CornerScribe

Scraping Others’ Sites for Content

Before you read what I have to say, check out this article, over at Blue Hat SEO.

How it works 

Okay, if you didn’t go read it, here’s the gist. You can find good content for your site by “scraping” old sites. The URLs are no longer active, but you can find the cached content stored online, like the Wayback Machine.

So, you find some good content that you think is abandoned. You copy and paste it into your own site, and reap the benefits of more unique content (which search engines love) with no more work than it took to find it.

One commenter even admitted to saving wikipedia articles for a few months and then posting them to his blog. Since the actual wikipedia article has no doubt changed, he’s now posting unique content.

Of course, it’s unique content that he didn’t create.

Ethical?

Not even close. This is stealing someone else’s content, plain and simple. Some of these people may be attributing the work to its original source, but I really doubt it. Even if they do, it only slightly elevates the activity, in my opinion.

I have a couple old sites that I’ve let fall by the wayside, and there’s some abandoned content out there as well. Does that give anyone else to use that content without my permission? No, it doesn’t.  Never mind the fact that I may want to use it again some day. The fact remains, it still belongs to me, whether I’m making use of it or not.

This technique depends on the original owner of the content not noticing that his work has been resurrected…on someone else’s site. That’s probably a decent assumption. I doubt that most people routinely check to see if their content has been swiped. However, all you need is one person to step up and say that you’ve taken their work, and you have some serious credibility issues.

Why do it? 

I think most people who do this type of thing are shooting for the quick money from blogging, if there is such a thing. They load their sites with lots of content and hope that some AdSense clicks will bring in a monthly check. That’s fine, but if you’re working on creating a blog that readers will come back to time and again, this is a really bad idea. Months of work can be undone in one posting if your readers find out that you’ve been swiping material and passing it off as your own.

A better way 

Write your own content.

Ask guest bloggers to write content for you. Many bloggers will do this for links back to their sites.

Get content from legitimate sites that offer free content. Tell where the content came from.

Ask site owners (if you can find them) to use their content.

Buy content.

If you’re going to the trouble of building a blog, don’t sabotage yourself by doing something you’d be ashamed for your readers to find out.