I haven’t found a good tool (or set of tools) that deters blog scrapers. That is, short of trying to manually block them the “old fashioned” way by adding filters to a server’s .htaccess, or submitting to an online anti-splog database (see last paragraph). The problem with the .htaccess route is that maintaining a list of sploggers would be a fiddly, never-ending task. Keeping track that way would be woefully impracticable.
Another sleazy thing I’ve seen are sites which scrape only an excerpt from an article (not the entire article or site), then link back to the original article. Some have the gall to claim on their site that they are the content author! This certainly smells like another form of splogging, but is there are more specific term for it?
Unfortunately, AntiLeech doesn’t seem to work for splogs which have this aggravating habit. I have yet to find another WordPress plugin that would block ’em. My pie in the sky wish would be a plugin (or two) that would behave like a cross between Akismet and Bad Behavior as a defense against sploggers. Kind of like an anti-splogger service, which includes blocking of unwanted linkbacks and spurious author claims.
My current workaround (bandage?) is SplogSpot’s splog submission web form, Submit a Splog. But their CAPTCHA is sometimes frustratingly fussy, lacking a non-image alternative. Are their better splog reporting services? Splog Reporter is defunct.
Update (4 Jan 2009): I forgot to note another sleazy splogging behavior I’ve noticed over the past year, splogs that act as bookmarking sites. To me they often look like a blog, with canned text for their Contact, About, FAQ and Privacy Policy pages — almost never mentioning real people’s names, real addresses in the brick and mortar world, or a plausible / tangible company history. These “social bookmarking splogs” (is there a better name for them?) are in addition to the sad abuse of legitimate social bookmarking sites like Digg and del.icio.us by spammers.
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