Plugin Name
AntiLeech
Plugin URL
http://redalt.com/Resources/Plugins/AntiLeech
Description
AntiLeech does not prevent the splogger bots from accessing your site. It produces a fake set of content especially for them that includes links back to your site and sends it only to them.
Review
AntiLeech is a perfect plugin to hit back at scrapers and it is the primary purpose that the plugin is built for. The plugin can detect a splogger bot using its User-Agent string or by IP address. You also have the option of adding your own set of IP addresses to which you want to “feed” the fake content.
Whenever the banned bot with the banned user-agent or IP address tries to scrape your content, Antileech detects this and gives them some fake content.
Regular visitors will have normal browser agents and they will see the correct content. i.e. they won’t even realize you have some kind of protection setup.
Readers of your feed will see the small image that Akismet adds. You can see that in my blog feed.
Besides this, Antileech also allows you to redirect your feeds to Feedburner. This features ensures that you don’t have to edit your .htaccess file or use an alternate plugin.
Installing the plugin is normal. You can set up some options from within WP-Admin itself, as well as setup which feeds you want to redirect to Feedburner.
I haven’t faced any problem with scrapers off late, but if that does happen and Antileech works its wonders, you shall be the first to know.
Have you faced problems with content scrapers?
I started getting “scraped” a lot a few months ago and instead of trying to stop it, I started writing posts especially designed to attract the attention of spambots and then monitor how long it took them to replicate what I wrote. Usually less than 24 hours at the peak of the experiment. It was pretty interesting and taught me a lot about the future direction web technology and content in general is going. I am still kind of unpacking everything I learned from it though. It’s too much to go into in one little comment…
I wonder if I put my pagerank at risk, if by using this plugin, my URL gets displayed on a known splog? Won’t this affect my pagerank in a negative way?
Jan, the plugin allows you to disable the linking to your site. That is what I have done.
Not all sites that syndicate one’s newsfeeds are leeches or splogs. I have a few partner companies and organizations that legitimately run my newsfeeds and because I offer full-text they (not always with awareness) end up displaying the full-text on their sites. I guess there are duplicate content issues with this, but is there some way to ensure Antileech wouldn’t block legitimate syndicatees?
db
I really appreciate all the short reviews for APAD! Thanks guys. These are really helpful for new (but not inexperienced) WordPress users.
Within the first week of moving my blog to WordPress I got “splogged.” I installed Antileech at that time and haven’t had any problems since.
I installed the plugin and I have only been splogged once. No problems since. 🙂
@David: I’ve been using the plugin since before the snazzy redesign of this site and I can say that yes, you should be able to be selective. I have been, choosing to ferret out the IP of the splogger’s site and send funky content to anything on that IP. The only way that your legitimate “feed readers” would have a problem is if they’re hosted on a shared service with the same IP as the sploggers.
I am new to blogging and this is the first time I have heard of splogging and scraping. How would I know if that has happened to my site? BTW I just love these plugins – so easy to get exactly the configuration you want without the bloat. Hope to learn how to write some soon.
Wow, awesome! I dugg it. 😉
myLot.com wrote to me and told me they were showing my content on their site. If I didn’t want it I should tell them. So I told them to stop (three times) and they ignore me. Will this plugin help me to stop them?
Within weeks of my blog going live I began getting comment spam but no scrapers, because I followed a tip I read somewhere about *not* pinging Pingomatic and the like upon posting. Apparently, only spammers use those services to find prey. At some point, my setting got changed back to the default – yes to pinging – and I noticed pretty quickly in FeedBurner’s Unusual Uses that my site is being scraped by a US-hosted spammer, who is then redistributing the content among at least 20 different .info domains. I contacted the hoster via their abuse address and they weren’t very accommodating, so now I’m putting together a DMCA complaint for Google instead.
I have had slowed traffic after posting to blogs i didn’t realize anything like this existed it makes me want to quit blogging my website is more imporatant to me then blogging