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Friday, March 22, 2013

What To Do If Your Blog Post Is Copied By A Blogger Blog

Recently my blog posts were copied again. In the past my blog post had been taken by another blogger as her own. That was the most creepy because the person took my personal posts and pretended they were her own. It is one thing for someone to copy another person's blog post for financial gain but to copy personal posts and pretend you are that blogger is downright creepy.

Anyway, in the past my blog has been copied lock, stock and barrel before too. This means that my entire blog was duplicated. I found out because someone wrote to me to ask if I had a mirror blog. At that time, I didn't know what to do. Someone thought me to change my blog images to show that you are aware that your blog posts are being copied. For example the blog is copying yours is called Parenting ABC. So all you have to do is include an image that says "Parenting ABC is copying the blog posts of ......" or "What you see on Parenting ABC blog has been copied from..." and that image will be picked up by Parenting ABC blog and displayed on that blog. If you're lucky they may take down the blog but usually that is not the case.

Anyway, these days, the plagiarizers are doing it differently. They will not make a duplicate copy of another blog. On the other hand, they will copy the blog posts from several bloggers and display it as their own. You can usually spot these kinds of blogs easily. There will be no email or contact information on the blog. However, there will be lots of ads. In fact, the blog will be filled with ads because the purpose of copying your blog post is to make financial gain from ads.

Well, recently I found my blog posts copied along with those from several other bloggers. This time I decided to take more proactive action. You can do the same too.

This is what to do when your blog post is being copied (if the copied posts are hosted on Blogger)

  1. Report the abuse to Google Adsense using this form.
  2. Make a complaint to Blogger using this form.
The first report of abuse is useful because you can cut off the financial gain from adsense which is what the plagiarizer is trying to do. 

The second complaint is useful because Blogger takes a serious view and do take a look at the complaints sent in using the form. I know because I submitted a complaint and it was acted upon within 24 hours. Within 24 hours I received a reply from Blogger and the blog posts were removed within 24 hours too. 

You can use the same form for multiple abuse showing your blog posts that had been copied one url at a time. That is what I did for all the 65 posts of mine that were copied from here.

In addition, I did a simple check (by doing a google search) to find out which other Bloggers posts had been copied on that blog. That is very simple. I know that the posts published there were not original. All I had to do was take a few sentences and do a google search and I found the original Bloggers. I contacted them and urged them to make a report too. Blogger will remove the offending page that had been copied if you make a complain but they will not take down the blog immediately. However, if they receive multiple complaints, that blog will be classified as a repeated offender and eventually the blog will be taken down which was what happened after the other Bloggers sent in their complaints too. The more complaints received, the "bigger" your voice and the more seriously your report will be looked into. 

It took me many hours to write to those other Bloggers as well as to submit my complain for the 65 pages of content that had been plagiarized from this blog. However, it was necessary to do it. I can't allow someone else to gain illegally from my hard work. Besides, your blog will also suffer if duplicated content is found through no fault of your own. 

To find out whether your blog posts have been copied you can use Copyscape the plagiarism checker or you can do what I did. Just take a few sentences from your blog post and do a google search and it will turn up any duplicate pages. 

Image Credit: The above No Copying Sign was generated from here.

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