This morning I opened up my administrative page to the apparently pleasant sight that I had lots and lots of comments. In fact, they were links to my site. However, when I started to approve them, many of which came from the same site in Spanish, I couldn’t see any context around them. Usually, I see a few words that show they’re saying something about my review. So, I went to the website they were on, only to find that someone had copied my entire Authors page over to their site, with links to my reviews. The only difference was that all the titles had been translated to Spanish.
I don’t read or speak Spanish, but it was seemed to me that the site was presenting them as links to biographies of the authors named, which they are not. I looked at one other page on the site, and I am guessing that it was a copied page as well, with direct links to someone else’s site. I’m guessing that all their pages are like this. In fact, they have created an “informative” website by wholly copying material from other people’s sites.
Essentially, since my Authors page links to all of my reviews, I feel like they are trying to take credit for all of my web content, and I believe that the other website authors would feel the same.
Since the other site was also on WordPress, I looked up how to address the issue through them. They first want you to contact the other site holder. Well, I tried, through their comments, and stunningly, they wanted my phone number before I could leave a comment, something I am not going to leave. So, I filed a form with WordPress asking for the content to be removed.
If you are a blogger, has anything like this happened to you?
What? Me Read? 
That’s so frustrating! I had a look and while that site does link to yours there is definitely a suggestion that it is their content.
Yes, and I think the whole site is like that. None of it is their content.
How could you see what it was? I didn’t say.
Oh apologies, I clicked on your Authors link and thought that was their site, but I see now it is your own site. My mistake…
That’s okay! I was afraid that somehow I had missed one of their links.
Actually, I just looked at the site again, and except for the copying of my list and maybe three pages of stuff that might be theirs, but whole rest of the site is copied from a website called Biography Online.
What a horrible experience. I have experienced spam but I need to look carefully at comments even suspicious following blogs to be sure there is not funny business. It’s unbelievable how miserable people can be stealing content from someone else’s who so generously contributes to us all.
Keep an eye on your pingbacks. That’s all I can say.
Horrible! I used to get this a fair bit on my professional blog – but because I include links on all my pages I’d get a pingback and go and investigate. Usually posting a comment asking them to cease and desist has worked, thank goodness, though I have one on the go at the moment where they’ve copied one of my pages and I am not having much luck. Good luck getting it sorted out.
That really stinks. My page is just a list, but it still bugs me. I was unable to post a comment because this site asks for a phone number, which I’m not going to give. I wonder if it’s some kind of come-on, because most of its content seems to be copied from another blog. I have notified the owner of that blog but not heard back from him. I don’t think he has anything to do with it, but what I’m wondering is if they are trying to get people’s phone numbers. Or if they included the phone number because they don’t really want any comments, which is odd for a blogger.
You should be able to put in all 1s or something for the phone number. I require an email and URL but people do make them up!
Really? That never occurred to me. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with requiring an email and URL, I have encountered that on lots of pages. However, if you require a URL, you won’t get comments from people who read your blog but don’t have a blog of their own. I have quite a few of those. I might go back and try the phone number thing, although I have already submitted the blog to WordPress to ask them to take it down, or at least the page.