Splogs + Scarping + AdSense = Fraud - GoFuckYourself.com

UltraSonic · 10-24-2005, 04:21 AM

This is what i got in the email today:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
The other day, an article appeared in Search Engine Journal suggesting webmasters monetize their sites using Google AdSense. While the article neglected to mention an alternative webmaster advertising program offered by Yahoo Search Marketing, the idea of using one's website as a commercial medium (if possible or practical) makes good sense and can provide a minor side-income. Such minor side-incomes are often the first ingredients in making the gravy craved by all small business owners.

Since the advent of Google's AdWords grassroots distribution program, AdSense, several webmasters have built businesses out of taking content off of other people's websites and using that content to build pages designed specifically to attract ad-clicks. As the average commission earned by sites running AdSense generated advertising is approximately $20/month, webmasters working this type of scheme need to create hundreds, if not thousands of pages to make a living. In order to create those pages and attract ad-clicking visitors, content must be created, begged, borrowed, or most commonly, simply stolen. Known as Splogs, these sites only exist to game Google in one way or another, mostly for monëy but also for increased search rankings or as a means of manipulating search spiders.

Splogs most often get their content by scraping, the process of sending an electronic copying bot to take everything it sees, recreating it on an unlimïted number of instänt documents. By running advertising generated through the AdSense program, the owners of the splogs make monëy when visitors clïck on the ads. In other words, literally millïons of instänt sites have sprung up over the past twelve months, most of which are free-hosted. Blogs, containing content scraped out from the original sites.

Before continuing, I would like to make it clear that there are several publications that request permission to reprint content. That's ok. Chances are, this article is being read in one of those publications. Online business runs on such agreements.

Splogs are bad business and the practice is finally getting the notice it deserves. Several search heavyweights have weighed in on Splogs over the past two weeks and a flame-war (the virtual equivalent of fisticuffs) broke out between members of two well-known SEO/SEM forums. As a result, the practice of producing AdSense revenues from stolen content on spammy sites got a little bit harder, starting today.

Matt Cutts, Google's sp@m fighter and quality assurance czar, has taken an obvious and positive interest in Splogs. In the SEO/SEM community, Cutts' name is as widely known as Page, Brin, and even Gates' names are. Cutts is "the man" when it comes to explaining the state of Google's various indexes and how they work. He is referred to as the Chief Sp@m Fighter at Google. In a posting to his Gadgets, Google, and SEO blog last week, Cutts invites Google users to report Splogs displaying AdSense driven advertising.

"You see a low-quality site that is running AdSense
If you run across a site that you consider spammy and it has AdSense on it, clïck on the "Ads by Goooooogle" link and clïck "Send Google your thoughts on the ads you just saw". Enter the words spamreport and jagger1 in the comments field."

The name, "Jagger1" is the reference name given the Google algorithm update that is currently causing the present shuffling of Google's search results.

Splog fraud is a big problem for Google and a growing concern for the other major search advertising providers such as Yahoo Search Marketing, and MSN. It is also a problem for others working on the Internet. The way content is taken from one site and replicated to dozens of others can cause no end to technical and financial issues for honest webmasters. Content, incidentally, is not always limited to what the viewer sees on the screen. Stolen content often includes source-code and as anyone familiar with code can tell you, there's a lot of domain and document specific information embedded in source-code.

Over at Search Engine Journal, a funny posting shows how one poorly executed scrape made an honest webmaster afraid of being branded a click-fraud artist by Google. After scraping the site, the splog-artist apparently forgot to remove the AdSense code from the stolen content. That's how the honest webmaster found out he had been stolen from. He was moved to contact Google before his AdSense account status was affected. If the webmaster hadn't been paying attention, he might have been badly branded by Google, burned by someone else's scam.

That's not the only way that scrappers could adversely affect honest webmasters however. The content webmasters create, or have created for them, is the attraction that prompts visitors to their sites. Attracting lots of site visitors is a pretty important step to making monëy from AdSense or the Yahoo Publishing Network. If someone is stealing that content, they are also stealing potential visitors. For the webmaster, that content represents investmënt. For the content creator, it represents product. Either way, the scraping of content is theft.

The stolen product is then used to create what is essentially duplicate content on another site. Duplication of content can have an adverse effect on the search engine placement of all documents containing the similar items. Imagine losing your placements because someone else took the material you laboured over. Fortunately, Google's historic record of documents is fairly good at weeding through which source first displayed specific content.

Search engines have several other reasons to be concerned about splogs. As many of them are created using the free-blog software offered and hosted by most of the major search engines, the proliferation of so many splogs consumes a lot of resources. They also gum up search results with sites not actually relevant to search engine users. Lastly, they devalue the legitïmate uses of blogs as communications and marketing tools, which might lead future blog readers or users away from the growing blogosphere. Citizen's publishing is seen as a major revenue source for both Google and Yahoo. Having invested so much time, energy and monëy into the establishment of blogs, the major search engines would be loath to let their investments go the way of the dodos without a fight.

Nöw that the web development community is talking about the issue in earnest, some forms of protections might evolve. As it stands currently, there is little a webmaster can do to protect his or her content from being stolen for profït. You can use Copyscape to see if your material has been nabbed but after doing that, there is little one can do except write angry letters to the thief and a lawyer.

Google is inviting users and webmasters to report splogs running AdSense whenever they are seen. In a just universe, not only would the AdSense accounts of those scrappers be closed, their bank accounts would be emptied after Google sues them for fraud.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Grumpf

Brujah · 10-24-2005, 04:29 AM

Jagger1 Jagger1 Jagger1 lol

Damian_Maxcash · 10-24-2005, 04:33 AM

Use a site like http://www.goarticles.com/index.html

80,000 articles you are free to use.

BTW Im not sure how Google could sue for Fraud - breach of contract maybe?

adonthenet · 10-24-2005, 04:38 AM

i got this email too today!

hmmwv · 10-24-2005, 04:48 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by damian2001

Use a site like http://www.goarticles.com/index.html

80,000 articles you are free to use.

BTW Im not sure how Google could sue for Fraud - breach of contract maybe?

you still have to get around getting punished for duplicate content. any tips on this?

Damian_Maxcash · 10-24-2005, 04:56 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by hmmwv

you still have to get around getting punished for duplicate content. any tips on this?

Im very new to the SE game - the only thing I can suggest is to water down the potential duplicate content as much as possible with other stuff - RSS feeds seem the obvious choice. We all know google likes content that is updated often, a good feed can give you this.

If you are worried about this being a traffic leak use your own feeds and use 'Adsense for feeds' on them.

As I say, Im just playing with adense at the moment. There are guys here who would be much better qualified to help you - getting them to do open up is another story!

10-24-2005, 04:58 AM

Fuck splogs. It's in true content rich sites that the stable and continuous money flow is in. People are such cheap shits, the think they throw up a couple o'blogs, rip other people's shit off and then cash in on it in the long run. Wrong, the community hath spoken and I'm glad that there's an active effort to slow it down a notch. As good as RSS has done for content syndication, it's - just like every other great technology out there - being abused to the max. What can you do about duplicate content from a 'content producer' point of view? You can block certain sites from connecting to your feed via mod_rewrite. How can you avoid punishment for duplicate content as a syndicator? Write your own shit.

10-24-2005, 05:04 AM

People should realize that producing truely informative and unique content will lead to a healthy and natural backlink structure that benefits SEs a whole lot, too. And if you play it smart, you can get a ton of backlinks from relevant sites with the keywords of your choice without having to do a thing yourself. They will come naturally.

I am not saying there isn't shittons of money to be made in the spamming game, but there sure is a lot of money to be made the more, shall we say, 'ethical' way.

10-24-2005, 05:07 AM

That being said, jagger1 has become my new favorite hobby

UltraSonic · 10-24-2005, 06:17 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Equinox

People should realize that producing truely informative and unique content will lead to a healthy and natural backlink structure that benefits SEs a whole lot, too. And if you play it smart, you can get a ton of backlinks from relevant sites with the keywords of your choice without having to do a thing yourself. They will come naturally.

I am not saying there isn't shittons of money to be made in the spamming game, but there sure is a lot of money to be made the more, shall we say, 'ethical' way.

What he said

reynold · 10-24-2005, 06:53 AM

that's too long but a nice read, thanks for sharing.

candyflip · 10-24-2005, 07:50 AM

Check out Chio's AutoBlogger Pro if you want to do this.

I've got my first site up and running and Google is already indexing my pages

I pull in the content, linking to the other site and add my own "unique blurb" to each entry.

UltraSonic · 10-24-2005, 08:20 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by candyflip

Check out Chio's AutoBlogger Pro if you want to do this.

I've got my first site up and running and Google is already indexing my pages

I pull in the content, linking to the other site and add my own "unique blurb" to each entry.

Url??

brizzad · 10-24-2005, 08:24 AM

who cares, adsense pays the bills

candyflip · 10-24-2005, 08:27 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by UltraSonic

Url??

Granted my intention isn't to spam. But after reading your article, I'm sure this could do just that...with a multi-domain license...or two...or three...or four.

http://www.relinksoftware.com/

Veterans Day · 10-24-2005, 08:37 AM

see sig when you want to really cash in

Free reprint articles are your friend.

candyflip · 10-24-2005, 08:42 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by brizzad

who cares, adsense pays the bills

Have you tried Yahoo's yet?

I added them earlier this week and am averaging about 250% increase from my Adsense links last week.

Screaming · 10-24-2005, 09:26 AM

That is one long read.

10-24-2005, 04:21 AM	#1
UltraSonic Confirmed User Join Date: Jul 2004 Location: UltraVirtuality Posts: 1,728	Splogs + Scraping + AdSense = Fraud This is what i got in the email today: -------------------------------------------------------------------------- The other day, an article appeared in Search Engine Journal suggesting webmasters monetize their sites using Google AdSense. While the article neglected to mention an alternative webmaster advertising program offered by Yahoo Search Marketing, the idea of using one's website as a commercial medium (if possible or practical) makes good sense and can provide a minor side-income. Such minor side-incomes are often the first ingredients in making the gravy craved by all small business owners. Since the advent of Google's AdWords grassroots distribution program, AdSense, several webmasters have built businesses out of taking content off of other people's websites and using that content to build pages designed specifically to attract ad-clicks. As the average commission earned by sites running AdSense generated advertising is approximately $20/month, webmasters working this type of scheme need to create hundreds, if not thousands of pages to make a living. In order to create those pages and attract ad-clicking visitors, content must be created, begged, borrowed, or most commonly, simply stolen. Known as Splogs, these sites only exist to game Google in one way or another, mostly for monëy but also for increased search rankings or as a means of manipulating search spiders. Splogs most often get their content by scraping, the process of sending an electronic copying bot to take everything it sees, recreating it on an unlimïted number of instänt documents. By running advertising generated through the AdSense program, the owners of the splogs make monëy when visitors clïck on the ads. In other words, literally millïons of instänt sites have sprung up over the past twelve months, most of which are free-hosted. Blogs, containing content scraped out from the original sites. Before continuing, I would like to make it clear that there are several publications that request permission to reprint content. That's ok. Chances are, this article is being read in one of those publications. Online business runs on such agreements. Splogs are bad business and the practice is finally getting the notice it deserves. Several search heavyweights have weighed in on Splogs over the past two weeks and a flame-war (the virtual equivalent of fisticuffs) broke out between members of two well-known SEO/SEM forums. As a result, the practice of producing AdSense revenues from stolen content on spammy sites got a little bit harder, starting today. Matt Cutts, Google's sp@m fighter and quality assurance czar, has taken an obvious and positive interest in Splogs. In the SEO/SEM community, Cutts' name is as widely known as Page, Brin, and even Gates' names are. Cutts is "the man" when it comes to explaining the state of Google's various indexes and how they work. He is referred to as the Chief Sp@m Fighter at Google. In a posting to his Gadgets, Google, and SEO blog last week, Cutts invites Google users to report Splogs displaying AdSense driven advertising. "You see a low-quality site that is running AdSense If you run across a site that you consider spammy and it has AdSense on it, clïck on the "Ads by Goooooogle" link and clïck "Send Google your thoughts on the ads you just saw". Enter the words spamreport and jagger1 in the comments field." The name, "Jagger1" is the reference name given the Google algorithm update that is currently causing the present shuffling of Google's search results. Splog fraud is a big problem for Google and a growing concern for the other major search advertising providers such as Yahoo Search Marketing, and MSN. It is also a problem for others working on the Internet. The way content is taken from one site and replicated to dozens of others can cause no end to technical and financial issues for honest webmasters. Content, incidentally, is not always limited to what the viewer sees on the screen. Stolen content often includes source-code and as anyone familiar with code can tell you, there's a lot of domain and document specific information embedded in source-code. Over at Search Engine Journal, a funny posting shows how one poorly executed scrape made an honest webmaster afraid of being branded a click-fraud artist by Google. After scraping the site, the splog-artist apparently forgot to remove the AdSense code from the stolen content. That's how the honest webmaster found out he had been stolen from. He was moved to contact Google before his AdSense account status was affected. If the webmaster hadn't been paying attention, he might have been badly branded by Google, burned by someone else's scam. That's not the only way that scrappers could adversely affect honest webmasters however. The content webmasters create, or have created for them, is the attraction that prompts visitors to their sites. Attracting lots of site visitors is a pretty important step to making monëy from AdSense or the Yahoo Publishing Network. If someone is stealing that content, they are also stealing potential visitors. For the webmaster, that content represents investmënt. For the content creator, it represents product. Either way, the scraping of content is theft. The stolen product is then used to create what is essentially duplicate content on another site. Duplication of content can have an adverse effect on the search engine placement of all documents containing the similar items. Imagine losing your placements because someone else took the material you laboured over. Fortunately, Google's historic record of documents is fairly good at weeding through which source first displayed specific content. Search engines have several other reasons to be concerned about splogs. As many of them are created using the free-blog software offered and hosted by most of the major search engines, the proliferation of so many splogs consumes a lot of resources. They also gum up search results with sites not actually relevant to search engine users. Lastly, they devalue the legitïmate uses of blogs as communications and marketing tools, which might lead future blog readers or users away from the growing blogosphere. Citizen's publishing is seen as a major revenue source for both Google and Yahoo. Having invested so much time, energy and monëy into the establishment of blogs, the major search engines would be loath to let their investments go the way of the dodos without a fight. Nöw that the web development community is talking about the issue in earnest, some forms of protections might evolve. As it stands currently, there is little a webmaster can do to protect his or her content from being stolen for profït. You can use Copyscape to see if your material has been nabbed but after doing that, there is little one can do except write angry letters to the thief and a lawyer. Google is inviting users and webmasters to report splogs running AdSense whenever they are seen. In a just universe, not only would the AdSense accounts of those scrappers be closed, their bank accounts would be emptied after Google sues them for fraud. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Grumpf __________________ Your Blend, Your Product Last edited by UltraSonic; 10-24-2005 at 04:23 AM..

10-24-2005, 04:29 AM	#2
Brujah Beer Money Baron Industry Role: Join Date: Jan 2001 Location: brujah / gmail Posts: 22,157	Jagger1 Jagger1 Jagger1 lol __________________ Free Premium Domain Lists and Tools at Clickmojo.com For Sale: Obscenity.com

10-24-2005, 07:50 AM	#12
candyflip Carpe Visio Industry Role: Join Date: Jul 2002 Location: New York Posts: 43,064	Check out Chio's AutoBlogger Pro if you want to do this. I've got my first site up and running and Google is already indexing my pages I pull in the content, linking to the other site and add my own "unique blurb" to each entry. __________________ Spend you some brain. Email Me

10-24-2005, 08:37 AM	#16
Veterans Day Confirmed User Join Date: Jul 2003 Location: The Windy City Posts: 8,403	see sig when you want to really cash in Free reprint articles are your friend. __________________ Build a Massive Traffic Network, Hands FREE, Totally Automated

10-24-2005, 09:26 AM	#18
Screaming I can change this!!!!! Join Date: Feb 2004 Posts: 18,972	That is one long read. __________________

10-24-2005, 04:33 AM	#3
Damian_Maxcash So Fucking Banned Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: MaxCash.com Posts: 12,745	Use a site like http://www.goarticles.com/index.html 80,000 articles you are free to use. BTW Im not sure how Google could sue for Fraud - breach of contract maybe?

10-24-2005, 04:38 AM	#4
adonthenet Too lazy to set a custom title Join Date: Feb 2005 Posts: 16,753	i got this email too today!

10-24-2005, 04:58 AM	#7
X37375787 Guest Posts: n/a	Fuck splogs. It's in true content rich sites that the stable and continuous money flow is in. People are such cheap shits, the think they throw up a couple o'blogs, rip other people's shit off and then cash in on it in the long run. Wrong, the community hath spoken and I'm glad that there's an active effort to slow it down a notch. As good as RSS has done for content syndication, it's - just like every other great technology out there - being abused to the max. What can you do about duplicate content from a 'content producer' point of view? You can block certain sites from connecting to your feed via mod_rewrite. How can you avoid punishment for duplicate content as a syndicator? Write your own shit.

10-24-2005, 05:04 AM	#8
X37375787 Guest Posts: n/a	People should realize that producing truely informative and unique content will lead to a healthy and natural backlink structure that benefits SEs a whole lot, too. And if you play it smart, you can get a ton of backlinks from relevant sites with the keywords of your choice without having to do a thing yourself. They will come naturally. I am not saying there isn't shittons of money to be made in the spamming game, but there sure is a lot of money to be made the more, shall we say, 'ethical' way.

10-24-2005, 05:07 AM	#9
X37375787 Guest Posts: n/a	That being said, jagger1 has become my new favorite hobby

10-24-2005, 06:53 AM	#11
reynold Too lazy to set a custom title Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Global Traveler Posts: 51,271	that's too long but a nice read, thanks for sharing.

10-24-2005, 08:24 AM	#14
brizzad holla Join Date: Jul 2003 Location: KFC Posts: 11,769	who cares, adsense pays the bills