From: Larry Hatch <larryhatch.nul>
Date: Sun, 01 Aug 2004 18:35:42 -0700
Fwd Date: Mon, 02 Aug 2004 18:00:22 -0400
Subject: Find The Copycats


Hello all with Web pages:

Here is a really nifty online utility to find other sites which
copy, "scrape" or plagiarize your hard work:

http://www.copyscape.com/

Just type over the URL in the box at screen center with the
address for any page you think might be victimized.

Don't be too surprised if you find the same pair of copycat
sites over and over.

The ones I'm thinking of usually give links back, but those are
'cooked' in javascript so those links don't credit the original
pages for purposes of search engine ratings. Mouse-over the
"links" and you will see what I mean in the bottom task-bar,
usually to the left. Instead of:

http://www.yoursite.com/yourpage.html

you will see:

http://www.COPYCAT.com/doc1234.html

which is _not_ a real page, just a jumper to your legitimate
page.

The apparent motive for this is to conserve "page rank",
directing it instead to other pages on the same scraping
site(s), and again for search engine ratings. Those in turn get
better Google (etc.) listings, and boost income from the
inevitable banner ads etc.

An honest link, is of the form:

<A HREF="http://www.YOURSITE.com/YOURPAGE.html"> (title) </A>

.. in the source code. Don't feel too bad. Even if the scraper
hogs the ratings, he still sends you visitors, and you get to
pay for the bandwidth (traffic).


Happy hunting,

- Larry