Have you ever received a backhanded compliment and wondered how to respond? You're not sure whether to say thank you or bug off. Well, in the Blogosphere, Hijacking a Blog Post is rapidly becoming an issue that every Blogger must be aware of. When search engine results for Grand Rapids, Michigan Real Estate Agents began to consistently rank my Blog on the first page, some of my Blog Posts were hijacked! In it's most benign form, hijacking can be construed to be the on-line version of a back handed compliment. In it's malignant form, it is just plain THEFT. As a very new Blogger, I was not anticipating this type of problem. But as more of my posts became indexed on search engines, I began to notice links to sites that I did not recognize. Initially these links re-directed the search to my original post but more recently, I have noticed a more deceptive, malicious form of redirection. Taking my title and even the initial first few phrases of my Blog Post, these thieves would then create a link which would re-direct my Blog Post to their own website or whatever they were trying to sell. In my case...flip-this-house-.com and oogleclick.com are using my on-line resume and teaching course schedule to re-direct searches to their websites.
I find this very disturbing. There is no means of contacting a live person by telephone and the e-mail path is so convoluted that I wonder if anyone would ever respond to my "cease & desist" order. Fortunately, I am a member of Active Rain. It occurred to me that this may have happened to someone else, so I did a search and literally put in the words: "hijacked blog". To my utter amazement , an excellent post by the Harper Team popped up entitled "Help, Stop Your Posts From Being Hijacked".
As a result of reading the Harper Team post, I now understand that there are at least 2 types of re-directs that can happen to a blog post on-line. Both are SPAM by nature; one is a form of a back handed compliment and the other is outright THEFT of your idea, name, article, copyright, and legitimate search engine postion. The former may or may not be worth the time to pursue, as the re-direct is still coming back to you as the original author. But when someone actually steals your content and puports it to be their own, it must be reported.
To View an Example of On-Line Out-right Theft vs a Simple Redirect on a Spam Blog, you can Click on this link to a Google Search for Blogs with my name Lola Audu. The 4th entry with the Sticky About Lola is actually a Stolen Blog Post by flip-this-house-.com and also the 5th entry by oogle.com. According to Oogle, my on-line resume will help you to figure out "What your real Value is" ....perhaps they can take a bit of their own advice by starting with the word REAL and removing FALSE links. It is important to check from time to time to see if this is being done with material you are posting. It has been said that "evil thrives when good men do nothing".
Google does take this seriously. The Harper Team post has a link to the Google Spam Report to report offenders. This type of activity pollutes the integrity of search engine results for everyone.
According to Google: " We work hard to return the most relevant results for every search we conduct. To that end, we encourage site managers to make their content straightforward and easily understood by users and search engines alike. Unfortunately, not all websites have users' best interests at heart. Trying to deceive (spam) our web crawler by means of hidden text, deceptive cloaking or doorway pages compromises the quality of our results and degrades the search experience for everyone."
When you experience this scenario, take heart...it probably means you're good enough to warrant some attention. After, you've calmed down, take the appropriate measures to correct the situation. This is an area in which we must all take personal responsibility. If you can find a number or e-mail, inform the Spammer that they need to cease and desisit from the inappriate use of you name and material. Next, contact Google or your search engine administrator to report the problem.
I was heartened to see that Laurie Manny's Post in which she draws attention to a hijacked blog and that was originally mentioned in the Harper Team Blog has been deactivated. This works!
Here are links to some Excellent Posts on Active Rain that can assist you in dealing with these issues:
- Help, Stop Your Posts From Being Hijacked...by the Harper Team
- Excellent article by David Kyle, The Skinny on Blogging in Relation to SEO which gives BACKGROUND about why some of this type of activity is occuring.
- Stopping Spam...by Jacqulyn Richey
- Grand Theft Blog...by Maureen McCabe. Also, the post following is highlighted in one of her comments.
- Help, I've Been Hijacked...interesting blog post by Kevin Boer of 3 Oceans Real Estate...he describes a situation in which during a transfer of domain names, someone was able to hijack his blog address.
- Top Ranking in Google GUARANTEED, Jay & Francy Thompson shed light on Scammers who use deceptive and sometimes costly techniques to do a lot of damage.
- This is an UPDATE to my original list of resources: John Occhi's blog about creating a GOOGLE ALERT is another great tool to be aware of when keeping track of what is happening to your information on-line. Thanks for the comment notification John.
These excellent resources are worth more than their weight in gold....Education like this is hard to find. Thank you Active Rain Community. Membership here has truly Rained In many Benefits!
Lola Audu, is the Designated Broker & Owner of Audu Real Estate. Our company specializes in helping people buy and sell homes in the greater Grand Rapids, West Michigan area. We've had the privilege of helping hundreds of clients succeed in their goals of purchasing and selling property including demonstrated success in the negotiation of Short Sale Transactions. You can contact us via e-mail @ info@auduhomes.com or by phone at 616-791-0511.
LOLA -
Good post...lots of great advice and reference material to read on the subject.
I noticed another mortgage company has copied several pages of text from my website and pasted it on their website.
My attempts to contact the perpetrator about removing the information and my own website host about protection have yielded litlle results.
Frustrating enough when someone hi-jacks a post - this person took the content from my website.
Good luck with your situation...
This is aweful. I had no idea that this could happen - Nor do I fully understand it either. Thank you for the post. I will need to go through and re-read some of the links that you provided.
Good luck!
I was alerted to the same thing this morning from a local agent friend. He noticed a blurb about "Homefinders.com . . . . . " which I quickly traced to one of my blogs. Fortunately, the web site was a conglomerate if short paragraphs from a number of sites and blogs all put together into a phony web page used for AdSense ads.
Light bulb moment!
I receive emails alerting to me news about what is happening in real estate, including my own company name. Some of these links would connect to the oddest websites that were not apropo to real estate.
I think this may be what I have been seeing! Hijacked real estate news.
Thanks for the alert!
----Rhonda
Thanks for the info on blognapping. Great stuff. Too bad it has to be written.
Jeff
Good-googley-god...as if we didn't have ENOUGH to worry about.
Thanks for sharing this information, Lola.
Your explanation was presented clearly and you very kindly took the time to pull in reference blogs. Well done. Very deserving of the star and recommended slot it received.
clap, clap, clap, clap
Veronica
Select Home Staging
Denver, Colorado
www.selecthomestaging.com
Brian,
It's a sad commentary that some people are so comfortable with dishonesty that they now feel it should be displayed for the ENTIRE WORLD to view! In this era, transparancy is key..and more important to business profits than ever before...Think Amazon.com product reviews & Ebay customer ratings systems.
Mariana, it's like taking low self-esteem in regular life to a whole new level on Cyberspace ...Flip-your-house.com & oogle.com are so lacking in their ability to be viable entities that they must masquerade as another. Think...oogle, trying so desperately to be a little bit like Google.
In a somewhat ironic development, Google has just placed this particular Blog Post at the top of the search for my name, so everyone who clicks will be reading about the theives and their duplicitous activities with their addressess posted just beneath for all to see. The Irony of Divine Justice!
Kevin, Your suggestion is brilliant and very workable for a site that is simply re-directing your post to your own original material from their site or blog roll. However, when the post or website is using your position via search engine rankings with a deceptive blurb that seems like you, it's not possible to do this.
Jeff, Veronica, & Virginia...thanks for your comments.
Lola,
Your timing with this post is nothing short of incredible. I am swamped at work today and have not had the time to get into the posts here at AR. I will read this one in detail and go through your links tonight, because this morning I received a Google Alert, followed the link to a site and found my other blog had been completely hijacked and all of my links removed. Stupid person did leave my name thank goodness, which alerted me. In the lower right hand corner of her page is a link to her home page. To add insult onto injury she is a web designer and has a copyright disclaimer statement on her own blog, which means she knows better.
I invite all of my Active Rain friend to follow the below link and tell her what a stinky thing she has done. I have already told her to pull it down with no response:
Google Blogs Alert for: Laurie Manny
History & Historic Districts of Long Beach California
Laurie Manny, REALTOR®Contact Laurie for all of your Long Beach CA Real Estate needs. lmanny@link; Beach CA Real EstateLaurie’s Other BlogI deliver Results! Origin of blondes; Des Moines public library; oldsmobile perfromance ...
Smoothrma - http://smoothrma.addapad.com
All of the recent posts are mine also, she is completely ripping off my little blogger blog.
Each time I go back more of my posts appear
Recent Posts
Go get her my friends,
Laurie this is a GREAT IDEA!
I have posted the following comment to our "friend": "You should know better. We have been alerted to your theft. Give Laurie Manny back her Blog, we will Bug you until you do". She probably will not publish it, but she will get the message.
The best thing for darkness is exposure to the light! I hope this "little" campaign will prove therapeutic to those who seem to have a problem in this area. Please feel free to return the favor to flip-this-house.com and oogle.com. Thanks to all...
You might want to set up a GOOGLE ALERT to keep an eye on when your keyo words or pther phrases are being used. I explain all about it in this earlier post.
Now Have a Blessed Day,
John Occhi, Hemet CA REALTOR
WWW.JohnOcchi.com
Thanks so much for taking the time to tie all of this together for us. I've bookmarked it as I'm sure I'll need to refer back from time to time.
John O, Thanks for letting me know about the post you had written about the ALERT tool on Google. I had never investigated this option. I have registered on it! I have also added it as a resource UPDATE in my original blog post.
Ryan, Timothy, & Chris...I thankful that this information has been helpful, thanks for your comments.
and all this time I thought a blog hijack was just having a little fun here in Active Rain with the author's permission of course! Thanks for the heads up!
Ines
Wow, fascinating post!
Now just follow this link to more useful info...
Um, just kidding. :)
Most agents would benifit from at least a basic understanding of SEO (search engine optimization) and how SE ranking is itself a valuable marketing commodity (essentuily the ranking is what's being misutilized in casese of 'theft').
Just talking to a few folks it's interesting how many misconceptions there are about how pages are ranked. There are plenty of good books on the subject, and you could do worse than simply pick up a copy of search engine optimization for dummies.
Cheers, -B
Thanks for the Information and Links
Hi Lola,
Thanks so much for writing such a detailed post. And thank you to all of you, I'm learing so much from this supportive community.
In Response to Jonathan Washburns book choice incentive for "Let's Have a Contest", I would be very pleased and honored to be considered a potential recipient for the book "Naked Conversations".
Lola Audu
Kip & Tamara, thanks for stopping by
Joan, most of my blog posts are copyrighted. However, this does not ncecessarily deter a thief. It's best to be proactive and report the offender...just the sort of actions which are appropriate outside of "cyberspace".
Ines, although this is not much fun...much good has already come out of this. This post is now showing up on Google for a Blog Search for grand rapids real estate agents. So many more people are being educated about the issue...
Kaushik...Hm...My New Title...AR Thief Buster... :)
Bryce...agree with you regarding the fact that what is actually be Stolen is the Ranking on the Search engine in my case, although content can also be plagerized as well. The post I referenced in this blog entry is also a great starting point for education. Thanks for commenting.
Mitchell, Lynda & Diane...glad that this has been helpful...
Ed, Yes, it's amazing...but it is important to understand this process and to know what to do.
Christopher, all of these links are available through the "search" feature on Active Rain.
Christy...We are all learning...I didn't know either..the exact mechanism of the mischief is something I don't claim any expertise at...but it does seem to involve a combination of creating a false hyperlink utilizing a portion of the original link and then seeking to fool the search engine by using the a small fraction of the actual text of the original post in the header. As indicated in some of the previous comments, sometimes the theft is literally a "cut & paste" job of a successful website or blog entry.
Without reading all of the comments (short on time for the moment), I have noticed, in my few short weeks on AR, that sometimes, just as soon as someone posts something which generates interest or results in a featured article, someone else publishes a similar article hoping for similar results. This is not exactly hijacking... it is more of a compliment to the author of the original post and a poor reflection of the character of the copy-cat.
With that said, with the number of posts on AR it may be common that two authors will post similar articles about the same topic within a short time frame if the topic is about some current event. If you watch the posts closely you will soon know who the copy-catters are because they do this regularly.
-Chris
Lola - Thanks for highlighting this topic. Something new I learned today!
Laurie - Looks like Karen Blundell has removed the ability to contact her from her site - however - she appears to have overlooked her contact email in WHOIS: kblundell@cogeco.ca
Technical Contact:
Blundell, K kblundell@cogeco.ca
109 Quaker Road
Welland, Ontario L3C 3G3
Canada
9057326850
She can run but she can't hide!
I received the following email from Karen Blundell today, December 29th, 2007:
You've received a contact message from your Contact Form on the ActiveRain network.
Message details:
From: Karen Blundell
Email: karen@karenblundell.com
Subject: Your post on Active Rain
Hi Tony,
Re post here:
http://activerain.com/blogsview/48192/How-to-Survive-A
Please see my post at my site:
http://karenblundell.com/site-news/no-i-do-not-hijack-blogs
Because I distribute free XHTML templates and WordPress themes into the OpenSource community, thousands of people are using them for their sites. They leave the link to me (the designer) in the footer as part of the licence agreement eg: Creative Commons
That does not mean I own the offending blog that's scraping (stealing) content. I do not and never would condone it.
Please let everyone know over there that I contacted you and set the record straight .
Regards,
Karen Blundell
WordPress Consultant
http://karenblundell.com
Email sent from IP: 24.150.61.40
Here's another form of blog hijacking I strongly dislike...
Posting comments that include a link to a website not related to the comment or the post.
There are some here who's entire reason of being seems to be to drive people to watch a movie or ad on their website.
"Mike, that's a great post! By the way, if you want to learn how to make millions overnight in real estate investing, go to www.Don'tClickonthisImJustUsingThisasanexample.com the results you'll see are absolutely true and unbelievable! Watch the movie now!"
Yes, I know I can delete them - but why should I have too?
I made comments on my other blogs "moderated" because of these people.
Just my little rant.
Hi Tony,
Thanks for stopping by...Interesting, your comment about Lauries blog, perhaps this lady who has taken Lauries material will reform her ways and stop taking other people's material from now on....Exposure has way of reformating a lot of things.
Mike, thanks for your comment; although what you mentioned with regard to re-directing a blog post to an advertisement is a little irritating if it is overdone...at least it is their own material!
Lola-
Very true, but it's a high jack none the less.
My regular blog, that often mirrors the one here, was attacked by spammers using the comment box.
I'd much rather have an open dialogue, even if they disagree with my position, than have to moderate.
Moderation in any form is a censorship - but they left me with no choice.
Posts like this one are wonderful in educating us on the pitfalls and dirty things that go on out there.
Thanks for adding the links to the other posts - You've done your research!
Mike, Wow...this is interesting info! Do you have the technology on your other site (similar to Active Rain )where a visitor has to type in a "fruit' or something else to prove they are "human"? It's amazing the lengths unscrupulous individuals may be willing to go to. This has been very educational for me too!
Lola,
Thanks for all the research you did. You get a 5 and bookmark.
Lola, while commenting on Randi's question about copying blogs, I followed a link to your article. I decided to repost my comment here in case it may prove helpful to people who read your blog.
Copying content without permission is, of course, a violation of U. S. Copyright law. Since lawsuits are often not practical, you might be interested in my article on using the Digital Millennium Copyright Act Safe Harbor provisions to get internet service providers to block access to material that violates your copyright. I would assume that the people that run ActiveRain would fall under the Safe Harbor provisions; and if they aren't, then Rackspace.com, which hosts the Active Rain site would take care of problems.
I have succeeded in getting a Dallas server farm which colocates RealEstateWebMasters.com's (REW) servers to block access to pages when REW, a Canadian company, failed to follow through on my complaints that Advanced Access and Point2Agent VA Cherie Young had illegally displayed a dozen of my web site designs on her site as if she had designed them herself.
Suzanne Stephens, Point2Agent Design Partner