Lenders Who Borrow
Payday loan websites include lenders who ‘borrow’ content from other consumer loan websites.
In other words, they steal text (especially testimonials), images and other content from their competitors.
There are a few simple things you can do to unmask content thieves and a few good reasons to avoid lenders who borrow…
What content is usually stolen?
Stolen content can include text and design elements. Text could be something as simple as the definition of a payday loan, as conspicuous as an entire FAQ page or as sinister as customer testimonials. Design elements include images and website layout.
Why should I avoid payday lenders who steal content from competitors?
When you apply for a payday loan, you give away a lot of personal information including banking details. Would you want to give this information to thieves? Would you want to enter into a business transaction with people who steal? Also, if the stolen content is customer testimonials, it brings into question the quality and nature of their entire business.
How can I spot lenders who borrow?
The easiest way to spot stolen text is to put the home page, FAQ or testimonial page URL into CopyScape. It will list all the sites using the same content. Another way is to put a line of unique text into Google (remember to put quotation marks “around the text” so that Google knows you are searching for a phrase, not just keywords).
The easiest way to spot stolen images is to use Google Image Search. Right click on an image in the payday loan site, click properties, get the image name and try searching that. In many cases, content thieves won’t even bother to change the image name.
Once you have spotted stolen content, you can find out:
- site owner and registration date (Whois/Reverse IP)
- when the content was put online (The Wayback Machine)
If the owners of the sites are different, then there is a good chance that the content was stolen by one or more of the websites listed. Websites registered later, of course, will be the usual suspects.
If the owner is the same, it means that the company is putting identical content on multiple websites (i.e. engaging in search engine spamming). This can be verified using Reverse IP to search the IP address. Some unethical payday loan site owners will have hundreds of nearly identical websites on the same IP address (the most I have seen so far is 456!). While not content theft, it constitutes stealing search engine placement and urinating in our information pool.
Either way, these are unethical companies. Avoid them.
Doing business with content thieves:
- puts you at risk
- rewards laziness/theft
- punishes payday lenders who invest time/effort into original content
Recent Posts:
- 07/12/2011: Expanded Contact Info Page
- 06/11/2011: Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3)
- 05/18/2011: Added Full Contact Info Page
- 05/15/2011: Payday Loan Site Traffic Comparison Update – May 2011
- 05/10/2011: IP Ban for Ratings Abuse
Random Posts:
- 09/01/2006: Mark Patton
- 01/08/2007: John Jones
- 09/14/2006: Michael Thompson
- 06/24/2006: Shop Around
- 01/22/2008: P2P Lending
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