I have already had the same problem with people stealing my content from my blog. One thing that worked very well for me in finding these sites is Copyscape.

Mike’s last blog post..How To Install A Car Amplifier

Thanks for the quick reply, yes that has to be the best Wordpress plugin I have came across in a long time. I am installing it now to see how it works.

Mike’s last blog post..How To Install A Car Amplifier

I was not aware of Copyscape–so thanks.

To answer your question, out in cyberland I found that the word “blog” is attributed to Peter Merholz, who broke the term “weblog” (coined by Jorn Barger) into the phrase “we blog” in his blog sidebar around 1999.

Is that right?

Hi Alex,
Another great post. Thank you for the great information, particularly the copyright feed.

Charly.
http://arvoreentreasures.com

Charly’s last blog post..What is Web 2.0 and Does It Work?

Response to RSS Question

From WikiPedia:

‘The short form, “blog,” was coined by Peter Merholz in 1999, who jokingly broke the word weblog into the phrase we blog in the sidebar of his blog Peterme.com. This was quickly adopted as both a noun and verb (”to blog,” meaning “to edit one’s weblog or to post to one’s weblog”).’

Cheers,
Charly
http://arvoreentreasures.com/

Charly’s last blog post..Video and Web 2.0

As usual, you don’t disappoint, Alex.

Very informative and helpful article. Man, I’m sure not looking forward to going after people who steal my stuff!

Honestly, I thought syndicating a blog’s RSS feed was good for the publisher. I’m glad you specified why you don’t want to syndicate (at least not randomly). I also learned what the DMCA is, I’d never heard of it before.

I just downloaded Joost’s RSS Footer plugin and am looking forward to trying it out. I’m curious, would you suggest using both RSS Footer and FeedFooter together?

I have to respectfully disagree with you on the duplicate content penalty statement you made. As the original publisher (i.e. the first person to get the content spidered and indexed) you will always be given priority. Others who use your content may end up in the supplemental index, but not you.

Jonathan Leger, a very successful marketer and testing maniac recently wrote a 49 page report called “Search Engine Myths Exposed”. He covers a bunch of search engine ranking issues, including duplicate content. I believe he’s giving it away for an opt-in and I strongly recommend it to anyone who wants to hear the real deal from someone who actually tests things at a scientific level.

All for now,

Russ

Russ’s last blog post..Will You Stick With Your Online Business Choice?

Hi Alex,
I use Copyscape as well as Google alerts and I also check Feedburner for unusual usage. Another recent problem is on MBL where bloggers take a break and return to find that their blog has been stolen! I have taken this up with MBL on behalf of some of those involved in having lost their blogs and managed to get them reinstated to their rightful owners. It’s not easy going though!

In answer to your question: The term “weblog” was coined by Jorn Barger on 17 December 1997. The short form, “blog,” was coined by Peter Merholz, who jokingly broke the word weblog into the phrase we blog in the sidebar of his blog Peterme.com in April or May of 1999. This was quickly adopted as both a noun and verb (”to blog,” meaning “to edit one’s weblog or to post to one’s weblog”).

Have a great week
Colin

Colin’s last blog post..Google Myths Exposed

Hi Alex, very informative article. I am a new blog person, and really its just for a personal site that I have done for a small group of friends.
In my internet travels have seen many blogs and sites with interesting original articles and many with obviously taken articles.
I have been trying to find out a way to have some of those of interest posted on our site while referring to the original poster/author/blog without becoming a scraper guy!
I am learning a lot here so far, but still not quite clear on the whole thing…
So is it OK to have a piece of the article or thats not good either?

jerry

KAPSCigarBar.com’s last blog post..Damn

Hi Alex,
Another excellent article on a subject that I think quite a few people are not fully aware of.

On a consistent basis 6-10 different blogs syndicate my content (snippets) and one uses the full articles.

Since my blog is to create awareness on canine advocacy issues, I welcome the syndication. The one blog that uses the full articles contacted me prior to inclusion and submitted a request and a ‘contract’ giving my permission to allow them to use my content.

For me, the additional exposure has been beneficial but I do keep track of those using my feed and content. I do have a copyright and Creative Commons License on my site as well.

Thanks for the info and keep it coming. I am an avid reader of your blog and always look forward to the great tips and information you consistently provide.

Deanna

Deanna’s last blog post..Benton County Citizen Want Mayor Out After Shelter Condition Come to Light

how about my RSS Feed have been subscripted to published in the blog of the Bloglines, Zimbio???

The problem is that the content of whole of the RSS subscrided blog is exactly the same as my blog Homepage… and i recently found that I unable to found my homepage in SE despite i use the main keyword of my blog….

Does it already considered as duplicated content by SE???

Do RSS Subscription to blog is considered as duplicated contents too??? will it hurt our own source blog???

Wincent’s last blog post..Easy Steps to Initial Tattoo Care

Hi Alex,
Another day, another useful post. Great.

Coined in 1997 by Jorn Barger, the term weblog, popularly shortened as “blog”

I think you are doing a great job man!

Ronak Shah’s last blog post..Online Copywriting

Hey, nice article and very useful to me! I have a business blog with an RSS feed.Is it not enough just to copyright your content on the blog and RSS feed? What else can you do?

Tom Lindstrom’s last blog post..Why Should You Use Social Bookmarking?

excellent post thanks for the info. I am relatively new to the topic of monetizing blog sites and have a site of my own where I am posting my research on the subject, while testing out different methods. I guess it’s a grey area for a noob to navigate and whereas there are some hardcore ‘thieves’ in the lot, I would imagine that for the most part it is an error of ignorance rather than theft, but that’s just my opinion.

Question:
How much time do you spend a lot of time actually hunting down and contacting these thieves and is it really worth the time over the effort.

And, wouldn’t a DOS attack just be easier? ; )

luis’s last blog post..Affiliate Marketing - Wikipedia Excellent Article!

This is great information. It is really sad that all of those steps must be taken though. But I guess there are always those who are only thinking of themselves and are willing to do anything to promote themselves. Thanks for sharing this with us.

Great article and procedure to follow.

Only part that marred it was your “duplicate content” remark. Duplicate content carries no penalty- this is a geeky urban legend. Someone invented it to sell a new category of IM eBooks- a liar and a thief. And then the clones jumped on the bandwagon.

Think about it. Unless it is a total website copy, there can be no search engine slap on duplicate content. It would quickly render the search engines useless ( as Google is seeming to be of late). It would mean that if I wanted to find multiple instances of the appearance of a quote for example, Google could only return one. The search would have no relevance. There are MANY other examples “if you take the time to think about it”, which is key.

Just because a GooRoo or SEO expert ‘discovers’ a new twist and writes a book doesn’t mean it’s true- even if honest (which I believe many GooRoos ARE NOT) many people do not know how to collect data and evaluate it to reach a valid ’cause & effect’ conclusion.

Remember-
-People SELLING something to you have their interests at heart before yours. This requires you to think and set a MUCH higher threshold on what you will buy/believe (whether talking about a book, a government, “news” programs etc).
-The GooRoos are mostly “self proclaimed”. Or they sit in a virtual circle jerk with their GooRoo buddies and all offer testimonials for all their buddies’ work, whether it’s good or not, because -guess what- they’re all promoting each others products as affiliates or in JV deals. Incestuous behavior is the BIG red flag.

AW Cole
http://www.MoreMoneyBetterLife.com

I understand your reasoning. And at some granularity level you must indeed be correct. I am interested in the level of granularity where I am correct- because the difference between us is where money can be made with little competition.

For instance, if I checked 100,000 sites for duplicate content at single word level- at single word level they would likely ALL be duplicate content; at single sentence, considering quotes and common remarks perhaps 1,000 would be duplicate content; at paragraph level (because of block quotes) perhaps 10 would be.

The resources and bandwidth required to even assess duplicate content at any of these levels for all websites would be staggering…so Google’s tests for uniqueness either must be in the multi-paragraph range- or Google must randomly check and ding websites - which could be true, but certainly not fair (and I am NOT saying that Google is or even should be fair).

Fair is not their business, but relevance (in search results) is their lifeblood. In the aggregate, relevance is harmed by examining for ‘unique’ at too low a level of granularity- so I posit that Google must be at paragraph or higher level when checking for ‘unique’.