Imitation – Sincerest Form of Flattery

You know you've got some popularity when your content gets ripped off by spammers. But you know you've hit the big time when people actually take the time to register another domain name similar to yours, and copy most of everything from your blog.

This recently happened to me. Somebody went through the entire process of buying a domain name, pay for hosting and copy my content down to my 3D RSS button. My blog is called EverybodyGoTo, the copycat spammer called theirs EverybodyGo.com {please type the domain to have a look}. Until last week you could read my content on that site, though not the most recent posts, but now it just shows an internal server error. You can see still what it looked like in Google cache.

The worst part was that the spammer included XXX links under my content, not to mention duplicating it. The cache version doesn't show the formating presently, which at one point completely resembled my blog. I was disturbed in the beginning by it because of those nasty links that were included, but I got over it within a week. Just brushing it off as a somebody who obviously had nothing good to do in their lives. A quick search on WIHT shows they are hosted with HostForWeb.com.

On the other hand if you have a look at JohnCow.com an imitation of JohnChow.com you'll see that the content is downright hilarious. Now if I had an imitator like that, writing their own original content, I would definitely recognize them for their effort.

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