content used somewhere else – I preferred Option 2 as shown in image below simply because all I have to do is add their RPC to my ping list and provide my feed. Now every time I will post new blog post – Gator gets notified and monitors it.
Simple, Effective, Non-Intrusive!
Allow Google Alert You For Content Usage
This option is more advanced and it will actually serve as dual edged sword – protect our copyrights as well as BE NOTIFIED when someone uses it without permission!
Step 1 – Install Plugin
Although Feed Footer plugin was created a while back and haven’t been updated to latest version – I use it on all my blogs and it is part of standard “Expert WordPress” blog installer package.
Simply install this plugin and you will be provided with 10 fields you can use to provide Text, Ads or HTML content to copyright protect your blog posts. Those fields will be auto inserted into your RSS Feed on rotating basis for all new posts only and since RSS is what scrapers always use to steal your content – it will show up on those “splogs”.
You can use it to both add ads as well as copyrights message with link to your blog. I recommend using some unique key phrase that you can use for easily identifying when your feed was used outside of your blog.
See the copyright message in image below that is added to my RSS Feed:
As you can see I have a unique phrase “Copyright WordPress Web 2.0 Spot-Er” auto-inserted into ALL MY posts in blog RSS Feed and now I can move to step 2…
Step 2 – Allow Google Monitor The Web For Me
Hey, Google is good for something besides doing searching! 
All you have to do now is use your unique phrase, “Copyright WordPress Web 2.0 Spot-Er” with quotes to create a Google Alert and each time it shows up anywhere – you will get email from Google! See image below
Now you just let the Big Guy to let you know anytime your content might is stolen 
And since we are on topic of Google Alert – you don’t have to limit yourself to monitoring only your copyright’s message.
You can use it to monitor for your niche specific phrase to be alerted anytime new story comes out, monitor entire market to be “the man or woman to go to” for latest information in your Niche! Make yourself “The Source Of Latest Info” and you will be rewarded.
Conclusion
No matter which method you choose to use – it is important to use at least something to protect your biggest asset, content you have created!
Related articles by Zemanta
- 5 Smart Legal Steps for Your Blog (blogherald.com)
- Support Creative Commons (Campaign) (thewavingcat.com)
- Scraper Security (sciencetext.com)
- Can content scraped from your site actually benefit you? (integralwebsolutions.co.za)
More Options Print This Page! Subscribe With RSS Reader Subscribe by EmailFiled under Copywriting |
Related posts: |
About The Blog Author
Alex Sysoef is an IT Consultant, Internet Marketer and ProBlogger who shares his passion and knowledge of WordPress, SEO, Social Media and traffic strategies on his blog WordPress Howto Spotter. Connect on Twitter or Facebook
16 Responses to “Protect Your Blog Copyrights”
Trackbacks/Pingbacks
-
RT @TheSpotter: RT @tweetmeme Protect Your Blog Copyrights http://bit.ly/26ybz8
-
Protect your blog copyrights http://bit.ly/3sWSHF
-
RT @TheSpotter Protect Your Blog Copyrights http://bit.ly/26ybz8
-
[...] Protect Your Blog Copyrights [...]
Appreciate the post. It’s something I should have done a long time ago. Note to self: Take action now!
Thanks for the problogger link as well. Blocking scrapers using .htaccess is an interesting idea….
I wonder what purpose can there be in copying the whole sites? I mean: the first one is visible to google, and the copied site will not become successful even if the main site is (if I get this right).
Hi Alex,
I just want to say thanks, every time I read anything
from you I learn something new.
I just wanted to offer an alternative for Xavier for
a free autoresponder plugin for WordPress.
http://downloads.wordpress.org/plugin/autoresponder-gwa.2.5.zip
Hope that helps.
Richie
Thanks ALEX,
This is a great Blog post and I never thought of this. I am glad you brought it to my attention. I have noticed some of my content but unfortunately I see it on really bad websites…IE Splogs..I will use the advice ASAP…
Thanks again ALEX!
Take Legal action! This is what I do, in fact I have one DMCA complain filed with Google right now to hit the scambag where it hurts – his income!
Hey Alex,
You always give us something to think about. This is a topic that I had not come across yet. I have to seriously consider your recommendations. As my blog grows I really need to start protecting my content.
.-= Luca Di Nicola´s last blog ..Multi Profit Websites Equals Multiple Streams of Income =-.
This looks very interesting and is something that has concerned me for a while now. I will have to look into it further.
Thanks for posting this.
Malc
.-= Malc´s last blog ..Cape Verde – For the Holiday Isle Beach Resort =-.
Wow I never know something like this existed. I had doubts about the quality of the article but its great.
I use the paid option of Copyscape and though the idea is very simple and you could do a similar search with google, it saves a lot of time! At 0.05$ per search is affordable.
.-= Mark´s last blog ..School Grants For Studying Abroad =-.
Thanks for this, I had to stop my rss recently due to stealing of my contents, I will do this and see how it goes..
.-= Savs´s last blog ..Advantages of Poster Frames =-.
Hi Alex, thanks for sharing! Unfortunately not all content is created equal. Once I got contacted by an author asking me to remove certain content from my website. He went on explaining that his work was “taken” and then sold against his will. Not something that happens often, but did happen to me. From now on I will be checking all the writing I commission via the copyscape.
.-= Michael E. Riley´s last blog ..Merchant Advances: 10 Things You Didn’t (But Should) Know =-.
Thank you for the alternatives to Copyscape! I used it several days ago when i first read about it and it gave me false positive results. When i went to the site it indicated it wrote: It seems the site removed your content. But the indicated site was in a different language and not really interested in my content. I saw in one of the replies you adviced legal action. But what legal action you can take against someone living in a different country, a country that does not punish even criminals and don’t give a dime on internet copyrights?