Track and Get Links From Those Who Copy Your Content
Have you ever seen exact copies of your content on other sites with no link back to the original? If you have a blog with no more than 200 visits a day, your answer is most likely to be “yes” (or you just never noticed it).
Going after each thief demanding to remove the stolen content is both time-consuming and depressing. Why not try to force them to link back?
Tracer (tip credit to SEOmoz.org) is a free tool that inserts a short piece of code to your pages. If any part of your page is copied, it adds a link back to your site to the copied content. Of course, the link might be manually removed but most thieves never care to.
The installation is really quick:
- Register
- Get the script and put it sitewide before </body>
- Test your script
You are done!
Now try it: copy anything from your page and paste it in MS Word. You should see a link back to your site after the copied extract.
Inside you will also get statistics on what has been copied from your site. The control panel interface leaves much to be desired and according to the owners might take long to update but it is free - so we love it!
Are there any other ways you use to protect your site from content thieves who never link back? Please share them!
56 Responses to “Track and Get Links From Those Who Copy Your Content”
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Great tip from the _gman if you think you are copied: http://tinyurl.com/decdk2
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Track and Get Links From Those Who Copy Your Content: Sphinn / DailyseotipTrack and Get Links From Those Who Cop.. http://tinyurl.com/decdk2
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Reading: Track and Get Links From Those Who Copy Your Content | Daily SEO Tip http://tinyurl.com/decdk2
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Track and Get Links From Those Who Copy Your Content http://tinyurl.com/decdk2
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? | “Track and Get Links From Those Who Copy Your Content | Daily SEO Tip” ( http://tinyurl.com/decdk2 )
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Reading: Track and Get Links From Those Who Copy Your Content http://tinyurl.com/decdk2 via @ShareThis
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Track and Get Links From Those Who Copy Your Content http://tinyurl.com/decdk2
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a good trick to protect your site’s content from thievers, as well as from me:P..http://tinyurl.com/decdk2
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Eigenen Content, der geklaut wird, kann man sich hinsichtlich SEO zu Nutze machen. http://tinyurl.com/decdk2
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Track and Get Links From Those Who Copy Your Content - http://tinyurl.com/decdk2
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@marketing_guide Eben gings noch
- hier der richtige Link nochmal: http://tinyurl.com/decdk2
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Ann:
Plagiarism and splogs are a big problem. I love it when bloggers start talking about people copying their content, and these complaints show up on the splog site too.
A simple way to track plagiarism is to create a Google Alert with a sentence in quotes from one of your recent blog posts. Google will tell you if anyone republishes the post.
Adam Green’s last incredible blog post..AlertRank adds new Google Alerts add-on features
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Beauty Reply:
March 16th, 2009 at 9:38 pm
Thanks for the tip Adam. It seems a good way to know if your content has been sealed. ¿But do you have to do an alert for each post in your blog? ¿Or do you know any plugin or something to simplify the process?
Beauty’s last incredible blog post..‘Invention’ beauty Cuban economic
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I use RSS Footer plugin to add a copyright notice with 3 links to my website after RSS> Most sblogs copy it too and it shows up on my WordPress dashboard. If I have time, I use free IP back tracing tools to find their host and complain to them with proof. Took 3 of them down this way till now!
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Golan Reply:
March 16th, 2009 at 9:53 pm
Not always works. A bit more advanced sploggers cut all your html out.
Golan’s last incredible blog post..Girl Backpacker’s Backpack
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Mr. I Reply:
March 17th, 2009 at 10:01 am
Then sites like copyscape and feedgator are always there which find duplicate content. You an track down the host of copycat and report to them.
Mr. I’s last incredible blog post..Ten useful things to help you blog successfully
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Fabio Ricotta Reply:
March 16th, 2009 at 11:12 pm
As you I’m using RSS Footer. It works very well for me because I share Full Feed.
Fabio Ricotta’s last incredible blog post..Entrevista com Cassiano Travareli da BrasilSEO
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The Related Posts plugin is particularly easy and effective. Another way is to insert links to other posts of yours within the content and again these will probably survive the scraping operation. There seems little else you can do but thankfully these scraper sites have little long term visibility.
Barry Welford’s last incredible blog post..Internet, the community of communities
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Awesome trick!
This is not gonna stop sploggers that use automated methods.
This is just a good hint to people copying chunks of your post in their own post to link to you. It won’t work on everyone but will work on some.
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Great tip .. as you follow more and more on Twitter you see some copied posts. So better safe than sorry and get some link juice.
Steen Öhman’s last incredible blog post..We are living in exponential times!
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Well that’s one way I suppose getting a positive out of a negative.
AndyW’s last incredible blog post..Review of ezBusinessNeeds DoFollow Searcher Tool
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Ann, one thing that I really like is to add as many internal links as I can. I mean, I usually link to another posts of my blog. So if the scraper copy my article I’ll get a lot of links.
As above mentioned, If someone cuts HTML content, I’ll lost all my links, but if no, I’ll get a lot of backlinks.
Fabio Ricotta’s last incredible blog post..Entrevista com Cassiano Travareli da BrasilSEO
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This is great. Absolutely going to try this!
Laurence Flynn’s last incredible blog post..Keyword Research - a necessary evil
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My blog site isn’t big enough yet to suffer from sploggers, but this page definitely has a number of strategies that could help, if I ever get there. Thanks to one and all.
David Elks’s last incredible blog post..Why would you throw football boots over a telephone line?
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A couple of niche sites have already been picked up by sploggers - luckily I use an RSS footer which includes a link back to my site. This tool will help for those people who dare to cut and paste directly from my site rather than filch my RSS feed. Thanks.
Clare Swindlehurst’s last incredible blog post..Viral Marketing 101 - Not Using It Could Kill Your Business!
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Very good points, everyone! So to sum up your very smart comments… To get links from sploggers (who either directly copy-paste from your page or automatically scrape your RSS feed):
- Add in-text links to relevant posts;
- Install RSS footer WP plugin which includes a link back to my site;
- Install “Related Posts” plugin (I for one use this one: http://mitcho.com/code/yarpp/)
Again, thank you, friends!
Ann Smarty’s last incredible blog post..Search Cloudlet Adds Twitter Tag Clouds
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Ann,
At the rate that people have been stealing my articles I’ll have like MASSIVE incoming links. lol.
Great idea I’m certain this tip will come in handy
Gerald Weber’s last incredible blog post..10 MORE Examples of Creative Twitter Uses
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Mr. I Reply:
March 17th, 2009 at 10:09 am
Lot of links from Duplicate Content websites can even hurt your rankings!
Mr. I’s last incredible blog post..Ten useful things to help you blog successfully
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Ann Smarty Reply:
March 17th, 2009 at 12:02 pm
This is not proved, though such rumor exists.
Anyway, it is better than the exact copy of your content links back to the original than exists independently.
Ann Smarty’s last incredible blog post..Search Cloudlet Adds Twitter Tag Clouds
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Gerald Weber Reply:
March 19th, 2009 at 4:11 am
I agree. I think it’s better to have the link back than to just have duplicate content floating around out there.
Gerald Weber’s last incredible blog post..10 MORE Examples of Creative Twitter Uses
We run a Car News site in the UK - Cars UK
- and around 30% of our bandwidth gets used up by people helping themselves to high quality car images and scraping the fresh copy we work hard to put up every day. If this gets us links back from just 10% of those it will be well worth it. We’ve already installed it!
And I have to disagree with Mr I - none reciprocated incoming links can never harm your site. If they could, every competing site would be shoving up links from dubious sites to their competitors. And so says Matt Cutts!
John’s last incredible blog post..The return of the Real MINI
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I’ve been having a few dramas with this of late. I use Google Alerts and Copyscape to find people that are doing this.
Will definitely try this on my site. I have also found that some of my articles from ezinearticles have been copied as well. Any tips for this?
I’m really happy for people to copy my content. I just want the links that should go with this!!
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How can SEO and a search engine marketing campaign improve Leadsmarketer website (www.leadsmarketer) position in the search engines? Our marketing and sales department invested a lot of resources in writing all the content for our web site but we just can’t seem to be ranking high enough in the engines, while our competition is on top. Do we have to re-write it all over again?
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Very useful! I fight with RSS thieves and this Tracer can be helpful.
Mih’s last incredible blog post..Canonical URL Tag - obja?nienie znaczenia i zastosowania
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Very useful! I fight with RSS thieves and this Tracer can be helpful to find them quick!
Mih’s last incredible blog post..Canonical URL Tag - obja?nienie znaczenia i zastosowania
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Sweet tool! If they’re going to copy your content, you might as well get a link out of it. Even if it doesn’t always work it’s better than nothing.
Digital Third’s last incredible blog post..Yahoo Search Marketing Introduces Day Parting
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Hi Ann,
I use FeedEntryHeader, for WordPress, which does the same basic job as the RSS Footer plugin, but shows the message (including configurable link to original post) at the top of the content rather than the bottom.
Personally, I’ve found that putting a copyright statement at the bottom has limited impact (apart from the link juice). The reader is more likely to navigate to your site if they see the copyright statement at the top of the page, BEFORE they’ve actually read it.
Disclaimer: I’m the plugin author, so I’m biased!
Stephen Cronin’s last incredible blog post..How To Prevent Smart Pricing - Great Solution
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This was a real pain in the neck when my blog was brand new so I manually added the links in my own content (manual RSS footer I guess). The more my new blog gets trusted by Google, the less I worry about it, but every little bit of preventative maintenance helps. Great article.
Bill Sebald’s last incredible blog post..SEO Friendly Link Shortening Services Exist?
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Thanks for the awesome tip! Wished it worked in firefox but IE is good enough! Thanks!
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Ann Smarty Reply:
March 20th, 2009 at 10:39 am
Well, actually it works in FireFox
Ann Smarty’s last incredible blog post..Search Cloudlet Adds Twitter Tag Clouds
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Bill Sebald is right. Focus on your content and trust value.
The Tracer tool can help you find your copied content, but when we talk of spammers - you can be dead sure that the link to your site is not coming from the best of neighborhoods (read porn, viagra, mortgage) You’d want to avoid such links even for free
Think twice before you use such tools.
Anil’s last incredible blog post..India’s Poster Child For Criminalisation Of Parliament
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Thanks for the tip. If you find one that’s not hosted, please let me know.
I don’t like using scripts that are hosted on other people’s servers like this.
Joel Drapper’s last incredible blog post..WeFollow - Great New Twitter Directory
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Very useful! I fight with RSS thieves and this Tracer can be helpful to find them quick!
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Grate tip , I wish there was a way to do it with articles, that you submit to article directories.So many times have I seen my articles on other peoples sites with no link back
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Ann Smarty Reply:
April 21st, 2009 at 4:43 pm
I guess, if you add your (author) name to the article bottom and then set up tracking on services like Google Alerts for this name, you’ll be notified when someone grabs your piece.
Ann Smarty’s last incredible blog post..Search Cloudlet Adds Twitter Tag Clouds
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ThThis is indeed a win win tool. I am goin to try this right now on my site. Also a word of thanks and It’s no wonder why this site is always on the first page of my Feedly account…It deliver the info I am always looking for.
Regards,
Jessica
Jessica’s last incredible blog post..Learn Forex Training- Forex Training In India
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Really powerful tool. I just installed the scrip & its working great. Thanks for sharing.
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Thanks for the article but here another question.
What if someone steals your website Title and heading and your business name just to manipulate the search results? Here is an example:
I put my registered business name” Handcrafted Garden Bridge for Koi Ponds” as my title to my website over a year ago,listed here as
Original Business Title and Heading, Garden Bridge website now check out this website and see his title and headers were recently changed to the same as mine and seems to be
Stolen business name and heading
Do a search for handcrafted bridges and then handcrafted garden bridges and see how this really manipulates the search results in google and confuses the public.
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I have seen this many a time with no link back
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good pretty ,let’s!
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Similarly I use RSS footer wordpress plugin from Yoast to get backlink…
Even Yarppp is also good to get backlinks on related posts…
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I really love this idea to get a backlink from my stolen content and i never ever new this your site is simply amazing.
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What if only spammers copy your content and you suddenly get many inbound links from low trust, “bad neighborhoods” sites? Will that not have a negative effect on your link profile and rankings in SERPs?
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Cool Tooll…. Thank you..
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Thanks for the article but here another question.
What if someone steals your website Title and heading and your business name just to manipulate the search results? Here is an example:
I put my registered business name” Handcrafted Garden Bridge for Koi Ponds” as my title to my website over a year ago,listed here as
Original Business Title and Heading, Garden Bridge website now check out this website and see his title and headers were recently changed to the same as mine and seems to be
Stolen business name and heading
Do a search for handcrafted bridges and then handcrafted garden bridges and see how this really manipulates the search results in Google and confuses the public.
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This article reminds me of a concept called, “NLP”. It is about copying the behaviors of successful people to attain the same success they enjoy.
Let’s take Mary Kay, for example. Sure, you can start a great make-up company that has good quality cosmetics; but unless you can really know what Mrs. Kay did behind the scenes, you will not be able to copy her success.
What did she do when she woke up? What did she think about on a daily basis? What words did she say to herself throughout the day? How did she view her life? Etc…
When you can copy the inner workings of a successful person - then and only then do you have a large chance of succeeding in the same fashion that they did!
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