I noticed that most of the offending pages (incl ones mentioned in this thread) have now been removed. We are winning this game people!

Half Time Score :

Us 21
Spammers 2

I had a programming bug that instead of comparing not-equal, compared equal. As a result I generated code from “not-my pages” instead of code “only from my pages”.

ACTION: I have deleted every offending page here and I am in the process of regeneration with my own sentences. I am trying to find out who grabbed my entire site late this afternoon - even with the offending pages. God only knows where it went. A quick test of ranked generated pages did show something.... not a single one ranked well for my target phrases. I am hopeful that my next test will fare better.

I am sorry for the error, it has been corrected. Any persons affected by this error should contact me directly. As a person that has massive portions of their site stolen almost daily, this is not my practice.

Before my colleagues that know me (and those that don't) I beg for your understanding and forgiveness.

And I ask to PLEASE be contacted directly in the future if any other gotchas ever occur.

[This message has been edited by bruceclay (edited 06-19-2001).]

They should also know the implications of what they do.

Anything in the /Promotion/ directory is suspect. Bruce is quite right that the logic mistake in the module of his program is easy to oversee. But a screen scraper is a dangerous thing to write. This an especially strong point given programs that generate code after checking keyword placement and the sites that score high to screen scrape them.

This is a dubious practice in and of itself.

I have only verified that Bruce's statement: "ACTION: I have deleted every offending page here"

Is only partly true. It would be more accurate to use the word "edited" in lieu of "deleted".

The redirects from click-thru will still take you to bruceclay.com showing the pages are actually there nearly intact. The offending content however (that can today still be viewed in Google cache) at bruceclay.com seems to be fully replaced with:

To bruce clay, llc. Copyright registered with united states copyright office, number tx in accordance with title, the library of congress, united states code. All rights reserved. Bruce clay is a trademark of bruce clay, llc selected as a starting point hot site in the exceptionally competitive business category.

In his defense, at least he acted quickly.

-detlev

[This message has been edited by detlev (edited 06-08-2001).]

My thoughts exactly, and one I feel the engines would / should take a dim view of.

In all cases, the pages you are so concerned about are FRAMES pages. I do not cloak these pages. 100% of the code given to the spiders in the HEAD and NOFRAMES section is also presented to the surfer.

So, in my own defense, I made a programming error that extracted code incorrectly and for that I have fully apologized. I already followed Detlevs suggestion and deleted the directory containing the current (already fixed) pages so search engine links will be dead (Google cache will have to flush itself although I have requested that it be removed).

But I do not believe that using a page generation tool based upon my own content and that presents the same page to the spider and the surfer is in any way devious, and it is certainly not cloaking or pagejacking.

[This message has been edited by bruceclay (edited 06-19-2001).]

[This message has been edited by JuniorHarris (edited 09-06-2001).]

Just want to clarify what I meant about a "dubious practice in and of itself".

All I need do is re-iterate:

"This an especially strong point given programs that generate code after checking keyword placement and the sites that score high to screen scrape them."

You need to screen scrape the SERP or you wouldn't even know where to go to find placed sites. You then need to screen scrape the placed sites.

Screen scraping is a process. I am talking about generating code with placed sites as a dubious practice.

Is that clear enough?

-detlev

Bruce wrote: "I suspect that this is where it gets gray..."

Precisely what I meant when I used the word: "dubious".

-d

And after you have put up the "proper" notice, that lists all the sites you have scraped content from, you use a JS redirect to hide the notice from public view. I can't recall MS or Apple ever doing that.

That copyright notice doesn't have anything to do with outbound links. It is there because you want to cover your butt incase someone noticed that you were building pages using content taken from competitors sites.

Copyrights, Trademarks, and Servicemarks are the property of their respective holders, which may include aerohost . com/search-engine-tips . htm, ourworld . compuserve . com/homepages/heiner_boyn, searchenginewatch . com, searchenginewatch . com/tips . htm, www . 123-search-engine-optimization . com, www . aaa-internetmarketing . com, www . aerohost . net/search-engine-tips . htm, www . anancyweb . com/search_engines_rating_sales . html, www . bruceclay . com/web_rank . htm, www . earntech . demon . co . uk, www . ezrankingreports . com, www . netmechanic . com/cobrands/bravenet/promote . htm, www . netmechanic . com/powerpack/info/info1 . htm, www . search-engine-ranking-services . com, www . searchengineguide . com, www . searchenginewatch . com, www . top-search-engine-ranking . com, www . webseed . com,www . bruceclay . com .

-detlev

[This message has been edited by detlev (edited 06-07-2001).]

[This message has been edited by JuniorHarris (edited 09-06-2001).]

[This message has been edited by bruceclay (edited 06-19-2001).]

Witch hunting? I don't think so. I think the posts in this thread have been very fair and we have all given the accused spammers the benefit of the doubt along the way. MakeMeTop has been contacted by the original company accused of page-jacking and they have come to a mutually satisfying understanding. MMT even removed any posts that may have painted the company in a bad light.

Detlev has reminded us to give Bruce the benefit of the doubt, which we did and we welcome his responses to the situation that appeared spam-like to us. We are not talking behind people's back, as we usually approach the company in question and ask them to explain their actions in using SEO methods that are "dubious".

Most of us are SEO's and so we have a right to question the motivations of our peers if it negatively affects the value of search engines for everyone. It is not as if we are finger pointing, we are all open to criticism in here and such is the beauty of a public forum.

If the moderators feel we have overstepped the mark and begun to flame or treat people unfairly, they will step in and remind us. That hasn't happened in this thread and I think it has been one of the most interesting threads in here lately.

Just my opinion...

PS - I thought I'd heard all the jargon there was to SEO, but now here's "screen scraping" - can't wait to throw that one out in my next presentation!

[This message has been edited by Kal (edited 06-09-2001).]

In my country I would take the offender to court regardless of cost as I feel very strongly about protecting my TradeMark and copyright. This is not to say that I would not allow anyone to use content from my site - I would - but with at least an acknowledgement and hopefully my permission.

We are all capable of making mistakes and I admire the fact that BC (a person who certainly helped me and many others in learning SEO) has had the courage to admit to an error and apologize. As far as I am concerned that shows the obvious difference between him and the usual code thief and is the end of the story as far as I am concerned.

However, the fact that this issue has been brought to light has (I hope) shown that we can look out for each other and may deter many people from embarking on stealing other peoples high ranking pages and trademarks solely for their own benefit.

Hypocracy? I don't think so!