17 Things Bloggers Can Do to Combat Content Scraping

Last week, I received an email from a fellow blogger. She found some of her posts reproduced without attribution on a sketchy blog site. She wanted to let me know that on that site, she also found some of my blog posts. While trying to figure out what to do, I discovered a similar website that had also posted some of my blog posts. The text of the posts was altered slightly, albeit awkwardly, but the content and photos remained all mine. Even the title of the posts listed my blog name.

It was jarring, to say the least.

Imagine seeing your content, including your photos, on another website. I was in good company along with Another Mother Runner, Marathon Investigation, and Women's Running. It made me wonder what these bigger blogs were doing, if anything, to stop their content from being stolen. I also wondered why anyone would want to steal content from my little blog!

Talk about feeling helpless. It's the freaking internet! As much as I wanted to reach through the screen and strangle the thief, it was just a fantasy. I needed to figure out what to do to protect my content and myself.