arubicus - 9:02 am on May 9, 2005 (gmt 0)

(arubicus, your post was too boring, sorry, I had to mention that here, and unintelligible.)

Sorry it was boring to read and lame at that. When you get to know me you will find that most of my posts are generally in that fashion. I tend to beat around the bush. I throw in some lame oddball responses and I hardly ever give a straight response.

This whole thing is nothing more than a moral issue in which there is never going to be a straight answer - just subjective emotional responses based on beliefs from life experiences of those who respond.

So are scrapers useless or not? Depends on whom you ask.

Here are some of my thoughts on the matter.

Everything that I listed in my previous post happens to be just some of the more frequent result complaints you will typically see from webmasters on virtually every forum I visit (even here). From legit information site vs. commerce sites in the same results to scrapers, spammers, useless info, affiliates, directories, big corporations, mom and pops... It just goes on and on. These same complaints have been going on for YEARS (Dare I say a DECADE!).

The thing is, besides the moral issue of scrapers, most seemingly logical complaints/arguments results in a chain reaction effect through virtually all types of sites. Now I am talking about the LOGICAL complaints/arguments not the subjective. Just think about it.

I believe the scraper problem is living breathing beast. A beast that is hard to tame and is ever changing and adapting.

Are the search engines to blame for cultivating an environment for the beast to thrive? Is it the advertisers/advertising networks who feed/nourish the beast? Are the creators/reproducers of the beast to blame? Or are we the makers of the content they scrape to blame for giving them the air in which to breathe?

Law of nature says if you cut off any one of these lifelines and the beast will die. Or would they?

The thing is you must COMPLETELY CUT off any one of these lifelines. Bad news is that you are still dealing with other (businesses/publishers/directories...) who in their own subjective thought processes and morals see no problem giving them an environment to in which it takes hardly anything for them to thrive again.

To me they are like the mighty cockroach. They need and very little in the way of environment to survive and they multiply quicker than you can kill them until every nook and cranny is overrun.

So how do you get rid of them? It would take more than getting rid of them in search results I believe. Logically it may sound like the answer but these scrapers can adapt and change to their environment. They will find a way. As search engines get smarter so will specialized scripts/programs that can generate mass content off the backs of others.

If you take down scrapers the collateral damage can also be great. Most on page and off page aspects of these scraper sites (scraper directories - content scrapers) can be found on most legit sites. There is huge possibility of a chain reaction effect that can happen. Something to think about.