How To Prevent Blog Content Scraping In WordPress?

The most crucial aspect of any web marketing strategy is the content and there is a big issue with content is content scraping. Content boosts both visitor retention and engagement. It also does not depend on what kind of information it is. Online content may be streaming movies, static pictures, or simply a single audio input. Moreover, contents on WordPress blogs are often in posts or articles. Unfortunately, text-based material is also the easiest to steal, a technique referred to as content scraping.

The issue with content scraping is that it infringes copyrights and takes traffic from websites that host the unique material. This article will look at ways of preventing web scraping and retaining distinct, useful online visibility.

What Is Web Content Scraping?

The scraping of blog material is when content is scraped from many resources and reposted on another site. This is typically done automatically through your blog’s RSS feed. Scraping material from chosen blogs is now so simple that anybody can set up a WordPress website, install a commercial or free theme, and download several plugins.

Ways For Preventing Web Scraping

After recognizing the issue, it is time to take action to prevent web scraping. Below are some things you could do to prevent web scraping.

Rate Control

Pace restriction, often known as demand throttle, controls the rate at which requests are delivered or received. Among its most general applications is to minimize web scraping. Rate restriction avoids problematic scrapers by setting a limited number of client-to-server queries within a specific period for all or selected IPs. If this limit has been reached, all further requests will be disregarded.

Block IPs

When you observe that specific IPs send too many queries, you could decide to ban them. You may incorporate these various lines to your .htaccess file: Deny from 94.66.58.135. Change the IP address in the code with the one you wish to restrict to stop receiving queries from it.

Avoid Hotlinking

As the htaccess file explains, this configuration file may be utilized to manage your website’s accessibility in various ways. One of this file’s numerous advantages is that it may be used to eliminate Image Hotlinking. If your website gets scraped, the image links will not link back to you and spend unnecessary traffic. Instead, they will show a damaged thumbnail and a 403 Forbidden warning.

In doing so, open your htaccess file in a text editor and put these codes:

RewriteRule .(jpg|jpeg|png|gif)$ – [F]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http(s)?://(www.)?yahoo.com [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http(s)?://(www.)?google.com [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http(s)?://(www.)?my company name.com [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$
RewriteEngine on

This prohibits other websites from Hotlinking photos on your site

Utilize A CAPTCHA

When you suspect that malicious bots have scraped your website, you may always employ CAPTCHA. As you may be aware, CAPTCHA is a technology that presents several fundamental challenges for you to complete to confirm that you’re a person and not a bot. As a result, it may also assist in preventing web scrapers. Proceed with caution since CAPTCHAs might irritate your genuine visitors and cause them to visit your site less often.

RSS Feeds

A summarized RSS feed is an excellent technique to minimize malicious content scraping rather than the entire RSS feed. This is another standard method of preventing web scraping. Changing this choice in Settings -> Reading the admin menu choices is very simple if you use WordPress.

Conclusion

Poor bot content scraping on your website might be aggravating. The primary objective must be to manage content scraping in a manner that does not negatively impact the customer experience. This is why, to secure your content and website, you must understand how to avoid web scraping in WordPress.