“My advice would be to really concentrate on the quality of your own site,” says Cutts. “It is the case that sometimes scrapers can be returned in Google search results, despite our best efforts. And it is the case that sometimes you see scrapers more or less often, but it’s also the case that Google has been working on trying to find and fix the problems related to scrapers.”

“We’ve got engineers working on that,” he says. “They’re going to keep working on that. We’ve actually got some good stuff in the pipeline that I’m pretty excited about.”

Now, it’s worth noting that the actual upload date of this video is August 8, though it was not released as a new video until today.

On August 26, Cutts tweeted:

“So we’ll keep working on the scraper side of things,” Cutts says in the video. “My advice for people who may have been affected by the ‘Farmer’ or the ‘Panda’ update is to concentrate primarily more on the quality side – the content side – thinking about how can you either improve the quality of the content if there’s some part of your site that’s got especially low quality content or stuff that was really not all that useful, then it might make sense to not have that content on your site. Things along those lines.”

See eHow’s strategy.

“So if you think about it, the fundamental problem, if you’re affected by this particular algorithm update, is that Google is thinking that your site is not providing as high quality content as some other sites,” he says. “So the best thing to do is to concentrate on the root of the issue. To concentrate on trying to make sure that you have the highest quality content so that Google sees that and can assess that, and then you don’t have to worry nearly as much about the scrapers, because you’re doing much better.”

“We are asking for examples, and may use data you submit to test and improve our algorithms,” the company says on a “Report Scraper Pages” form, found here.

Google’s head of web spam, Matt Cutts, tweeted about the new initiative:

This testing comes after months of iterations of Google’s Panda Update, designed to improve the quality of search results, though there has been no shortage of complaints about scrapers ranking over original content in that time.

The testing also follows a recent, big refresh of Google’s spam submission process, discussed here.

This past week, Google shared an interesting video, providing an inside look at the search algorithm tweaking process. While no earth shattering information was necessarily contained, it did provide a rare visual glimpse into the process. Watch it below.

Answering user questions as he so often does, Cutts took on the question, "Is there a way to benefit from content scraped from your site?"

The simple answer to this is yes. You actually may be able to slightly benefit from having your content scraped. According to Cutts, if you make sure the pages on your site have links to you in them, the scrapers may leave the links in and end up linking to you. He says these links can "help you along."

"There are some people who really hate scrapers and try to crack down on them and try to get every single one deleted or kicked off their web host," says Cutts. "I tend to be the sort of person who doesn’t really worry about it, because the vast, vast, vast majority of the time, it’s going to be you that comes up, not the scraper. If the guy is scraping and scrapes the content that has a link to you, he’s linking to you, so worst case, it won’t hurt, but in some weird cases, it might actually help a little bit."

It’s the same principle that Cutts talked about when talking about having links in low-quality directories. He says Google tries not to score the low-quality directories too high, but it doesn’t hurt your site at all for being listed there.

He says that most of the time, you don’t really need to worry about scrapers, because they don’t have a large effect in terms of the actual impact on users very often. He does add that if you see a scraper ranking higher than you, you can consider doing a Digital Millennium Copyright Act request (DMCA), or if it’s a true spammer (gibberish, etc.) you can go ahead and do a spam report on them.

A post on Google’s Inside AdSense Blog is directing users with this problem to the company’s process for handling the situation. File a report by following the steps Google has outlined:

1. Identify in sufficient detail the copyrighted work that you believe has been infringed.

2. Identify the material that you claim is infringing the copyrighted work listed in item #1 -  Identify each page that allegedly contains infringing material by providing its URL.

3. Provide information reasonably sufficient to permit Google to contact you (email address is preferred).

4. Include the following statement: "I have a good faith belief that use of the copyrighted materials as described above is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law."

5. Include the following statement: "I swear, under penalty of perjury, that the information in the notification is accurate and that I am the copyright owner or am authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed."

6. Sign the paper.

7. Send to the address or FAX shown here.

The second step there could be time consuming depending on how long your content has been scraped.

Gergana Marinova of AdSense Publisher Support notes that only the copyright holder should bother reporting infringements, as they cannot accept reports from third-parties. Copyright holders can also report violations to Google Webmaster Guidelines where they can fill out a form.

Then, a few days later Matt Cutts and Googler JohnMu spoke about the reasons and the methods that Google employs to block such automated rank checking tools.

Now, according to Search Engine Roundtable, it seems that Google is hell bent on its resolution to evade and block scrapers, by deliberately changing the search results in an effort to confuse the scrapers.

According to Search Engine Roundtable, “It seems like Google may have implemented a feature that is transparent to searchers but can totally mess up rank checking tools. This is not just impacted WebPosition Gold, but all scraper based tools, including the SEO Firefox plug-in.”

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