Adsense Scraper Framing Websites

[outland88]

I've come across a scraper site framing legitimate web sites from the links. Is this allowable under Adsense policy? I wouldn't think so. I thought I had seen everything. Who would I report this to? I certainly don't appreciate what this site is doing.

[diamondgrl]

First, report it to Adsense and maybe they will start taking it seriously. My experience is that they don't yet.

Second, write a cease-and-desist notice to the site. I did that with one site and they stopped framing my site.

[outland88]

DG, Looking through the Adsense modules there doesn't seem be an actual address for abuse. This is the first time I've seen a scraper do this. Have you seen it often?

[PatrickDeese]

> actual address for abuse

just use the search mechanism and search for something like "report adsense fraud" or similar, and it will send you to a contact form.

[Jenstar]

You can also click on the Ads by Google on the ad unit, and report that way.

[jomaxx]

Are they showing AdSense ads in the frame surrounding linked sites? If so, I believe that would be a considerable violation. If not, then IMO it's a bad practice but it's been around for many years (just Ask Jeeves) and I don't see how it's relevant to AdSense.

...I was going to say "reprehensible" instead of "bad", but I have to admit I have contemplated doing that myself now and then, so it would be hypocritical to take that strong a position on the subject.

[jchampliaud]

Someone framed my site over a year ago, I reported it to AdSense and they must have said something because it stopped. At the time having two AdSense blocks on the same page was against the TOS.

[arubicus]

I recently stopped a site stealing our pages and dumping their ads in place of ours. After a group effort from other sites they were doing it to the content theif stopped (It was reported to the adsense team - Google did nothing). So the content theif started to do the framing thing as mentioned above.

For a long time now we have had a frame buster on our site. Simple javascript that helps prevent the site from getting framed. We checked that site again and their frame idea does not work to well on our site (not at all actually). I suggest you pick one up.

Even works to keep Jeeves from framing.

[outland88]

Yes, Jeeves was the first thing I thought of as how they were justifying their position. Yes, I did a search for the exact term “report adsense fraud” before posting. Apparently the abuse address is not so well publicized as to be readily apparent. I’ll probably pursue it through Adwords support or Jenstarr’s tip.

>Are they showing AdSense ads in the frame surrounding linked sites?

Yes, Jomax they are. Apparently half the site though is hijacking full index pages from other sites and framing them with Adsense also. Differing metas from the hijacked site. The other half is a typical Adsense scraper that frames all links on the page. They have about 2,000 pages in Yahoo. What few they have in Google seem mainly penalized. It’s more than me effected.

Arubicus I did keep track of frame busters a couple of years back in the forums but never utilized one.

It makes me wonder if anything isn’t being hijacked but I guess that goes without saying. To me it seems to be getting out of hand lately.

[incrediBILL]

Just drop in a line of frame popping javascript.

If you're truly concerned, send the script to everyone being framed

[edited by: incrediBILL at 7:34 am (utc) on May 15, 2005]

[david_uk]

I had a scraper framing mine a while ago. I wrote asking them to stop framing my page as they had google ads in their left column, and I had psa's appearing. I also added a frame buster.

So are we saying that framing a site so that they have ads, and our sites show psa's is a violation?

I just looked at the site, and it seems that most of the content AND the google ads are gone. I'm assuming that Google must have caught up with them, and there is now no need for the meagre content they did have.

[incrediBILL]

So are we saying that framing a site so that they have ads, and our sites show psa's is a violation?

I wrote to Google about a competitor doing this, incluging MY site, wrote to Google

They gave me lip service about sending my complaint to the "investigative team" which is google-speak for DELETED, could give a rats ass.

I dropped in the script to bust frames, done.

[cornwall]

1. Ad frame break out to your site
[webmasterworld.com...]
has a couple of suggestions that work

2. You would be surprised how many people do it to you. When I looked last month (checking for 302s, and this example is not one) I found about.com did a nice line in framing sites and adding their own ads.

[Marcia]

They have about 2,000 pages in Yahoo. What few they have in Google seem mainly penalized. It’s more than me effected.

Report the site to Yahoo Search.

What people do with their own sites is their own business IMHO, but once they're TAKING your site it IS your business, and Yahoo seems to take their QC very seriously.

[larryhatch]

I have a short frame-buster script on every page of my site, I should have done it sooner. - Larry

[outland88]

I appreciate the responses. I’ve always been hesitant about using “frame busters” because I rank well in Google and Jeeves. I will test though Larry and Cornwall.

It irritates me because I knew some of these Adsense scrapers were going to get more and more aggressive about stealing other people’s content with Yahoo’s current algo. Plus there’s an advantage to Google doing nothing about it. I was expecting it to get worse though.

Marcia I share your sentiments on the second half.

Larry how is that script working out in Jeeves?

[arubicus]

outland-

The buster I use works great on Jeeves also had no problems in rankings for Jeeves or google.

[larryhatch]

Hello Arubicus: First off, the frame buster I use goes like this:

<BODY onLoad="if (top!= self) top.location.replace(self.location.href);"
TEXT="#000000" BGCOLOR="#efeeee" etc. etc. >

Here are my site rankings in SERPS:
- - - - - GG YH Jeeves
kw1 only: 18 11 13
kw1+kw2 : 5 1 12

I see no visible damage whatsoever.

Google sends the majority of SE referrals, Yahoo maybe half as many, MSN around 22%.
Ask Jeeves/Teoma send a handful of visitors at most, way way down the list.

When I click on the AJ redir, their page shows mine framed, then POOF AJ is gone and my
full page is all that shows. No complaints at all. -Larry

[arubicus]

Pretty much the same.

<script>
<!--
if (top.location!= location) top.location.href = location.href;
//-->
</script>

The Jeeves frame shows then poof! See ya Jeeves. Gotta love it.

NO problems with rankings either.

[arubicus]

Oops. Found one I didn't update!

if (top.location!= location) {
top.location.replace(self.location.href);
}

Ahh this one is much better. The one in the previous is an old one that has a rash with IE and the back button. It busts the frame but the back button sends you back to the page that framed you which gets busted...

This is the one I use on my complete site (except the index page which has now been updated)

[twist]

xhtml 1.0 compliant

<script type="text/javascript">
if( window != window.top ) { top.location.href = location.href; }
</script>

[larryhatch]

I prefer the one I gave above. Using the <body onload ...> method, I don't declare a script.

The back button isn't broken, it takes you back BEFORE the AJ redirect, no richochet effect,
i.e. to the AJ page with your phony link on it. No tennis-ball effect.
This is one of the most useful things I learned on this forum.

A major site / organization in my odd niche decided to frame a number of the better sites.
I enjoyed passing around the 'fix', though few actually used it. - Larry

[kokaroach]

Ok, I have a scenario and also a question If you don't mind...

I go to Ask Jeeves and search for my own url, then click through. The site's in the AJ frame.

Now, on my main page, there are adsense ads showing up that are not even the same color or layout I specified when setting up the code in my AS account. they're the blue border, white background ads.

What's up with that?

I can understand the ads not being targeted because the site's in a frame, but are those $%^&* replacing my adsense with their own some how?

K

[kwngian]

Thanks everyone for the tip.

Rather than having to amend all the pages I have, I actually put it into one of the existing javascript file.

[ncw164x]

but are those $%^&* replacing my adsense with their own some how?

No this was discussed last year and was confirmed that askjeeves are not changing the publisher account number for their own

[webmasterworld.com...]

[kokaroach]

Thank you kindly ncw164x.

That puts my mind at ease.

K

[outland88]

ncw164x what is your interpretation, from that thread, of framing sites with Adsense outside of Ask Jeeves. AA seem to confine his interpretation to Jeeves. I've never noticed Jeeves using advertising or Adsense in it's frames.

Arubicus I already picked up on your frame buster from the link. I'm going to test Larry's and yours. Thanks.

[ncw164x]

My interpretation of that thread is if you have any doubts what so ever contact the adsense team giving as much detail as you can with the problem, they are a friendly bunch and are only too pleased to be of assistance ;)

I have contacted the adsense team twice regarding askjeeves and the possibility of any adsense click not being credited to my account, I was advised that there is no problems and askjeeves will "NOT" get the credit for any clicks from my site while it's being framed

On the second occasion what concerned me was the name of my site was not in the URL of the adsense when framed by askjeeves, it was showing a URL containing askjeeves when you mouse over the ads, again I was advised that this is nothing to worry about and I "WILL" get the credit for any clicks

What I don't like with the framing of my site is when I have a coloured border around the adsense layout as this changes the look and layout of the site, It should be a white border on a white background.

I have since added the frame buster script to stop this from happening.

[renee]

of course framebuster works only if the user has javascript on. The good part is that neither does adsense work. however, if the user's javascript is off, the scraper will continue to be able to frame your site and even indexed in google!

The question - how many users have their javascript off? my estimates are that it is up to 20%. Does anybody have any stats?

[jomaxx]

It's way less than 20%, once you discount spiders and such. Also being framed will not affect your Google indexing in any way.

One note about that JS framebusting... It can prevent your site from being accessed via online translators. Very user-unfriendly. With these Javascript snippets you can explicitly exclude some domain names from being "busted" out of, and I recommend you do.