20 Apr 2006

The Blogger Strikes Back

When recently grumbling about splogs, I wrote that there’s little you can do about it. Although trying to persuade owners to remove content is futile, there are ways you can attempt to cut off their search engine traffic & advertising cash via spam reports and the nasty DMCA:

Google

• Infringement Notification for AdSense
• Report a Spam Result
• Click on an ‘Ads by Goooooogle’ link in the site, then ‘Send Google your thoughts on the ads you just saw’
• Blogger’s ‘Flag’ button

Yahoo!

• Notice for Claims of Intellectual Property Violations
• Search Spam Report

MSN Search

• Notice and Procedure For Making Claims of Copyright Infringement
• You could try the ‘Help us improve’ link on search results pages or delve into the feedback forms

Technorati

• Infringement Notification

Please don’t use any of the above unless you’re sure it’s appropriate & worthwhile, you have your facts straight, and are willing to face the possibility of retaliation. Search engines are swamped with complaints, and infringement notifications in particular must be a huge burden, so stop and think (and consider getting legal advice before sending off written notifications).

If the content copying isn’t doing real harm to your reputation or business then just let it go and put your time into something else.

(The fact that this information will soon be republished by a few rip-off sites is wryly amusing…)