Hi all... Is the site being scraped???

Check this one out.. Scrapes the article and comments..

http://www.smartphoneup.com/

 

Web scraping - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I see it all the time when doing searches for things like device drivers. The Google list will often have them at the top, and when clicked you'll see a topic or paragraph title that is just about exactly what your Google entry was, but the content is lacking.

You have to move down the Google list, sometimes to the 2nd or 3rd page, to find the actual, non-scraped sites you're looking for.

 

Yea... unfortunately web scraping happens all too often!

 

It seems like all the articles there are from AF. What's the point of scraping? Is it to get traffic on their site?

 

From the wiki link:

"Uses of Web scraping include online price comparison, weather data monitoring, website change detection, Web research, Web content mashup and Web data integration."

It is also a way to build a data base on somebody else's work, and then, yes, garner huge page hit stats.

There have been lawsuits, arguments about the practice, even involving how the data is gathered (bot or copy-paste, etc).

 

Sure does. I just looked at it too. In a way that's good for AF because when people get directed here they could be thinking why be on that other site when they can register here and get all the answers they need.