panda

OneWayLinkBuilder.com has been scraping not only our blog content, but Vertical Measures blog as well. I’ve asked many times through many streams and nothing was done about it, well, not until Panda anywho. We’ve implemented Google’s original source meta tags, blocked the scrapers via .htaccess but that didn’t stop them there. They take our content fully, rip out the links and the images which is really down right rude.  Since Panda is supposed to throw down thin, duplicate and weak content, I was glad to see it working so well for us.

Well I had to write about it since we weren’t getting anywhere trying to stop them from scraping. I even offered to let them take an excerpt but at least provide a link back to our original work. I filed a DMCA request with Google months ago and that did absolutely nothing, so it’s nice to see the Panda update doing its job. I know a lot of people think it’s done nothing but screw things up even worse, but here’s a real world example.

The original source implementation seemed to be doing an ok job, but not great. For the longest time we’d still see the scraped posts ranking within the top 10 search results. While it wasn’t hurting our rankings or image at all, it is just frustrating to see someone stealing your written words, and the links within them. I’d also hate to think a potential client would think it was their work, and end up wasting their time getting links that are most likely a waste of their money. With that in mind, just taking a look at the links they’ve built, you can see quickly this is not a consultant you want to deal with.

Post Panda Results?

I am pleased to see that the blog results are now what they should be, something I’ve demonstrated in the picture below. This is exactly what Panda was intending to do, so we’re all pleased that something has worked in our favor. I know not everyone is pleased, and I’m very aware that a lot of scraper sites are still outranking original content producers out there. That has been very evident if you look at all the inquiries in Google Webmaster Central.

So there’s a bit of hope for our team and hopefully folks out there dealing with scraper sites. If you’re seeing the opposite still with your content, pipe up here in the comments and let’s get a discussion going. We’re always more than happy to offer our advice and hopefully that leads to some answers for your problems.