Unfortunately, I had to set my blog feed to short when I discovered it was being used to populate some spam blogs (splogs). Not only is it annoying to see your content stolen, if you use the Blogger platform, it can lead to your own blog being marked as a spam blog and frozen (Blogger searches for identical content on blogs as a way of identifying splogs). This happened to www.modestybrown.com only last week, and although she had access restored quickly I don't think she'll mind me telling you that she had a very unpleasant and panicky hour or so until it was resolved.
I found my content being republished by chance as a result of searching for a small brand I'd reviewed, but you can check for unusual uses through Feedburner (if this is how you are publishing your site feed). Click on the 'see and manage more uncommon uses>>' link in feedburner to see where your content is being republished. Most of them will be through things like Bloglovin or in the blogrolls of other bloggers, but if you see an address that is unfamiliar it is worth having a look and checking it isn't a splog.
If you set your feed to short, it's also helpful to make sure you have a mobile device template enabled on your blog. This is also simple to do through Blogger. You just go to 'templates' and enable a mobile template. It makes it easier for people to read your blog on a mobile device, so it's well worth doing in any case.
I hope this post is helpful. I'm not a technical wizard by any means so if I can do this, anyone can.
Special apologies to Tsunimee/Liloo who is going to curse me for encouraging people to set their feeds to short. You don't want your favourite blogs deleted though!
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I totally agree!
ReplyDeleteThank you very much for this brilliant post and advice. I know it must have been hard to pull yourself away from Skyrim! ahaha double thanks for this.
ReplyDeleteThanks for this, very very useful. What a shame for Modesty Brown, bet she was fuming x
ReplyDeleteThanks so much for this really useful post Grace. I was also thinking that Liloo would be annoyed lol - I like Google Reader too, but use Bloglovin more these days.
ReplyDeleteNic x
Thanks for this post! It was very helpful!
ReplyDeleteThis is such a useful and informative post. You forget how helpful it is to share ones own experience. I was very grateful for your calming influence and advice in the time of immense panic! I'm going to have a look Feedburner now. I actually don't know if I even have mine properly synchronised. I really ought to check.
ReplyDeleteThanks so much for this- very useful advice. Very kind of you to share xx
ReplyDeleteHow worrying, thank you for this and for such good advice xx
ReplyDeleteThanks for this information, I wasn't aware of this issue until I stumbled upon one of my posts in a splog which is annoying as it's not about the pageviews, but the time and effort you put into a post and then for the content to be stolen!
ReplyDeleteI'm still old skool and click through to blogs to view posts:)
Ooohh I don't understand - I am too old for things like this, you see when I was at school computers were the size of whole rooms and I can remember playing the ping pong tennis thing on the tv, I am just hoping that my blog is so small and insignificant that it won't affect me. I appreciate your helpfulness though Grace, I just don't have enough spare synapses to get it :(
ReplyDeleteThank you for this! I would never have known had I not read your post. I've changed all my feeds to short :)
ReplyDeleteVery helpful post-thank you so much for sharing!
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