Scraper site including my urls

[EyeOfTheTiger]

Tweet

Hi,

I recently came across a site (withheld) which features a great deal of my urls in which I have asked to be removed from.

Why ? They have started to appear in search results above my urls for keywords which are misspellings of popular terms and which only my sites really seem to feature hence I used to get top slots alot.

Now they seem to have gazumped me to the spot based on the fact that my keywords appear plastereed all over their site under my site description. The keywords which took me ages to craft and research to get these positions.

It wouldnt be so bad if they only fetured my site on the returning search pages of their directory but they offer my competitors above me in their results.

I have emialed the site owner and amazingly received a reply.

"Our search results are powered by Yahoo! Search technology. Consequently, we are unable to remove any specific listings from our directory.
Should you wish to take this matter further, you will need to contact Yahoo! in order to be removed from their search results.
I must say that I am puzzled as to why you would want references/links to your site(s) removed from our directory as this can only be a positive thing."

From looking into my log files i can only find 82 visible referrals since Jan 01 05 from their site, so hardly worth crying about in terms of loss of traffic i get removed.

Am I being anal in asking for this request, and surely it's not my reponsibility to contact Yahoo, but his.

I am not prepared to remove myself from Yahoo listings as i get good raffic from them, but surely there is a way for siteowner to contact URL to put a ban on this URL appearing, I know when I spoke to MIVA about this, they said it was possible to block individual URLS from showing in scrapes or feeds.

Anyone got any comments, hopefully you can see where I am on this ?

Tiger

[EyeOfTheTiger]

Have I hit on a raw nerve with people out there?

No replies or advice to be shed from any experts/people similarly in my boat ?

Tiger

[futureweb]

I know little of SEO but wont they get done for duplicate content if they are using content from your site and you were about and ranked first?

From a technical point of view you could block / redirect to a non existant page or where ever you like based on the referer i.e if a user is sent from SomeSite.com you can re-dricect them off else where. Not sure if this is good practice but if it produces complaints to SomeSite.com saying its a dead link then they will most likley remove you.

i.e in ASP

'ASP CODE TAG HERE 
MyReferer = Request.ServerVariables("HTTP_REFERER") 
if MyReferer = "SomeSite.com" then
response.redirect("error404.html")
end if
'Close ASP tag here not showing on forum for some reason

[John Jupp]

I've recently noticed quite a considerable downturn on one site. I've found no less than eight scraper sites using my url's and only concentrating on the specific url's where I was in the top five.

As soon as I've got the time in the next couple of weeks I'll be doing a background check on them and see what information I can get on them before deciding on an appropriate course of action.

My view is that sites which do not have my express permission to list me should remove the links. I would be interested in an appropriate legal precedent which may be invoked.

[John Jupp]

I am definitely NOT impressed.

Four of the sites are copying url's without any reference to my site in a blatant attempt to redirect traffic and of those four one of them has even gone so far as to also pretend to be Tesco, Argos, ASDA and QVC with special sections created just for them which has no link to them at all except more internal advertising to other search portals plus closed down links and newly acquired domains!!!!!!!!!!!

[Itchy]

Have I hit on a raw nerve with people out there?

No replies or advice to be shed from any experts/people similarly in my boat ?

Tiger

Erm i just a bit confused asto what your explaining can i see an example?