Having you name on web garbage

[loudog]

Like many others, I have Google Alerts setup to notify me anytime certain phrases hit the net. One of the alerts are setup to notify me whenever the term "Lou Lynch" is used on a blog or news site. I have had this thing set up for the better part of a year and got alerted every so often.

Just recently, as of a few days a ago, I have been bombarded with "Lou Lynch" alerts (10-12 a day). The alerts point to random versions of past article I have submitted over the last year or so. This would seem normal except that the articles are on sites that I never submitted to. I know that articles sometimes get picked up by other sites, but these are spammy, thrown-together blogs that I would not want to be caught dead on. The article are stripped of my links are sometimes spun so bad they make absolutely no sense except for my name, company and phone number.

What actually happened here? Should I be worried about having my name on all this garbage?

[jessiesc]

Exact same thing has been happening to me lately Lou, except I am being notified by copyscape.

I've been trying to track down the site owners with no luck.

All these sites seem to be at WP and have multiple subject matter from other writers.

Some actually keep my links which is fine, but others edit my links and put there own which is not fine.

Not sure what to do about this or if anything can be done.

My thought at this point is to contact wp and update them on the situation, but I'm not sure if there is anything they can/will do.

I'd also like to hear others suggestions.

[DenaDavis]

I have see the same thing. I find an article with no links. It is probably not worth the time to track them down. There is never an "about us" page or a "contact us".

[NealRM]

I have seen something simular. My site address is tacked onto a spam page. Sometime there are links other times it is just text.

I think these are robot created sites that have the single purpose of collecting clicks. Many have PCP ads or other types of advertiements. I don't think that anyone would beleive that you are really advertising on that page. Most people now a spam page when they see one.

As for stopping it. It would take a lot of time and have little gain.

[DenaDavis]

The question is would google penalize you for the link if they include a link.

[NealRM]

Google does not penalize you for incoming links. Penalities are only for items on your site and under your control.

[loudog]

Good point Neal.

@Dena. Chances are, if we know about it then so does Google. I don't think Google penalizes as long as the link (if it exists) isn't reciprocated. Otherwise, we could penalize our competition by sending one way garbage links into their sites.

I was more worried about reputation. A few of the higher end article sites sometimes check your track record before allowing you to publish. I would hate for this to effect those relationships.

[REW Tyler]

I think these are robot created sites that have the single purpose of collecting clicks. Many have PCP ads or other types of advertiements. I don't think that anyone would beleive that you are really advertising on that page. Most people now a spam page when they see one.

We have dealt with this a lot in our past. So far google has does a pretty decent job of knowing whats robot generated content or legitimate content. It doesn't mean you don't get the articles generally scraped the odd time, how-ever they are generally pretty quick to catch on and remove the sites from the index.

Google alerts is great for this, but the mind numbing amounts of alerts for some keywords becomes annoying after awhile. I would probably not use your name, and just set them up for the article titles as it probably would generate less alerts and be more specific to were your content may be going as far as scraping is concerned.

The question is would google penalize you for the link if they include a link.

Probably not, it would take a lot more then a link or two to get your penalized.

[loudog]

That's funny. I just got an alert about this post

[curtisreddehase]

If google does not penalize you for bad links how do they know how to give you credit for a good link?