Look how old this is!
I post at SearchCommander.com now, and this post was published 17 years 8 days ago. This industry changes FAST, so blindly following the advice here *may not* be a good idea! If you're at all unsure, feel free to hit me up on Twitter and ask.

While I’m flattered that someone thinks enough of my content to steal it right off my webpage and post it as their own, I’ve never actually had it happen with my website copy before. It’s happened with the occasional article I’ve written, but nothing else.

Now though, it appears that there is an “Internet consultant” named Jeff Rodgers in Medford, Oregon, that has done just that. He took text from the home page of my site, and posted it on the home page of his site practically verbatim. You can see the evidence of his “crime”here.

To make matters worse, he’s stolen content from other websites too, and he even stole the client testimonials page from another company (Spartan Internet). He did that without even bothering to even change the client’s names, which shows that he’s not only unethical, but amazingly lazy too! You can see that evidence here.

Now what can I do?

I found some great information on a couple of websites, that outline a step-by-step process I could take, assuming that I had the time.

Rather than steal their content, I’ll just give you a link back to Barry Schwartz’s post at Search Engine Roundtable which has links to some other great resources, and also links to report the offenders to Google, Yahoo and MSN. I’ll also provide a link to Google’s own section about the DMCA, Digital Millenium Copyright Act

In my own case, I think it’s more entertaining to just blog about weasels like this, who give legitimate consultants a bad name. However, since it’s my home page, I’d better do something. In the meantime, please be sure not to take any inappropriate retaliation against this guy…

Jeff Rodgers – Rodgers Media Group – Medford Oregon – 541-326-0610 – [email protected] – and fax 801-937-2603

(By the way, I found this guy using a new free plagiarism checker that was recently developed by Garry Egan – thanks Garry!)

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