Although I have been writing this blog for a bit over two years now, in a lot of ways I’m pretty naive as to the workings of the blogging world. Mostly I just have fun writing up my cute kid/pet stories/pictures and posting them. In return I get a baby book for my sons. Just as importantly, I have also acquired a membership in a club composed of fellow moms like me - smart and curious women from many places and paths in life. Our interests and talents are diverse; what we have in common is the incredible love we feel towards our children and families. I love going down my blogroll and seeing new posts from my friends - the serious posts, the funny posts, the venting posts, and the details of life which make up each of these tales.
I’m part of this wonderful community which has enriched my life in so many ways, and one of my favorite events is when a new person comes out and introduces herself. I love making new friends, and I’m glad that there are others who enjoy my writing just as I enjoy the tales of my friends. Jamie just popped out this way recently; I know her from a blog we read in common, and it’s wonderful to hear that she enjoys reading about life here in The Menagerie House. (Hi, Jamie!) It’s a fun community, and with the exception of one troll who hung out for a couple of weeks until he got bored, I’ve never had trouble with or from the more unsavory elements you can find on the Internet. But I do worry about something going awry in my happy little bubble out here, so here’s the scoop. Maybe one of you wonderful readers happens to know what’s going on here.
Tonight I had what I thought was a new reader delurking, only this time one of my posts has been linked back to a blog that I don’t know, and no comments were left at my blog. This new site doesn’t even looks like a real blog to me, but I can’t figure out what the purpose of the site is. Like I said, I’m pretty naive. The author of the post starts out saying that my name is Nicole Lavato, posts part of a paragraph of Kiri’s birth story, and then links to the rest.
Perhaps I worry too much, but I wish I knew why some site I don’t even know is sending readers my way. Is the site selling something? What are they doing at this site? And why are they interested in my writing if they don’t even bother to introduce themselves?
Has anyone ever had this happen? And what’s going on over at this “Pregnantcelebrities” site? Any insights you could give me would be helpful. Thank you, everyone, for chipping in here!
Clearly not a legit site, it looks like it is on a wordpress platform, I might try emailing them and alerting them to it, as if they are hosting it they can take it down. But I’m rather naive about such things as well…
They scooped your content. Here’s an article by a blogging & WordPress guru with more information and tips. In fact, there’s a lot of good stuff on her site. Chichimama, you might want to take a look at it, too.
I must be pretty naive, too b/c I’m dumbfounded.
How weird… but, also disturbing at the same time. If I were you, I’d just go private. I like knowing who my readers are.
I wish I could help, but I too and dumbfounded.
That’s pretty creepy. I haven’t had it happen to me (that I know of). I turned off my web stats a long time ago, but now I think I am going to turn them back on to see who is coming and going. Sorry that I don’t have any advice or experience to offer.
Oh it would be a shame if you went private because of nasty people. I hope you can work it out. I don’t think it has ever happened to me so I don’t have any advice.
I don’t have any idea either unfortunately, as I tend to live in my little bubble too.
There is one food blog I read that is currently having her entire blog stolen every time she posts…I do feel bad for her but don’t know what you do really.
Good luck in figuring it out. Keep us updated for sure!
Creepy, indeed. I had a troll of a poster who just kept posting a link to his/her site, which I then had to remove from comments each time it happened. I’ve since added the word-verification thingy to my Blogger site, and they’ve not been back. Weird.
Best of luck working it out.
Thanks for your help, guys. I keep hearing about content scooping and theft of intellectual property all over the place, so I’m always a wee bit paranoid when something unusual starts going on around here. Julie, thanks for the article. I read it briefly, but I’m planning to go through it more slowly this weekend so I can find out more about this stuff and perhaps prevent some of it. I think for now I’ll just keep an eye on my stats - I’ve got the IP address of the bot that grabbed this post, and if it happens again, I’ll be complaining to the relevant ISP. I’m also going to change the set-up for now so that my pages aren’t being searched by bots. Hopefully that’ll do the trick. If not, I guess I’ll have to invent Plan B.
Thanks again, guys!