fantomNews™ — the ultimate know

(rt) Used to be a time when search engine reps claimed that cloaking software vendors’ common pitch (yes, fantomaster’s never been an exception on this score) regarding the advantages of web site code protection via their IP delivery products was an overblown, dishonest pseudo-solution to a pseudo-problem. It was viewed as a mere pretext to lend an aura of legitimacy to what was basically – again, from the search engines’ point of view – an unacceptable practice.

Of course, what the search engines do claim in the same stride when propagating such assertions, if not in as many words, is that their technology is quite up to the task of detecting duplicate content. Which, on closer scrutiny, proves to be just another “search engine white lie” the likes of which all experienced SEO / SEM agents have become so familiar with over the years. Because while it’s obviously true that 100% identical content can be detected and weeded out fairly easily, copycatting simply doesn’t end there. What they don’t tell you is that’s it’s actually quite a complex problem.

Ok, let’s be entirely open here: four or five years ago content theft may indeed not exactly have been any webmaster’s most pressing headache. It was very much there, sure, but it’s equally true that many SEOs and, especially, cloakers hyped the concept somewhat to make their products appear even more attractive.

Nevertheless it’s still quite true that probably the only really effective protection against people stealing your code and content is industrial-strength cloaking because it prevents the content thieves from ever getting to see your material in the first place. However, this generally concerns only SEO focused pages – obviously, there’s no point in cloaking content you actually want to display to your human visitors!

The situation has changed quite dramatically since then, and unfortunately none to the better. As ever more unimaginative and fundamentally unscrupulous “entrepreneurs” (read: gold diggers) hit the Web in search of a fast buck or two, the number of copyright infringements has experienced a veritable explosion. And it’s certainly no big help either that major search engines like Google and MSN are setting the worst of examples by displaying cached web pages without their owners’ express permission. This technically makes them the packleaders of the copycat crowd.

However, what this constitutes, too, is an excellent business environment for services like Indigo Stream Technologies’ (providers of → GoogleAlert) → Copyscape.

What Copyscape does is spider the Web for you to detect infringements and notify you if found so you can take affirmative action and protect your intellectual property.

There’s a basic free service and, as usual these days, a paid version called Copysentry to automatically protect your entire website which scans the Web daily for copies of your pages and e-mails you as soon as they appear. You will also find some basic tips on their site, outlining what to do after the event, once you’ve discovered a copycat filching your content.

Hat tip to Martinibuster, too, for his September 2004 interview with Copyscape’s principal Gideon Greenspan here:
→ “Are Content Thieves Copying your Website?”

Subscribe!