So what is the best strategy for dealing with content-scraping scumbags? My personal three-tiered strategy includes the following levels of action:
- Do nothing.
- Always include lots of internal links
- Stop the bastards with a well-placed slice of htaccess
These are the tools I use when dealing with content scrapers. For bigger sites like DigWP.com, I agree with Chris that no action is really required. As long as you are actively including plenty of internal links in your posts, scraped content equals links back to your pages. For example, getting a link in a Smashing Magazine article instantly provides hundreds of linkbacks thanks to all of thieves and leeches stealing Smashing Mag’s content. Sprinkling a few internal links throughout your posts benefits you in some fantastic ways:
- Provides links back to your site from stolen/scraped content
- Helps your readers find new and related pages/content on your site
- Makes it easy for search engines to crawl deeply into your site
So do nothing if you can afford not to worry about it; otherwise, get in the habit of adding lots of internal links to take advantage of the free link juice. This strategy works great unless you start getting scraped by some of the more sinister sites. In which case..
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