andydidyk.com

Well, I’m writing this blog while sitting at a Starbucks (fortunately, it hasn’t been closed yet and isn’t slated to be). It’s a great place to write, but I couldn’t help but chuckle at how cliche it is to be blogging at Starbucks.

As an update, it turns out that my blog was, in fact, dropped from Google. It hasn’t yet been reinstated, despite repeated attempts to contact Google and the filing of a formal complaint. A good friend and former co-worker, Peter Cook, did a little digging for me and discovered that I was a victim of a “splog,” or a “spam blog,” that basically installed a WordPress plugin that scours the web for recent blog posts with certain keywords and then downloads the post and automatically posts it on the splog.

Because this guy, who for ethical purposes will remain nameless as will his URL, was doing this with thousands of advertising and marketing blog posts per day, his traffic went through the roof, and it made it seem as if every blog from whom he stole content (because of my more modest traffic rankings) was stealing it from the splog! Google’s algorithms know no mercy, and thus it looked like I was the thief from the more “established” site and that I was duplicating his content. Not fun. Or cool at all.

I’ve learned a lot from this experience, and I want to share some excellent resources with all of you in case you find yourself a victim of a splog, or of anyone who steals your content. I want to give credit where credit is due, because without this specific online resource, I would have been lost.

If you suspect that someone has stolen your content, go to Lorelle’s blog on WordPress. It’s the most comprehensive, one-step-at-a-time approach to dealing with content theft I was able to find. The cut-and-paste letters and forms really helped me as I escalated steps in order to get my content removed.

I’m still not entirely sure why I don’t have any post content showing up in Google, but I’m going to keep posting, do some reading on SEO for blogs, and hopefully everything will work itself out.

–

UPDATE: one or two of my blog posts have started resurfacing on Google, but I haven’t received a notice from them as to why. I guess that’s pretty good though. The really good news is that the splog has been vanquished! The deceitful practice has been replaced with a simple site stating that the domain is for sale. Ahh, vindication.

UPDATE AGAIN: Also, the guy posted my emails to him on his blog stating that it was a “one sided conversation” accusing him of content theft. Lovely, eh? He stole it, whether intentionally or through a plugin, and I’m glad he took it down. And someone else bought the URL, so at least I don’t have to worry about that guy anymore.