Madness Monday: Splog Busters, or My Experiment to Fight Splog

(Copyright (c) 2010 Cynthia Shenette) I've been reading all of the blog articles about splogging and content theft over the last couple of months with great interest. As a "newbie" blogger I was surprised to discover that I too had been splogged. In response I did my due diligence. I contacted the sploggers, sometimes several times, and asked for my material to be removed from their sites. Most of the time my material was removed, but it was a frustrating, time consuming process.

One thing I've noticed on the various splog sites--the sploggers conveniently leave out my name and blog address from the splogged portion of my blog. I've also noticed they include about a paragraph of my content in their splog. I decided to try a little experiment. For the last month or so I've included a copyright notice at the beginning of every post, "(Copyright (c) 2010 Cynthia Shenette)." I figured if the sploggers were picking up the first paragraph of my post then they'd pick up the copyright statement as well. It's kind of a pain, and I think it disrupts the flow of my writing, but if it helps deter content theft then I feel it's a worthwhile means to an end.

Since I've started my experiment I've noticed that I don't seem to show up on sploggers' sites as much. My name might show up, but my content doesn't. I once noticed a splogger chopped off the word "copyright," but did include "2010 Cynthia Shenette." At least my name appeared in the post which is better than nothing. My guess is they have some kind of program that eliminates posts with the word "copyright" in the content.

I've been doing this for about a month and have noticed a difference. The other night I asked my husband, a web architect, about this. I asked him if my idea could be working or was it just my imagination. My husband, who is more than happy to tell me when something is in my imagination, said some sploggers may have a filter that eliminates content with the word "copyright" in a post. I also contacted Thomas MacEntee from GeneaBloggers for his opinion. He seconded my husband's opinion that my theory might actually work and not be just bunk and hooey. Thomas suggested I post about my experiment. I would love for other bloggers to try my idea and report back with your results.

Together we can fight splog!