Google Making New Algorithm Adjustment; Will Focus on Scraper Sites

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A lot of bloggers, webmasters and web publishers are familiar with the scene. You get pingbacks, trackbacks or email alerts of sites linking back to you, only to discover they’ve copied your entire content, including links and have even hotlinked to your images. Now, Google wants to target these so-called scraper sites, and is asking for everybody’s help.

Scraper sites are the scourge of many a webmaster. The general consensus is that they’re bad for you — duplicate content results in search engine penalties, and they often infringe on intellectual property. Google has long been criticized for not being able to act on these, to the extent that sometimes the infringing sites even appear higher than the original source in the search result pages. While most web publishers would recourse to a DMCA takedown notice, addressing each and every one of these scraping incidents can be tedious, especially for bigger publishers.

Now Google is planning another algorithm adjustment, this time targeting sites that lift content from other sites, with the intent of passing these as original, and often slapping on advertisements or ad links. Matt Cutts — Google’s anti-spam czar — asks everyone to contribute.

Scrapers getting you down? Tell us about blog scrapers you see: http://goo.gl/S2hIh We need datapoints for testing.

The link leads to a Google Docs form, which anyone can fill in with the relevant details. Web authors can include the URL of the original content, the page that copied the original content, and the exact keywords used in a Google search where the infringing site appeared.

Search optimization experts have pointed out that the recent Panda algorithm update was not exactly able to address the spam issue, and has allegedly even affected some legitimate sites negatively. This time around, Google is working on “testing algorithmic changes for scraper sites (especially blog scrapers),” and perhaps they need a bit of human input to help make sure they’re better able to determine the original content from the copies.