Recently, I have learned to find out where my most popular articles have ended up. It took some time, but it was worth the search. It will startle you to see that your entire article was copied onto another site, without your byline! It will also surprise you to find your article being change to suit the website's owner.
What Are Popular Articles?
Usually, popular articles are the articles that are on the Hot Content list. In the past, the top 10 articles that are on the Hot Content receive a sudden spike in page views, which often got picked up by a well-known site. This means that the article have received thousands of views in a very short period of time.
These days, anyone can be on the Hot Content, and the articles are not required to go popular before it is placed there. To simplify things for this article, when I use the words "popular articles", I prefer to the ones that have thousands of views, not the ones on the Hot Content nowadays.
How to Find Where Your Articles Are
If you want to find out where your popular articles are at, do some searches on Google, Yahoo, Alta Vista, MSN, Ask, and Lycos. You might not find it on the first page result from these engines, so go on to the next pages! Read the short description under the link or click on the title that is familiar to yours article.
I found my popular articles on BlogSpot and personal sites without my byline, and they even changed a bit to fit the webmaster's gender.
How to Solve This Problem
Once you knew where your popular articles are at, contact the owner of the site through email. If he/she chooses not to reply, leave a comment on their newest post, and keep doing so until they answer you. You can then ask them to remove your article, or add your byline.
For BlogSpot owners, I did the same by sending an email, then leave comments on their newest post. If they are not cooperating, you can tell them that you will report them to Google. Usually, BlogSpot owners responded faster to your request than personal website owners.
My article: "Distinctly Rare and Unique Lobster" was picked up by six different websites so far when I did my search! These websites were kind and generous enough to link back to my original story. Other sites had removed the article at my request.
Chan Lee Peng has just found many popular articles from Triond writers on other websites. Yes, they copied the entire articles, without byline to the authors, and published on their sites. Since I had dealt with this problem, I thought to share this experience with you.
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You can also use this website: CopyScape to find out who else has similar content to your article!