Scraper sites republish content without attribution, violating copyright laws and causing problems for legitimate content producers. They use automated means to collect content and generate advertising revenue. Webmasters use techniques to defeat scraper sites and some call for action from search engines and advertising companies. Search engines and news aggregation sites are not considered scraper sites due to fair use guidelines.
A scraper site is a website that pulls content from other sources and republishes it, usually without attribution. Such sites are operated for a variety of reasons and are of great concern to many legitimate content producers on the Internet, as they pose a number of problems. Most scraper sites violate copyright law by reprinting content without consent and discrediting the author, and they also wreak havoc on search engine results and site rankings, which can make it difficult for users to Internet find sites they actually want to see.
The main feature of a scraper site is that it uses automated means to collect content from other sites. The practice of collecting content is known as “scraping” and can be done in a number of ways, from downloading entire sites to extracting content from feeds generated in RSS, XML and Atom for the benefit of readers wishing to subscribe to a site. rather than constantly visiting it to check for new material. Once scraped, the content is literally removed and installed on a new site.
Most scraper sites are maintained for the purpose of generating advertising revenue through ads linked to the site. People can innocently search for something, land on the scraper site, and then click ads out of confusion. Scraper sites are also used in link farming, a practice of maintaining multiple sites that all link to each other, thereby inflating search engine rankings.
When content is stolen, it frustrates the original creator both because it violates copyright law and because the scraper site can deprive the owner of the original content of revenue. Many webmasters use a variety of techniques in an attempt to defeat scraper sites, and some have called for action from search engines and advertising companies, asking them to remove scraper sites or make them less profitable so that the practice is less attractive.
In cases where a scraper site credits the creator, this can also harm the creator by making their site appear to be in a “bad neighborhood,” with a large number of spam links rather than links from respected sites. As a result, search engine rankings may drop, and the site owner may not be able to do anything about it, as site owners cannot control who links to them.
Getting a site scraper to remove copyrighted content can be extremely challenging, as many of these sites use layers of subterfuge to hide their owners. Some frustrated webmasters go directly to the company hosting the scraper site, citing copyright infringements and demanding immediate removal of the disputed content.
Technically, search engines and news aggregation sites could also be considered scraper sites. However, because these sites are maintained for the public good, and because their use of material falls within fair use guidelines, these sites are generally not grouped with malicious scraper sites.
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