We’ve wondered previously who was going to use MySpace News (if ever), and now we’ve found the traffic source: Google.
Framed pages of blogs and news sites, complete with MySpace News branding and MySpace URL, are being indexed by Google as original content, stealing search engine placement and direct links from content creators.
A search of Google found thousands of MySpace News pages presenting story headlines with a MySpace url that led directly to a framed page that uses content from other sites.
The legality of passing off content as your own is questionable. The case most frequently cited in content framing cases is Washington Post vs Total News where the Washington Post argued that this was unfair and harmful use of their trademark and there was a danger that the user would be confused concerning whose content was being displayed. Unfortunately that case was settled out of court; notably MySpace today is framing content from the Washington Post as well (example here). Some refer to the practice as stealing, and even Chilling Effects notes that the legality of serving framed content is questionable.
The practice may also be in breach of Google’s TOS; MySpace is leveraging its position of strength to promote your content branded as their content in the Google search results, a practice that looks like search engine manipulation from a distance.
No matter what the legalities and moral dimension, if you’re a publisher and MySpace is hijacking your search results and throwing up a frame with their branding around your content, it’s not a good thing. Given what little traffic MySpace News is doing on their main site, there is little new traffic benefits from the service, instead the traffic from the MySpace News pages on Google cannibalizes existing search traffic.
Here’s hoping the Washington Post and the other big media outlets who are having their content framed and presented as MySpace News content take the matter further.
JACK —
I have created a thread for this discussion in the forum. It is titled — “The MySpace News Scam Revealed.” It might be buried — I created it a few hours ago. Feel free to add your thinking and wisdom about myspace.
I love it! As one of the oiriginal TotalNEWS founders who were sued, not for framing but for simply linking to certain news sites, I find this turn of events very ironic…
I don’t really care. I think you all are making something out of nothing. The media just loves to create drama, don’t they?
to david: i couldn’t find the thread. can you post me a link? are you sure you created it in this forum or a different website?
That sample page you gave with the Washington Post news article. I mean, come on – if someone thought that was my space providing the news – they are really dumb.
yes its seems the problem is with Google only not myspace
I know the people over at MySpace–they were trying to push more traffic to blogs, not to steal anyone’s stuff.
TC is attacking people who are trying to do good for bloggers.
Looks like MySpace’s PR isn’t doing a good job.
The idea that MySpace would want to “steal” your search results is simply preposterous. This is a multi-million dollar company we’re talking about. Why on earth would they want to use your silly little blog and brand it as their own? I think of them as simply news collectors who want to spread the news to people. These aren’t thieves. Besides, there are more important things in the world that we should be worrying about, like Darfur, not search results.
marky: The article doesn’t say whether they tried to call MySpace for a comment.
Mike or Duncan, could you follow up and say?
Thanks
I don’t see any comments from MySpace in the article, either.
I think this is a legitimate issue but a professional journalist would at least offer a comment from a reliable and specific source.
Misinformation on the web spreads like wildfire.
The people saying that this is good because it can send your site some traffic are missing one of the most important points. Google ranks sites largely based on authority and link authority. No ordinary site can compete with Myspace on that field. Even techcrunch has about the 1/30th of the link authority cof Myspace. Now let’s see what happens. Google indexes the original source and then finds an exact copy on Myspace news so little googlebot gets a bit confused since it needs to decide which one is the original version. Then it looks at the sites and thinks, hey Myspace has 30million backlinks (votes) so it’s a site I can trust more than johndoe’s blog and ranks the duplicate higher. However the problems for johndoes’s blog are only beginning. Google is trying for quite sometime to weed out duplicate content and keep only the original sources. As a result if johndoe’s blog doesn’t have enough link authority googlebot may characterize it as a scrapper and condemn the entire site to supplemental hell where the google sun never shines. So a move like that by Myspace can hurt seriously hurt small publishers and Myspace will be making money in the expense of small publishers.
This article is extremely misleading. Duncan, as a blogger myself I recognise the need to create sensationalist articles for traffic purposes from time to time, but working for Techcrunch I think you need to employ a little more responsibility and ethical vetting.
I don’t see this as search engine manipulation any more than digg.com.
As an example, google any rough digg.com front page article title that you can remember – chances are that the digg page for the article will come up as the first link, rather than that of the original page. And actually in digg’s case it is worse because digg puts a page of content (the digg page) in between you and the article you were actually looking for. However, we all (myself included) love digg.
I think the point is, as long as content is getting spread, attributed, and traffic is being driven to the original source we shouldn’t get our knickers in a twist. It would be a different story if, for example, Myspace was scraping the content.
This is actually mostly a google issue as the real problem is the duplicate serps. Google is increasingly struggling to deal with this and seems to be penalizing the higher quality original content in some cases whilst leaving the copies intact.
Why they don’t penalize myspace for this is a riddle to all. They could have this issue fixed in no time if they really cared about users finding the most original content (as they claimed for their NEWS updates of late)…
The guys running Myspace are heavily influenced by the heavy handed manipulative tactics of Fox. When your daddy robs banks, then your son becomes a criminal syndrome. If this was the first incident of ‘bad’ behavior then we could give them benefit of doubt. But they have been censoring and blocking competitive sites on the other end of the spectrum. Myspace’s actions since Fox purchased it make Microsoft look like a gentle loving kitten!
TotalNews was a great site in it’s time. Like Google new before google ever existed A shame they never finalised this issue. But i see lots of other sites framing (like hotmail) without said gnashing of legal teeth.
As some have pointed out, there are 2 unrelated issues:
– should MySpace display content in a frame … debatable
– should Google index the MySpace copy … NO
The screenshot actually shows another Google problem: the 4th & 5th results are “Search Results” themselves, and clearly labelled as such. I thought Google was going to remove those? Calling Matt Cutts!
Dimitris: That would be true if there were a copy of the next on MySpace. But look, there isn’t. If you read Duncan’s article without actually looking at the frame, you might think so.
But if you do look, it sure doesn’t seem like they were trying to steal google ranking.
Doesn’t this problem apply to all syndicated content?
So does google
http://vidsonly.blogspot.com
Thank goodness Duncan’s crack investigation skills is on this case. Duncan you are too big for this site. Perhaps you can get a new job working for Dateline NBC. You are Arrington’s biggest mistake.
Interesting – this isn’t even the worse case for the original content owner. Imagine how you’d feel if the person copying your content appears higher in search engine rankings than the original.
We’ve only studied a few categories (recipe sites, lyrics) using Attributor, but we’ve found the above scenario happens often.
Other than making sure the original content owners are aware of it, what can be done? How about an independent 3rd party where content owners register their content for free and the engines use this to ensure the original content owner ranks higher?
Rich Pearson: If Time magazine featured your blog and it was ranked higher in Google search than your ACTUAL blog, would you be pissed? I doubt you would. People have a bias against MySpace for no good reason. MySpace has done a lot for social networking. They paved the way for the little people, whether or not you’d like to admit it. Now people who aren’t rich and famous as they’d like to be are bitching about them when MySpace News is really just trying to help them out.
by: If Time included a link back to my blog, I probably wouldn’t mind – but then again, if they gave me a link, it would be hard for Time to rank higher than me.
I’m not calling out MySpace at all – copying content is an industry-wide problem. Given that search engines are the gate-keepers, we need a way to ensure that the people creating the content get listed first.
Hi Everyone, I find this all very fascinating. I personally don’t mind the linkframes. MySpace makes it clear on their faq page (http://newscdn....al/faq/faq.html) what type of service they’re providing. I don’t feel that they’re “copying” anything. They’re rather like a giant blogroll…kind of like StumbleUpon. The difference is that StumbleUpon doesn’t use linkframes, but so what? I agree with some of the people here who said that this might be overblown.
I’m going to write up a Wikipedia entry about MySpace News. Anyone want to help me contribute? Should I include this linkframe issue in the entry, or is it too early to add that? Let me know, thanks.
P.S. – I’ve tipped CNN on this, so maybe they’ll do a piece about the legal issues regarding MySpace News. Thanks, Duncan and Michael for the report!
Should we ask MySpace directly about this before we jump to any conclusions?
Alvin–CNN will discover their parent company does the exact same thing…
Bob, why are you defending MySpace? TechCrunch’s reporting is thorough and objective. If none of their reporting on MySpace or MySpace News has been positive, it’s because there’s not much positive worth reporting about. MySpace is making a ton of money off of innocent bloggers. And what do the blog owners get out of it? I’d love to hear your defense, as I doubt that you’ll have much to defend yourself with.
I found an article on CNN, but TechCrunch isn’t listed as a source. http://money.cn...01-19752738.htm
Myspace, facebook, gaggle, …. always copy other companies content, especially Microsoft!
http://fakestev...er.blogspot.com
What is myspace news url? can’t find. thanx
Funny thing nobody in 83 replies has even brought up… Iframes don’t get crawled by spiders.
The title, sure, but not the content. Unless google just changed this recently or unless myspace is adding extra code and links in the iframe.
this is the hottest news in town right now. everywhere i go people are asking me if i’ve read this post. what’s the biggie?? meow
As Dave say, it’s a Google problem first. Because, frame is a way to help user in its navigation, to keep the context of its search.
Yet another vital issue exposed by TC. The relevancy here is startling, as some commenters have said. No innocent startup or corporate mogul should trust TC, but that is a GOOD thing–that means NO favortism. Sites like Mashable are TOO EASY on MySpace and PPP. Favoritism in media is what destroys us. It is why gossip journalism such as Access Hollywood has become nothing more than a place for Hollywood to promote their crap. In TC’s defense, this is true and objective reporting and Duncan is doing his JOB–a good one at that. Keep up the good work and don’t listen to the naysayers.
Roger: I agree with your sentiments. TC is both informative and entertaining. I love the fact that, even if you are friends with TC, they will still tear you apart if they hate your product (that happened to someone I know). No other blog is as honest and fun. Fortunately, MySpace isn’t some “innocent startup” and we can chop it up to little bits as much as we like…lol
LEAVE MYSPACE NEWS ALONE!!! *tears*
So it seems like the consensus is that MySpace sucks? Maybe everyone who has posted here works for Facebook!! I’ve never even heard of MySpace News until now. What is it exactly? I visited the page and didn’t understand what I was looking at? What is “voting.” Why vote for news? Makes no sense. P.S. I don’t work for Facebook…I promise.
http://www.lotro-lotro.com
I have a feeling this problem lies with google itself. MySpace news is big but I still feel it is a problem primarily with google.
Bob, why so silent?
I think techcrunch has lot all credibility after the PayPerPost story and this one. Then again, this isn’t MSNBC
I am trying to grasp why there are no quotes from MySpace in your article.
From my experience as an editor of an ivy league college newspaper, any writer who does not attribute his “facts” valid, trustworthy sources would most likely get fired.
Why do the editors of TechCrunch find this type of “reporting” permissible? MySpace might be owned by a large corporation, but that still does not warrant a biased attack such as this one.
where is myspace news? i can’t find it on myspace…is it hidden or invitation only?
may the Lord act upon his will to fix the harm that myspace news has caused to society and the universe. it is in God’s hands now. bloggers, you must pray for salvation.
I have e-mailed Tom via his profile regarding this pressing matter but haven’t heard back from him. Does he reply to e-mails? He has a lot of friends, so it might take awhile before he gets back to me.
Bob, where are you?
Jesus is very unhappy about this. the Bible does not accept MySpace.
Do a Google search on “MySpace News Is Stealing Your Search Results” and look at how many sites are gaining search engine visibility with this very story.