Social Rank - The new breed of blog scraping
I have had dozens of pingbacks in the last week from sites such as New Media Signal and MightyBlogger. All of these sites are brought to you by a website called Social Rank and all of these sites have the exact same design (all have the logo you see on the right too).
Basically what Social Rank does is post a brief excerpt from one of your posts on their site. They then list the posts from other blogs which have linked to your post or ‘covered your story’. How do they get traffic? Well, they send a pingback to your blog and the dozen other blogs which were listed as covering your story. I had over 20 pingbacks from them the other day within a space of a few hours.
At first glance these sites look legitimate however you quickly realise how these sites are just badly disguised blog scraping websites that were uploaded to make money via adsense. On their first day they launched no less than 30 websites. Yes thats right 30 websites!! All of these websites have the exact same design. All of these websites have several adsense ads and links to their other blog scraping sites. These are not legitimate sites. There is a link to the home page and thats it, no info page, no contact page etc.
I found an interview with the owner at Instigator Blog and they claim that they are planning on launching 1,000 sites like this. Considering that every one of these sites use the same design I predict they will have these sites online by Christmas. Has that sunk in yet….1000 blog scraping sites!!!
Do not be fooled by the appearance of these sites. They offer no content and are relying on pingbacks from hard working bloggers to get traffic, once they are uploaded they will never be updated again. My advice to all of you is to delete or spam their pingbacks so that you do not send their blog any traffic. All this company is trying to do is make a quick buck via adsense by getting traffic from your blog via pingbacks.
Please spread the word about this if you can, this is a problem that unfortunately we all share.
Related Links :
Social Rank HomePage
MindValley Launches SocialRank To Aggregate Niche Blog Content (was very surprised that Instigator Blog did not see this company for what it really is)
Vishen | October 3rd, 2007 at 7:56 am #
Kevin - I apologise for the pingbacks. This was a major blunder we made whan we launched.
Blogger Andy Beard complained about this and within 12 hrs we turned off all PingBacks. It was a stupid mistake on our part and we’re sorry. We apologised publicly for this on Andy’s Blog.
http://andybeard.eu/2007/10/socialrank-splog.html
Okay, now about scraping.
We are no scraping your blog. SocialRank is a Niche Filter, like Techmeme or Digg.
We us math to rank the quality of Blog Posts in specific niches - like Motherhood or Ruby Programming.
We’re not using any blog content at all. The only thing we show is the title of the post and the first 3 lines of it.
You cannot read a post on a SocialRank site. You must go to the original blog.
This is no different from Digg, Reddit or StumbleUpon.
Actually - we’re even fairer than them. All the sites above allow their viewers to leave comments on their own site instead of the original bloggers site.
I run 9 blogs (including blog.mindvalleylabs.com and selfpursuit.com) and I hate comment theft. I want comments on my story on MY site.
So for SocialRank, if you try to comment on a post by clicking on comments - you actually end up on the bloggers own site. The blogger gets the comment.
We don’t take bloggers content at all. Our service is simply a filter and ranking service. We help people find the best posts and best bloggers.
So to clarify, what you see on SocialRank is not content, but RANKINGS of content.
I will make myself available to you if you want to look further into SocialRank.
Sincerely
Vishen, co-founder
randy | October 3rd, 2007 at 8:18 am #
so what really IS blog scraping, n what isn’t? are all blog aggregators massive blog scrapers? is techmeme a blog scraper?
A Blog about Nothing | October 3rd, 2007 at 9:15 am #
Vishen - So how does one opt-out of your “service” if they don’t want to participate in it?
Kevin | October 3rd, 2007 at 10:23 am #
I appreciate you commentating however I have to disagree with a lot of what you said.
I got a pingback from you this morning so it seems they are still on for me at least.
The fact is, I do not believe you can compare yourself to digg. First of all, digg is one website whereas you are planning on launching a thousand. All of these sites are built specifically for adsense. Digg does not rely on traffic from the blogs it lists ie. if your sites do not send pingbacks to get traffic from blogs then your sites will not get traffic (well maybe a few hits from google etc)
I am a huge fan of pingbacks however you are taking advantage of what they were set up for. Pingbacks are good because it lets people see what other blogs are covering the story and continuing the discussion etc. Its an important part of the blogosphere.
By sending a pingback you are simply looking to get traffic to your blog. I dont see how you can argue otherwise because if the owner had pingbacks on anyways people can see what other blogs have covered the story which basically makes your site worthless.
If you switch off the pingbacks then I will have no problem with your sites or what you are trying to achieve with them. I don’t grudge anyone trying to make money through the web.
However, by pinging thousands of blogs every day you are simply trying to get traffic. I don’t see how you can switch pingbacks off though because if you do your sites will not make you any money at all.
You seem like a nice guy so I’m sure you can understand my frustration with sites like yours who ping BloggingTips for free traffic. I’ve had over a dozen sites scrape the content here in the last few months and it’s timeconsuming to deal with.
Here’s my suggestion : if you want to be taken seriously, why not switch off the pingbacks and do what your doing on the one domain.
Until you do that though, I would like you to please remove Blogging Tips from your sites. Any pingbacks I receive will be marked as spam.
Market Matador | October 3rd, 2007 at 10:57 am #
In many ways, I look at this and say it isn’t really all that bad. Sites are getting incoming links; therefore, building up their Technorati status. Also, the scraping is just for excerpts, then the reader has to click on the actual link to the real article to read the rest.
Not too bad.
Alexandru | October 3rd, 2007 at 11:04 am #
Vishen, same question here as A blog about nothing and Kevin. How do I opt out? And don’t compare with Digg, no way. At Digg and Reddit people write their own descriptions. You’re scraping portions of my articles.
You hate comment theft. I hate content theft. You’re using a part of my content to populate your automated blogs. Please take shylockblogging.com off your list.
Vishen | October 3rd, 2007 at 11:39 am #
Guys…anyone can opt out. Just send us an email. You can find the email address on SocialRank.com.
Kevin, the morning PingBack must have come before we turned it off. Pls let me know if yoiu notice this again. They were turned off around 9am GMT.
The original flawed aim of the Pingback as that we wanted to bloggers to know if their post made the Daily Top 15 in their category. It turned out to be a PR disaster and we turned it off today. So sorry.
It was never a way to get traffic. Pingbacks are just not a good traffic generator.
As for multiple domains, here’s why. We’re a long tail filter. And we want go into niches that others ignore. But many of our niches just won’t take off on the samn site.
For example, we have filters for content from Atheism Blogs, and from Christian Blogs. From Motherhood blogs and SecondLife blogs. And even from controversial topics like Queer blogs.
The audience is way too diverse for us to build a community on a single site.
Kevin - I will be available to answer any questions from you and your audience. Thanks, I do appreciate you helping us avert this PR disaster. We’ve only been live for 2 days so we’re glad we got warned early
Kevin | October 3rd, 2007 at 11:46 am #
Im glad that you are turning off pingbacks.
I dont understand why you want 1000 domains though. If you want this to be a successful business model you should have everything at the one domain. Do you really have the time or energy to build a brand and promote 1000 sites?
‘The audience is way too diverse for us to build a community on a single site.’ - Did this affect Digg, del.iciou.us or stumbleupon?
Vishen | October 3rd, 2007 at 12:21 pm #
“The audience is way too diverse for us to build a community on a single site.’ - Did this affect Digg, del.iciou.us or stumbleupon?”
Yes it did - it limits the scope of their audience.
Go to Digg right now and you’ll see that a large number of the niches on the Net would never get publicity there.
Digg is great is you happen to be Male, Atheist, Liberal, and a Technophile. But for thousands of other niches, their posts would never make Digg.
Like Motherhood, QueerLife, Sudanese Culture, Malaysian Culture, Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Belgian Flemish Posts, Elearning, PR…
These are the niches we’re providing our service for. We have sites for all the above.
My mother would never find Digg interesting. But she would love TheMomsWorld.com, which is powered by SocialRank.
At the same time, she may get offended by ChallengeReligion.com, which is also powered by SocialRank but kept on a separate domain for obvious purposes.
And that does not even cover the regional aspects of the site. Go to Malaysia.DailyVoices.com and you’ll see the first post is about Islam.
That kind of stuff has an audience. But it won’t work on one site.
Michael Martine | October 3rd, 2007 at 1:38 pm #
This is nothing more than better-than-average automated MFA sites (made for AdSense). Their value to anyone but the most ignorant is extremely dubious.
Vishen | October 3rd, 2007 at 3:08 pm #
Hi Michael
Pls take a look at the ranking system behind SocialRank. I think you’ll disagree that is just an MFA site.
http://socialrank.com/learn-more-about-socialrank/
By the way, our previous project was BlinkList.com. Won a couple of awards and was just mention in the Wall St Journal Online at Sep 30.
Blinklist earned revenue from adsense. Just like a gajillion other sites out there. But it was certainly not MFA and nor is SocialRank.
Guys - seriously. Read about the algoritm first before tossing around these accusations.
And as I said. Kevin - I am open to an interview and to answer all your questions.
PS - our company is http://www.MindValley.com.
Kevin | October 3rd, 2007 at 6:30 pm #
Dont think an interview is needed.
You have to see it from everyone elses point of view. You said they are not built for adsense yet there are two adsense advert areas before there is even content. Then there are more on the sidebar and the footer. Now obviously, a lot of blogs have adsense on it however there is a major difference between those sites and yours. Yours is automated and is relying on content from other sites.
Vishen, you seem like a really nice guy and I respect the professional way you have responded to these comments. However, these sites are ten a penny on the blogosphere and are not offering anything to the visitor. I think you would be better putting your energy into building 3 or 4 great blogs instead of trying to build more of these sites.
Mike | October 3rd, 2007 at 7:14 pm #
Wow, I am quite surprised how quickly people form an opinion without getting the facts. I guess that is one of the most comment complaints about the blogosphere in general. It is like everyone has become a journalist except without the duty to first look into the details.
Why am I saying this?
Accusation 1 against SocialRank: It is a MFA site.
Why? Because we use ads (AdSense) to monetize the content. Well… lets take a look at Google. They are an MFA site. Why? Because they use ads (AdWords) to monetize the content.
Accusation 2: “The value of SocialRank to anyone but the most ignorant is extremely dubious.”
The above statement shows that we have not articulated clearly enough the value of SocialRank.
Let me give you an example. In the past 24 hours, over 274 articles have been published by bloggers on Internet Marketing. Do you want to know which ones are the top stories of the day without having to read through all 274? I do and I can now get the answer at http://www.MarketingLens.com
SocialRank is a powerful algorithm that helps to rapidly filter the blogosphere by surfacing what’s important and what everyone is paying attention to right now. Above I just listed an example for Internet Marketing but I can do the same for lots of categories. Our goal is to give every blogging community of every significant interest area an intelligent filter via a SocialRank powered site to make it faster to discover the top stories of the day.
Lots of people online are already complaining that they cannot keep up with all of the feeds that they have been finding and SocialRank makes it possible to rapidly and easily discover the top stories of the day.
Kevin | October 3rd, 2007 at 7:59 pm #
A made for adsense site is a site which is rarely updated and either has
* static content relating to a specific genre with high click thru rates
or
* automatically generates content using a script which pulls data from other sites
Talat | October 4th, 2007 at 12:15 am #
Kevin-That is an interesting definition of MFA sites:
Let us see how Google and SocialRank fare in it.
Criteria 1: *static content relating to a specific genre with high click thru rates*.
Google: If you search for hello world in Google the content and even the ranking remains there for a long time.
SocialRank: Go to marketinglens.com for example.The content/ranking changes very rapidly.The page you see today is not the same tomorrow, as the contents change very rapidly.
Criteria 2:*automatically generates content using a script which pulls data from other sites*
Google: Does not automatically generate content, but acts as a filter for search.
SocialRank: Does not automatically create content. But acts as a filter for blogs in the niche sites.
As we see criteria 1 applies to google and none applies to SocialRank. It seems google is more of an MFS than SocialRank by that defintion.
That said, I do not agree with the definition of MFA sites. The basic criteria is- ” is it providing a valuable service?”. Google and SocialRank both provide service in the jungle of www by filtering out things for you, by giving you a service.The good thing is that users are very intelligent, and they recognize a good service when they see it.I personally want SocialRank to succeed because it provided good service to its users, because it made our browsing life a little easier.And I personally am totally committed to the quality of the algorithm so that it surfaces out the best and the most fresh content in the jungle of blogosphere, that it brings order. That would satisfy me.
Matt | October 4th, 2007 at 12:51 am #
I personally have no problems with any site that takes my title and a few lines. It has been done to death for the last few years.
In fact, if you are not a Digg-traffic focused blogger, even Digg is nothing more than a scraper. My content basically - most posters anyway do not bother to write their own description or title.
One more site that does it to me, no problem pal.
Vishen | October 4th, 2007 at 1:45 am #
Hi Kevin, to answer your question:
“I think you would be better putting your energy into building 3 or 4 great blogs instead of trying to build more of these sites.”
Yes, I run 9 blogs. Among them…
blog.mindvalleylabs.com
marketingsqueeze.com
selfpursuit.com
mindhacks.org
meditationliving.com
and several others.
We started SocialRank from a bloggers perspective. How can you find out how your posts rank in the field you’re in. And how do you identify other bloggers kicking ass in that field.
Kevin | October 4th, 2007 at 8:02 am #
I think we will have to agree to disagree on this one. For me, a site which has several adsense ads and pulls excerpts from other sites is a made for adsense site.