Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Do you post in your sleep?

It looks as if I might! My technorati search on my name returned this today:

Now, although the third one on the list is well out of date, it doesn't trouble me, because that was a genuine instance, and I know the deal.

I'm more interested in the first two. Interestingly, they both start in exactly the same way, namely "Karyn Romeis wrote an interesting post today on Here’s a quick excerpt" and both of them then go on to a post that has absolutely nothing to do with me.

So I naturally followed the breadcrumbs to see where the trail leads. The first item on the list brings me here. Hmm.












Following the trail further to "read the rest of this great post" I find myself here:


The second item on the list is much the same deal. Now, of course the spam alert alarm is going off in my head, but I can't quite figure this. Why would someone arbitrarily link my name to a post I didn't write and why does clicking on my name take you somewhere other than this blog? What on earth could they hope to achieve by this? And if I leave a comment on either "dotkash" or the final destination of the breadcrumb trail in each instance, will it do any good? On the other hand, could leaving a comment open the way for yet more abuse? In fact, am I overreacting to see this as abuse?

Answers on a postcard...

No, seriously, I could do with a little guidance, here!

5 comments:

Harold Jarche said...

These are pseudo-blogs that aggregate posts from others in order to increase their rankings so that they can sell advertising. They use bots and scripts to generate what look like real blog posts; but they're just spam. I have been linked to many of these sites and they seem to be on the rise.

The only thing you can do is ignore them.

Anonymous said...

Thanks, Harold. I suspected as much. What a pain.

Cammy Bean said...

I think it's called "scraping"...

Anonymous said...

It is scraping. They picked up one of your actual posts earlier, which is why your name is there. The script used here does a crappy job of matching names with the right post; that's why your post is attributed to someone else. Theoretically, you could try to report them and give them a DMCA takedown notice, or whatever the equivalent is in the UK. Harold's approach of simply ignoring them is probably the best answer though. You could spend lots of time getting these taken down, but more would simply spring up.

Anonymous said...

Cammy: gross name... totally appropriate!