Nerd Culture hasn’t even been online a month yet and already it’s been splogged! In case you were wondering; splogging is when another site copies your content and uses it for their own site. Often times file links are even left intact, direct linking to your own server. This is how I tracked down this one. PSPBlenderBlog.com copied my post about Dark_AleX’s 3.71 M33 firmware release for the PSP. In doing so, they linked to the firmware file I was hosting which, of course; shows up in the referer links of my blog stats. Many sites use a custom made anti-leech system for file references on the site, but I hadn’t got around to making one for Nerd Culture yet. Instead, when I spotted my files being direct linked, I changed the filename, so now anyone that clicks the download link on their site is linked to my home page. Thanks for the free traffic PSPBlenderBlog.com!
Splogging is a huge problem on the internet. Other sites copy your content, which makes spiders recognize duplicate content, making it weigh as less relevant for PageRank. The really bad part about it is that the search spiders will often assume that duplicate content means the site has moved and will replace your index position for that particular page with the newer one. This, of course, is an extraordinary pain and can have nasty effects on your traffic. But if you keep a watchful eye out for content thievery you can use it to your advantage and turn direct links into back links. search spiders just love it when you get lots of back links. 
If you find an offending splogger a good way to dampen their mood is to report them to Google via their AdSense ads. First Click the “Ads by Google” part of the AdSense box, then you should a link at the bottom of the page that says, “Send Google your thoughts on the site or the ads you just saw. Click this and a box will appear where you can rate the ad relevancy, but at the bottom of that box is a link that says, ” Also Report a Violation?”. Click this link and 2 checkboxes will appear to report either the website or the ads themselves. Click the website checkbox and more options will appear; click “The site is hosting/distributing my copyrighted content” and a box will appear to add additional information. You can fill this out with a brief description if you like, or you can just press submit. Either way, the offending site is going to be ever so displeased when their AdSense account is banned.
