#90 Miserable Site Scalpers How do you feel when you've been ripped off? Violated? How do you feel when someone blatantly rips you off for their own profit. Have you searched the search engines recently for your own web pages? What do people find when they search for you? Earlier this month we got a real wake-up call when we received the following rather disturbing email...

 > I was searching sites about web designing, using Infoseek and 
 > I came across this puzzling circumstance. I found  WebDesign & 
 > Review but the link took me to: 
 > http://www.creativedge-ct.com/p/wdbbb.htm
 > I then found my browser suddenly redirected to another site 
 > that I did not want.  Is this intentional or just a coding error?

We immediately went to work on this lead and discovered we had become the victim of a rather sleazy plot: site scalping. For some reason "A Graphic Edge GRAPHICEDGE-DOM" of Escondido, CA had seen fit to visit WebDesign & Review (in The Design Center), then copy the main page and post it in their own web site. What they did next is one of the most insidious forms of stealing we've seen on the Web. They registered the page at Infoseek, seeded it to the search engines, then coded a redirect into the html to jump the unsuspecting web surfer into their own pages.

(Don't bother to look at the url above, they took it down when we contacted them for comment. However if you look at the /p/ directory you'll see all the other scalped pages there too. They didn't reply to our inquiry -- and all their mail addresses respond with automated spam.)

What does this mean? It means people searching for, and finding WebDesign & Review will be redirected to the Graphic Edge site. And, there's no telling how many thousands of potential visitors have been diverted. What's to stop these low-lifes from stealing c|net, or Playboy pages, or those from other top-5 sites on the web? Maybe you'd better go searching for YOUR meta tags and page content... has your site been scalped?

This alert came from the office of William Pierce & Associates. Through telephone conversations with Bill (Pierce) we discovered that The Design Center is but one victim in a long, long list of sites that have fallen prey to this miserable practice of site scalping. Bill suggested we look into the directories of the Graphic Edge site, and pointed out other scalped pages as well.
"The practice seems to be running rampant," Bill comments, "...and growing at a considerable rate."

Pierce is now working on an investigative story about this new scourge with interviews of companies that have "scalped" pages listed as well as companies or individual's whose pages have been scalped. The search engine folks will be contacted to see if there's anything that can be done to help stop this cancer.
Bill points out, consumers who hire web companies may well wonder "If these web companies do this on their own sites, how original will OUR site be?"

We're anxiously awaiting the finished article from Bill and you can bet we’re going to spread this crusade as far and wide over the nets as we can. It's a low-life, miserable practice and ethical webmasters should do everything in their power to thwart it.

You can help the online community by sending this message to others, or by direct people to this page. Or, better yet, this is one page I HOPE you steal. Post it at your web site for all to read. (You could be nice and leave the links into The Design Center in if you like.)

Send mail to showker@graphic-design.com if you would like to be alerted when Pierce article is ready

Fred Showker

Fred Showker is director of The Design & Publishing Center on the web at http://www.graphic-design.com/, and is a co-founder of both The User Group Forum on America Online, and The User Group Network at http://www.user-groups.net/. He has been a user group activist and supporter since 1984.

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Fred Showker, nationally recognized designer author and speaker, is a 25-year veteran of the graphics industry, with his own firm Showker Graphic Arts & Design. Heís an associate editor for the Mug News Service (MNS) as well as Home & School Mac. You can see Fred in action at any of his Design & Graphics workshops around the country sponsored by Dynamic Graphics Educational Foundation, InHouse Graphics, PrintFest and others. You can chat with him directly on America OnLine, where he is ìAFA Shwkrî, a forum assistant in the User Group Forum (UGF), or in eWorld as co-host of the WORKING SOLO forum.
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