Scraped content

[sjikkerdennis]

Hi guys,

Currently my content is scraped by bots and the content is used my lots of hacked websites. The content is not shown (old trick; blackhat cloaking) on the normal website, only when you take a look in cache.... Does someone knows a way to secure my website from scraping?

I know I can inform Google about these hacked websites, but I do not think this is the solution.

 

[ARZ]

Hmm, that is not a good situation indeed. I think informing Google is the good way. About securing the website try to search google for some answers, I was never solving such thing. But I think it´s important to let google know your site had been scraped.

 

[metropot]

I protected my media using WP Content Copy Protection & No Right Click,
i believe the scripts also available for php sites...

 

[sjikkerdennis]

Thanks for your answers.
@metropot on what site do you use it? Because I have read some reviews about the plugin and it appears that websites become very slow. So I fix one thing and get another problem...
How is your experience?

 

[CL-Ed]

Right click protection and plugins like that are a waste of time. They are only useful against the most clueless of people who aren't smart enough to use their browser's menu bar to see the exact same source that they can see by right clicking. They are useless against automated scrapers like the ones used by criminals who are doing the cloaking. By the time your plugin gets a chance to run it is too late because the bot already loaded your page and has a copy of the source. So you need to stop them before they load the page source.

There are ways to do this using .htaccess or web server or firewall configurations but stopping bots is a Sisyphean task that you don't want to do yourself because you'll never stop them all. Often a tiny tweak by the scraper is all that is needed to bypass your blocks.

It is best left to a third party who can dedicate time and expertise to it instead of you wasting your days trying to keep them all out. You can use a Web Application Firewall (WAF) service like Incapsula (expensive, very good) or Cloudflare (cheap, not as good) that can prevent bots from accessing your pages by intercepting page requests and giving them a javascript challenge or something that only a real browser can solve. You might have seen a Cloudflare challenge page occasionally when browsing the web. It is testing whether you're a real visitor before forwarding you to the page. If the bot can't pass the challenge the page wont load, and they never get a copy of the source. The WAF also protects you from a lot of malicious traffic and hack attempts, and things like DDoS attacks. Also the reduction in bot traffic will take a load off your server and potentially decrease your hosting requirements and costs.

A good WAF will stop most basic bot traffic. But a really determined scraper can use a simulated browser to defeat that, or even pay humans to do it if they are rich and desperate enough. I have been using WAF services like those above for years and pages from my sites occasionally still get scraped and included on cloaked pages like that. It's a never ending arms race.

 

[Frank]

it's common but wont affect you thought its annoying seeing your content in the serps tagged to some non related construction site which then 301s to a one page top 10 list

 

[Thomas Andreas]

Hi guys,

Currently my content is scraped by bots and the content is used my lots of hacked websites. The content is not shown (old trick; blackhat cloaking) on the normal website, only when you take a look in cache.... Does someone knows a way to secure my website from scraping?

I know I can inform Google about these hacked websites, but I do not think this is the solution.

why do you think they are attacking you in the first place?

 

[Xilenciso]

I heard about DMCA, but I do not really know how does it works. Anyone here used it or had real cases?

 

[Anissa Lestari]

Good question. If anyone has any experience on how to deal with scrapped content, please do share. I would also like to use the pluggin on my web. Thank you

 

[Gabriel Valentine]

I don't think this will harm your site. Google crawls pretty regularly and if finds your content on your website first then they assume this is the anchor/original source. Any other replications would rather harm the other sites as Google will treat is duplicate and no worthy content. We have few of our websites scrapped all the time, so far no harm on us. Hope that helps.

 

[DaftDog]

Why is duplicate content bad for SEO?

Duplicate content may harm your SEO performance for a few reasons.

1. Undesirable or unfriendly URLs in search results;
2. Backlink dilution;
3. Burns crawl budget;
4. Scraped or syndicated content outranking you.

Read more here: https://ahrefs.com/blog/duplicate-content/​

 

[Thomas Andreas]

I protected my media using WP Content Copy Protection & No Right Click,
i believe the scripts also available for php sites...

how exactly does this tool work?

 

[Aff_G]

Hi guys,

Currently my content is scraped by bots and the content is used my lots of hacked websites. The content is not shown (old trick; blackhat cloaking) on the normal website, only when you take a look in cache.... Does someone knows a way to secure my website from scraping?

I know I can inform Google about these hacked websites, but I do not think this is the solution.

I have experienced this also. I still don't understand why they do this in the first place??

I also have it where the content is showing in serps (exact match search) then when you click the serp link you are re-directed to a casino via affiliate link.

 

[Kani John]

Have you found a way to fix this problem? Can the DMCA help?

 

[xecutable]

I've filled DMCAs several times in Google's DMCA section. It does help to the point that once you show, you are the original content creator they will simply delist the scrape material from their search.

But then you'd have to do that for the next piece and next piece. Unless you are being outranked by the scrapped material, or for some reason enjoy filling out forms with reasons and links, there's no reason to spend multiple hours of taking things down, when on the very next day they'd be on another scrapper website.

I believe this is one of those old myths that still lurks around. If Google can understand "who's the leading man in titanic" and return a name, pretty sure it's advanced enough to distinguish scrapped content on a website full of scrapped content, versus a site with original content and has produced and keeps producing on regular bases original content.