Has Someone Been Writing Crap About You?

October 6, 2008

If you’ve ever had your website content scraped you’ll know how annoying it is. But I was doing some reputation management and I found this site: Aboutus.org

I checked the entry under my blog name and they had some well monetized bullshit that was supposed to be an excerpt from this blog. So I decided to see what they’d written about other folk too. Some of the entries were already there and others weren’t, so the site automatically “created” a listing. Trouble is, it seems anyone can edit these listings, so you don’t have a lot of control over your own stuff:

Problogger.com - Problogger.com - Under Development - An 11 Pixel Studios Project.

Excerpt: Problogger will be a new type of blogging community. Offering innovative technology, fully customizeable layouts, image hosting, and many other features, Problogger is sure to breath new life into the blogging community. Check back for updates.

This Problogger guy sounds interesting. I’m looking forward to hearing how he’s going to breath new life into the blogging community - aren’t you?

Men With Pens: Men with Pens Web Content Writers and Freelance Writing Services.

Excerpt: Shooting from the hip: to react to a situation very quickly and with a lot of force, without thinking about the possible effects of your actions.

Ok - I guess James does that sometimes. But it isn’t what it says on the packet.

Steve Pavlina: Description: “Steve Pavlina is a blue-eyed, colorblind, left-handed, well educated, vegan, lucid dreaming, purpose driven, happily jobless, reality manipulating”………. “Simply put, Steve is one of life’s runaway experiments who goes around scaring people until they either ascend to a higher level of consciousness or flee naked into the desert screaming, The horror, the horror!

Well, it doesn’t mention anything about needing to run into the desert screaming in Steve’s new book. I wonder if I missed a chapter?

Dosh Dosh: The listing seemed pretty normal. The contact details were very odd though: doshdosh@divegirl.com

Does Maki run another site giving advice such as How To Wee At Sea and Snog The Instructor - Good Move or Bad Move, or is this just a practical joke?

I checked on the listings for other folk including, like Barbara Swafford, Vered DeLeeuw, Liz Strauss, Kelly Rigby and they seemed pretty normal. So, some folk are doing some sneaky editing.

On the one hand - I suppose it’s a good link baiting technique. If folk write crap about you, you’re obviously going to want to edit your own listing. And it does give you another inbound link to your blog. But on the other hand, it’s really nothing more than a sophisticated scraper site - a busy one at that and they’re making money by scraping together stuff from our sites and allowing anyone and everyone to edit them.

What do you reckon - would you amend your listing and accept the inbound link? Or would you ask for your listing to be removed, so this site can’t profit from it? Or would you think screw it - and go do some creative editing on your competitors listings?

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Comments

23 Responses to “Has Someone Been Writing Crap About You?”

Steve Pavlina on October 6th, 2008 3:42 pm

Funny… I actually wrote those lines about myself. They were on my old About page. You can look it up at http://www.archive.org if you’d like.
Steve Pavlina’s last blog post..Financial Meltdown
cathlawson on October 6th, 2008 3:56 pm

Am LMAO Steve - I’ve read a lot of your stuff but nothing like that before. I guess it shows you don’t take yourself OTT seriously.

I’m enjoying your new book - but now I’m going to take a look at the Wayback machine for your old about page.
Vered - MomGrind on October 6th, 2008 4:24 pm

Good questions.

I guess if Steve Pavlina isn’t bothered by it, we can let it go too?

Vered - MomGrind’s last blog post..How Do You Deal With The Recession?
cathlawson on October 6th, 2008 4:29 pm

Hi Vered - that’s a good point - but Steve actually wrote what it said. Now I’m worried that I did actually write that crap they’ve listed a long time ago.

And also - is Maki really a female surfer in disguise? Did he actually ever say he was male, or did we all just assume it?
Elaine B. on October 6th, 2008 4:44 pm

Thought provoking! Okay I actually have a few rules… ONE, NO splogs. If they are blatantly spamming remove it or be removed.I don`t care what it says about me, it goes. TWO, Depends on the content. If I wrote it (Like in Steve`s case) Then who cares. Damaging and slanderous material, my attorney will handle that.
For those who have opinions and like to publish them, until you have bother to KNOW me, your opinions are but speculation.

I still remember the blogger who, because Will Smith`s poorly made analogy, dubbed the Fresh Prince a Nazi-GAH! Some people just shouldn`t write.

Elaine B.’s last blog post..A New Appreciation for Modeling and Inner Beauty Filters
chris on October 6th, 2008 5:00 pm

Such as the nature of the internet…

chris’s last blog post..Strike 3, Again
Davina on October 6th, 2008 5:55 pm

Hi Cath. Sigh… stalkers, blogging wars, splogging… what next! Right now, I don’t give a hoot. Maybe I “should”, but I just don’t. I have bookmarked Aboutus.org though…

Davina’s last blog post..Creative Luny Landing In The Sand
Betsy on October 6th, 2008 6:32 pm

Hi Cath - I am so confused! You mentioned reputation management. Maybe you could write a post about what to do in that regard? I mean . . . I inhaled and everything back in the day, but somehow that doesn’t seem like the type of thing you’re talking about.

Betsy’s last blog post..AUTUMN IN EVERYTHING
cathlawson on October 6th, 2008 6:55 pm

Hi Elaine - I haven’t seen you around in a while. I can imagine you coming down hard on folk who slandered you, thinking of some of the things you’ve mentioned in the past. I didn’t hear about the Will Smith case - I like him too. I’ll have to look it up.

Hi Chris - true - a lot of folk on the Internet don’t think twice about helping themselves to content and making a huge profit on it.

Hi Davina - searching yourself online is really important if you have a business. You want to make sure folk aren’t saying anything untrue about you. And also, you need to be looking for customers complaining about you so you can put things right.

Hi Betsy - Sorry to confuse - what I meant was - I was doing what I just explained to Davina when I found all this funny stuff. I did a reputation management post i January, which might be useful to you: http://cathlawson.com/blog/2008/01/31/what-are-people-saying-about-your-business-online/
Betsy on October 6th, 2008 7:04 pm

Thanks, I’ll read it!

Betsy’s last blog post..AUTUMN IN EVERYTHING
cathlawson on October 6th, 2008 7:06 pm

You’re welcome Betsy - I’m pleased you asked. The McDonalds video is a bit shocking. I’d read about what happened & had to switch it off part way through.
Marelisa on October 6th, 2008 8:00 pm

Somehow I don’t thing that James from Men with Pens wrote about himself that he doesn’t stop to think about the consequences of his actions I guess it’s like the comments you read on stumbleupon about your articles that get submitted. Some are very positive and some really make you wish you could delete stumbleupon comments (not because they disagree with you or didn’t like the article, because that’s fine, but because they’re hostile and vulgar). Such is the nature of the internet.

Marelisa’s last blog post..The Hannibal Barca Approach to Achieving Your Goals
cathlawson on October 6th, 2008 8:10 pm

Hi Mare - I was thinking that too. I know MWP use shooting from the hip as their tagline. But I doubt whether they wrote the other stuff.

I hate it when you get those folk on stumbleupon leaving the hostile and vulgar messages too. That’s one thing I don’t miss since I was banned. And when you use a flag to get them removed - nothing happens. It’s amazing what the powers that be at StumbleUpon deem as acceptable.
Dot on October 6th, 2008 8:58 pm

Sounds like something pasted together by a search engine. Personally, if it happened to me, I’d request revision or removal, but that doesn’t mean it would happen. Also, I’m not familiar with the terms “scraped” or “splodged,” so I had to read around them.

Dot’s last blog post..I’m Thinking of Someone
John Hoff - eVentureBiz on October 6th, 2008 9:16 pm

Oh I so want to be bad and choose your last option!

I’ll probably just forget about it. I’m too busy to police the Internet. Yes, it irritates me but my ultimate goal is generating profits for myself and I need to stay focused on that.
Ellen Wilson on October 6th, 2008 11:17 pm

I like the bit about Steve Pavlina, especially the reality manipulating part. Makes me want to go scuba diving or something.

Damn good ad copy. Ha!

Ellen Wilson’s last blog post..Personality Types Explained
Ellen Wilson on October 6th, 2008 11:30 pm

I did find one weird link to me and wasn’t sure what to think. And subsequently do. So I just left it.

Ellen Wilson’s last blog post..Personality Types Explained
cathlawson on October 6th, 2008 11:44 pm

Hi Rita - That is great. I’ve not met him in real life yet but he comes across as a nice guy on his blog and in his videos.

Hi Dot - sorry - there’s so many different words to get our tongues round on the Internet and it’s so easy to forget that not everyone knows them.

A lot of the scraper type sites don’t have any contact details, so it’s often difficult to get stuff removed - unless they’re on a blogspot domain and Google will usually delete them.

Hi John - the last option would be fun if you were having one of those evil days wouldn’t it?

I do agree - it’s easy to get too obsessive about searching what folk have said about you and it can waste a lot of time.

Hi Ellen - it was funny wasn’t it. And you know - I had a feeling I’d read it somewhere but I didn’t realise he’d written it himself.

I get some pretty horrid links coming in to me too. Apparently, if they show up as inbound links in your blog - it’s best just to put them in the spam folder. But most folk seem to say that bad inbound links can’t harm you, just bad outbound ones.
Ari Herzog on October 7th, 2008 1:22 am

As I type this sentence, Cath, I see three words above this box: SPEAK YOUR MIND.

If someone wants to create fictitious content about me, that’s fine with me as long as it doesn’t detract people from getting to me.
Evelyn Lim on October 7th, 2008 1:48 am

What a find! Thanks for letting me know about the link! Still, I don’t really care too much about what others say. My only concern is that I do not like getting stalked!

I’ve received a few emails from strangers, revealing that they are trailing me. What an ardous task they put themselves through! I’m all over so many blogs every day!

Evelyn Lim’s last blog post..What Enneagram Profile Type Am I?
Davina on October 7th, 2008 5:59 am

Hi again. Very good point you’ve made. Thanks.

Davina’s last blog post..Creative Luny Landing In The Sand
Barbara Swafford on October 7th, 2008 7:34 am

Hi Catherine - I’ve never taken the time to check on this, but I’m happy to hear you checked for me. Thanks for the mention. It’s nice to know I’m not being slammed or degraded.

Barbara Swafford’s last blog post..I’m Leaving You In Good Hands
cathlawson on October 8th, 2008 11:40 am

Hi Ari - that’s a good point. Not all bad publicity is bad. If it doesn’t stop folk visiting your site - that is a good thing.

Hi Evelyn - Your welcome. There’s some weird folk online. They must have a heap of time to waste if they’re following you round.

Hi Davina - Thanks - being able to find that sort of stuff is a good thing. Before the Internet it was far harder trying to find what folks were saying about your business.

Hi Barbara - You’re welcome. Your entry was all good. I recognised it as things you’d written on your about page.