You suddenly notice a drop in traffic and start wondering what could be wrong and you realize that some blog posts that used to fetch thousands of page views daily now brings a couple of hundreds. Sensing what could be wrong, you copied the first few lines of that blog post you wrote, paste it in google search box and realize that your site has fallen to the bottom of search engine result page. Some sites that copied your original work now rank higher than you! This can be the most frustrating part of trying to be a professional blogger and plagiarism really kills a blogger’s motivation. Each time I notice something like this, I feel nothing but anger. I mean, it’s so unfair; I work hard, do my research and come up with an original piece of writing and some idiots claiming to be bloggers comes to copy everything that took me hours to write without even linking back. Do you feel like reporting them to google but don’t know how to get it done?
According to what Michael Stelzner said at Blogworld, he said “You’re not a blogger, you’re a publisher!” You should see yourself as a web publisher and not just another blogger. You have a copyright to your blog posts or published work and you have every legal right to it. Nobody should use them without your permission.
I know quite a lot of publishers do face this very problem, these spam bloggers come to your blog to copy your contents and steal your traffic. These guys go from blog to blog copying other people’s work, publishing up to 15 articles daily while they steal traffic from the rightful owners. So, they think copying and pasting from other blogs is the easy way to make money online, right? They better think again! Just to know the height of the problem, someone was even so naive enough to copy a sponsored post here- the dumbest thing I’ve seen in blogging so far. ‘Copy & paste bloggers’ are only going to bring you down and reduce your page rank, they will steal your traffic and sink you lower on search engine result page and before they kill you, it’s only right to kill them. Plagiarists are evil and should be treated as such.
If you find a blog or site copying your contents without linking back to the original post, the first thing to do, of course, is to contact the site owner. In most cases, they won’t respond. Like a friend said, contacting a thief to get your stuffs back is only a waste of time, just go to the police straight away. lol.
Now, before you start taking actions, you need to copyright your contents as soon as possible. There’s a need to register your copyright so you can prove it when filing a report. If you’re sure your blog posts are original and you took time to write them yourself, register your copyright at myfreecopyright.com. The service is free and you get a digital fingerprint to verify you’re the rightful owner in case of a dispute.
Also, you need to warn plagiarists not to copy your contents and anyone who ignores the warning does as his/her own risk. With Copyscape.com, you can even detect those copying your contents without your permission. If even you wish, you can even pay them to do all the dirty work for you if you’re too busy to get it done by yourself. Grab a banner there display it as a warning to potential content thieves.
How to Report Someone Copying your Blog Posts
Now if you need to report a blog to google to remove your copied work on that blog from web search and get the site penalized, there’s a page dedicated for that. If the blog is also hosted with blogger or using any google’s service, you can report those content lifters on that same page. Google recognizes Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) and you’re free to report any site violating your copyright.
You just need to visit this google’s support page and report that spam blog. Now, before you report them, be sure the content you’re talking about is something you originally wrote as making false claims can really get you into trouble.
The holidays are here and I sure have time to hunt and kill, bringing down anyone who plans on bringing me down on google search. If you’re copying my contents without linking back, I suggest you link back to the original post or remove my content from your blog. It takes time and a lot of ‘brain cracking‘ to write down an original blog post and if you copied it, a single line at the bottom, giving credit to whom its due won’t hurt your blog.
