david_uk - 12:20 pm on May 7, 2005 (gmt 0)

Yes I agree that scraper sites have little content to offer, and their developers do little effort to develop them yet gain a lot of money for it but having no content does not mean they are not doing a service to searchers.

Not everybody shares this line of thought. I find scrapers and scraper ads very frustrating. I know how to use a search engine to find information, and sites that have no content other than ads and links to other no-content sites filling up the top spaces on my search annoys me. That is not a good experience, nor is it a service to searchers, as I know the *only* reason they are there is to generate clicks for themselves on the back of stolen content.

If it was not for the scraper sites, who's developers spend their time on nothing but fishing for those "excellent" keywords, those 100,000 searchers would just not be able to find the content-rich sites, simply because they used search phrases that such sites do not optimize for.

They can't find the content pages in the top slots of the search BECAUSE OF the no-content scrapers, and not thanks to them. Nuke the lot of 'em and you'd find the content easier.

Webmasters that can't put in relevant keywords (it 'aint rocket science) aren't that serious about having their site visited.

Search engines have improved vastly over the last few years, and so has people's ability to use them effectively. Saying that scrapers fulfil a need is crap - sorry.