Forum Moderators: phranque
This is usually done my automatic scripts, cut and paste methods, and a few other tricks.
Scrapers are NOT considered good sites and are being complained daily.
Personal Suggestion: Dont get into scrapers business. Instead, use your time to write and build content.
We all are expecting that soon scrapers will meet their end.
... I am expecting since years spammers will meet their end...
ha ha.. me too....
I think they'll both be around for a while, spammers and scrapers both. As the coding advances in an effort to curtail them, or even slow them, they'll simply burrow in further and use other holes to ply their wares from. I guess I'm one of the few people in the world who thought CanSpam was a major leap forward. A few high profile busts and a little noise in the news and then ....pfffft. Scrapers will follow a similar path. If there's money in it people will go to extraordinary lengths to circumvent any obstacles to their getting their piece of it. If you think of scrapers as rooftop snipers who setup and take one shot and then move on to the next shot it helps to define their illusiveness. Someone in another thread mentioned "next generation scrapers" and alluded to different ways of doing this. As we speak there are some very creative individuals out there who probably already have this next generation ability in hand. When google, if google, slams the existing scrapers off the internet this next generation will be waiting to go online - and it will. Google will respond and the scrapers will introduce 3rd generation and the saga continues. Personally I don't see any successful resolution to this.. all I see it doing is making for a very strange and frustrating internet...
A scraper site is different than a "scruper" (a scraper with scruples). I hate to see people lump all scraping activity under the black hat umbrella, when there are a number of scraper sites out there that are extremely beneficial to people and deserve their own label.
Topix.net is an excellent example of a scruper, as is Google.com.
A scruper is any site that scrapes other site's content with the intention of improving that content in some way (i.e. categorizing it so it's easier to find).
And obviously, a scruper takes a ton of time and resources to set up, whereas a scraper can be in place in minutes. A scruper site will be a good investment long term if it's a good idea (and can work just as well as a scraper site in terms of being search engine food and having a great ROI from ad clicking visitors). Also, because it too has self generating content, once the initial creation is done there's usually very little maintenance needed. It's the initial creation that can be incredibly difficult.
Creating scraper sites on the other hand requires constant maintenance, as you always need to replace the ones being kicked out of search engines with more.
In short, a scraper webmaster seeks immediate pay and for minimal effort up front (but lots of effort down the road) and minimal serps security. A scruper webmaster seeks pay long-term, with maximum effort up front and minimal effort down the road, and maximum serps security.
Think of someone bringing a camera into a movie theater and taping the movie, then trying to sell it on the street. While they probably make a profit, it is both illegal, immoral, and usually crappy quality. Scrapers do the same thing with website content.
Great analogy.
Irrespective of how you feel about "morals", the last time I checked scraping wasn't illegal. I'm quite happy to get visitors from the biggest scraper of them all. You know who I'm talking about!
The "what is a scraper" has been discussed about one million times. Try Google [google.co.uk] for threads like these:
[webmasterworld.com...]
asp4bunnies, you really are promoting this "scruper" thing you've come up with, aren't you? :)
asp4bunnies, you really are promoting this "scruper" thing you've come up with, aren't you?
hehe, definitely. I'm very close to launching one. I want to make sure it's labeled for what it is. :)
So No scrapers for me I guess.
Thank you again.
I want to make sure it's labeled for what it is. :)
I like the term... even did a search on it because I thought I'd missed something somewhere... ha ha...
scrupers it is then.
I take it google is the biggest scruper of all?
Most BIG scrapers ( or scrupers - as i learned recently ) use RSS for automatic syndication and it is really easy. BUT with google not coming up with AdSense for RSS , I like to think that the adsense adverts of the orignating source would also flow alongwith the RSS feed, bringing profit to the prignal source.
This means that the sites that are banking on RSS feeds may soon find the adsense blocks of the originator appearing whereever he uses the feed.
This will impact the scrapers and scrupers collectively and once they lose the earnings, they may not have enough reasons to continue the sites, apart from hobby .
till then scrapers may have the party.
my comments should be seen in view of full scraper sites and not the one which use rss as additional content
Spam and scrapers exist for one reason - to scam people. I also agree that banning them isn't the answer as they will adapt. I think they will always exist, but I hope Google gets smart in dealing with them. I don't know the answers, but the points below I think may at least help.
I think what would help would be Google showing determination in dealing with offenders. I've reported 3 of them to see what happens. All of them violate the TOS blatantly. One has an adlinks unit in the left pretending to be a menu, and an adsense block on the right pretending to be information. I know about this site because I saw their ad on mine! They could start by showing true determination and publicly kicking major scrapers without warning. I'll report back in a week or so ti say if they are still there or not.
The other thing they could do is to look for auto generated pages and kick those webmasters publicly without warning.
Where they could get smart is to hit scammers where it hurts - financially. The whole purpose is for them to advertise cheaply to get traffic in order to funnel the visitors towards the higer paying ads. Notice how scrapers don't often have scraper ads on their sites?
When it costs them as much to get traffic as they get in adsense earnings it becomes not financially viable for them to exist. You wouldn't need to ban 'em then!
Therefore, give publishers the option to block minimum bid ads.
The current algo places ads not on bid price, but a combination of factors inluding ctr of ads - hence they get placed above genuine advertisers. Google should maybe give higher bid advertiser more weighting in the algo to squeeze the scrapers likelihood of getting placed - unless they bid as high as the suppliers of goods and services that they are trying to syphon the traffic towards.
scraper [n.] One that scrapes, especially a tool for scraping off paint or other adherent matter such as ice on a windshield. (or content off a web site)
For me a 'screwper' is a scraper in such a hurry that he screws the job up.
A screwper might leave links intact, leading back to the original honest but victimized site.
If memory serves, somebody here found out their pages were scraped when somebody emailed in
with a question. The 'screwper' had left a contact email address intact.
I wish the scrapers would get caught xeroxing 20 dollar bills. -Larry
'screwper' is a scraper in such a hurry that he screws the job up.
a 'screwper' is a scraper, who, in a desire to be a scruper, screws the job up.
asp4bunnies, you really are promoting this "scruper" thing you've come up with, aren't you?
hehe, definitely. I'm very close to launching one. I want to make sure it's labeled for what it is. :)
Hope you'll put it in your profile when you launch it, as well as instructions for robots.txt exclusion.
no offence meant to younger people, fellow dyslexics, jumpy people, incompetents or keyboard manufacturers
Hope you'll put it in your profile when you launch it, as well as instructions for robots.txt exclusion.
I'll sticky you if you like, when it launches. What do you mean by instructions for a robots.txt exclusion? Why wouldn't I want to be indexed? :)
