Warning - Mixing Yellabot & Lawyer Review Sites

[tylerjaysen]

Hey Warriors,

So I'm always looking of ways to automate mundane tasks and using plugins with Wordpress can make your tasks easier to accomplish.

Goal:
I wanted to set up some lawyer/attorney review sites that were locally based and would rank locally on page 1 of google and these would be monetized with adsense and CPA offers.

So I used the plugin Yellabot..which essentially scrapes the yellow pages based on a keyword that you type in to its search field...ie Los Angeles Lawyer.

Yellabot goes out and grabs all the info from yellow pages online and aggregates it for you so you can upload to your Wordpress site.
And that it exactly what I did. And ended up adding like 6k pages within a half hour or so.

In addition, Yellabot has a template associated with it so it will for example...pull royalty free images and place a photo to the left of the information that it pulls from yellow pages online...in this case the attorney's contact info.

Well here's why I despise attorneys:
Well after my 3 attorney sites have been up online for about 12 months...I get a certified letter in the mail and it is from the courts. Hmmm I wonder what this is about? Apparently, when Yellabot scraped content of this one particular lawyer...it placed a picture of a boy...maybe 17 years old...smiling ....to the left of his information...no big deal....right?

Wrong!

This particular lawyer saw that picture and now decides he has to take me to small claims court for...Libel, Defamation, Intent of emotional distress..and a few others....all because this picture of this boy was automatically placed next to his information. And what do you think this lawyer wants..? Yep...money. He wants to sue me for money....because he feels I created this to basically sully his name I guess. Really? Are you serious?

This one site has thousands of indexed pages that were created with software and there is no way I can check all of them. This guy just happen to do a search for his name in google....and blam...he sees that page on my site...and now he's gonna sue me. Parasite.

So be careful when you think about creating a site like this.....cuz it might come back and cause you some grief.

My court case in on the 30th of this month.....so I ill keep you guys posted on the outcome if you're interested.

[mosthost]

Sorry to hear it. This is one of those unintended consequences of marketing like you did. With lawyers, obviously, you should keep your nose clean.

[Gussieboi]

Wrong niche to choose. Dont mess with the lawyers...

[AlphaWarrior]

Perhaps, you shouldn't be putting up automated pages/sites and not having a clue as to what is on them.

Stealing data from yellow pages and adding 6k pages within a half hour or so is not adding anything of value to the internet.

[guitarjosh]

Originally Posted by AlphaWarrior

Perhaps, you shouldn't be putting up automated pages/sites and not having a clue as to what is on them.

Stealing data from yellow pages and adding 6k pages within a half hour or so is not adding anything of value to the internet.

I'm sure "adding anything of value to the internet" is the primary goal of everyone on this forum. Maybe it looks that way from that high perch you're sitting on though.

[stephenwaldo]

Man, that sucks.

Have you talked to a lawyer at all? Have you talked with the lawyer who's suing you at all, or did you just get a letter in the mail? Do you have any idea about what's gonna happen, or is it still totally up in the air at this point? I guess you did just post this today...I'm always curious when I read about legal stuff like this.

Either way, eff that guy! What a jerk.

I'll be rooting for you!

Kindly,
- Stephen

[Talen]

It's funny how lawyers are the despicable when what you did was wrong. You should have known a lawsuit was a possibility just from the mere fact that you knew the program you used would swap out pictures and add in pictures of god knows what. What if the pic it added in was of Ted Bundy or the like?

Fact is he's probably worked hard to build his business and having a pic of a 17 year old next to his listing might infer to someone that sees it that he is young and inexperienced.

And yes, if you have 6 thousand pages created and uploaded to your site it's your responsibility to check all those pages or you could end up getting sued.

[tylerjaysen]

Originally Posted by stephenwaldo

Man, that sucks.

Have you talked to a lawyer at all? Have you talked with the lawyer who's suing you at all, or did you just get a letter in the mail? Do you have any idea about what's gonna happen, or is it still totally up in the air at this point? I guess you did just post this today...I'm always curious when I read about legal stuff like this.

Either way, eff that guy! What a jerk.

I'll be rooting for you!

Kindly,
- Stephen

No I haven't talked to the guy...just got the letter in the mail. My court date is the 30 of Dec...so a few days away. I will come back and post my results of that court day. And yeah this guy is a duche for sure.

[tylerjaysen]

Originally Posted by Talen

It's funny how lawyers are the despicable when what you did was wrong. You should have known a lawsuit was a possibility just from the mere fact that you knew the program you used would swap out pictures and add in pictures of god knows what. What if the pic it added in was of Ted Bundy or the like?

Fact is he's probably worked hard to build his business and having a pic of a 17 year old next to his listing might infer to someone that sees it that he is young and inexperienced.

And yes, if you have 6 thousand pages created and uploaded to your site it's your responsibility to check all those pages or you could end up getting sued.

Yeah I see your point and that is why I'm sure the reason why he's suing.

[Fraggler]

It could be worse: You could have Yellow Pages coming after you for flogging their content.

[AlphaWarrior]

You called the lawyer a parasite. But in all honesty, and I may be the only member of the Warrior Forum that believes this, when you use software to automatically take data from sites that you do not own and create thousands of pages that you do not know what is on them, then you are the parasite.

Despite what most people think, lawyers have a strict code to follow when advertising. Without knowing the specific facts, it may be that what you put together looks like lawyer advertising and may have subjected lawyers to possible discipline by the state bar.

It may be like another warrior suggested, the photo may make it look like the lawyer is young and inexperienced.

Or it may be something else.

Bottom line is that I think that there is a lot more in play than a lawyer trying to get money from you.

[yukon]

I don't understand why your posting this on an open forum, when your forum name looks like it possibly might be your real name, & photo?

If the lawyer found info. on the case already, do you not think he will search the net for your name?

Do you just not care?

It's possible he might add slander to that list?

Good luck.

[sterling628]

Thank you for sharing.

[mosthost]

Originally Posted by sterling628

Thank you for sharing.

Thank you for being you.

[3aliens]

so what was the outcome of the court date.

[vmedia]

another reason to use an untraceable biz listing when registering domains