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RSS Mashup Blogs-Do you approve their "comments"?

by Alan Petersen
3 replies
A few of my posts on my blog end up in these mashup sites. They pull a post from your RSS feed and have it on their site. You get full credit and a no-follow link. Then you get a ping back. Do you approve it? It shows up on your post as a comment.

What's the view of these mashup sites? They appear to be scrappers since their whole "blog" is made of posts from thousands of blogs but they provide an excerpt of your post with a link back to your post. So it's not as bad. Too bad the link is no-follow.
#approve #blogsdo #comments #mashup #rss
  • Profile picture of the author Mark Brian
    This is a case where there's fine between unethical and acceptable. RSS was designed for that very purpose. If you offer RSS, you pretty much allow them to do that.
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  • Profile picture of the author Colin Evans
    I disagree - I determine the terms for use of my RSS feed, and I don't allow my contents to be published. The RSS feed can only be used to read my content in a reader.

    So I don't approve (I delete) any pingbacks from a scraper site.
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    • Profile picture of the author Alan Petersen
      Originally Posted by Colin Evans View Post

      I disagree - I determine the terms for use of my RSS feed, and I don't allow my contents to be published. The RSS feed can only be used to read my content in a reader.

      So I don't approve (I delete) any pingbacks from a scraper site.
      That's what I was thinking. RSS feeds are for my subscribers who want to read my posts not an automated program that is using it just to build content for their site. Unless like you wrote it's meant to be displayed like using Google new RSS to add the "latest news" on your blog. They want you to do that. But a scrapper site? If they were going to build their site with other people's content they should at least have do-follow links. Then at least there is a quid-pro-quo about it.

      I'll do the same from now on. Delete.
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