Christmas Raiders Try To Stuff The Duck

Getting back into blogging for 2008 has been somewhat of a challenge. Unlike some of the part timers in the industry who have come back to work today (Monday 7th January), we had work to do right across the festive period. That’s not to say there was no time for mince pies and alcohol, but duckland needed tending and managing. Also when it’s quieter, it’s actually a good time to implement new features - and that’s what happened.

Also over the festive period we had a little bit of an issue with a popular money saving website:

The site in question responded appropriately and removed some of the numerous posts made by the raider (It should be noted that the thread above may have been deleted in response to an abusive post made by an ex-Loquax user). The image above was taken from the google cached version for posterity, although most “raiders” aren’t so blatant about their activities. Over the last 12 months or so duckland has been raided numerous times in a similar fashion.

As a site that updates a lot of new content daily seeing it systematically lifted to another forum can be quite frustrating to see! The reality though is this kind of occurrence will only ever increase, and if you’re a siteowner who spends a lot of time sourcing offers, promotions and competitions (as we do), the likelihood is you’re probably furnishing a few of the very very popular deals and money saving forums that are out there.

However, there is a plus side to this (well you have to try and be positive). Firstly it makes you realise the vulnerability of your site and content - steps have been made to make life a little bit more difficult to “raid” (e.g. encoding all links, reducing the amount of free content to non-registered users), but it’s nay on impossible to stamp it out. Also, the good news is that even the briefest mentions on another site can result in new visitors. Not all raiders are clever and occasionally they will slip up!

Simply by providing a good service and keeping in touch with your userbase (even over the festive period), you can generate a good reputation. This in turn results in recommendations and referrals. The downside is you will attract those who think you’re their purely for their “raiding” purposes, but I guess that’s the price to pay for just being incredibly good.