Software download sites - scrapers and non-scrapers

[suleika]

Inspired by some comments in the thread  Article: Please don't steal this Web content:

It can be a pretty discouraging situation to be in when someone steals your content like this. It really doesn't do much for encouraging the victim to keep working hard and producing new content.

And I have some mixed feelings about software download sites that do this. On the one hand, they are promoting my software.

On the other, they are copying partial content from my web pages, leaving out important information or presenting it in a way that makes no sense. This is unfair and can make me and my applications look bad.

Most of the time it is for applications I don't have PAD files for. If I had wanted these applications to be included on software sites, I would have created PAD files for them and submitted it, myself.

-app103 (August 04, 2007, 03:40 AM)

Is there a thread somewhere on this site on the good, average and less good software sites, based on how they treat the authors, link back (or not), nick copy without asking (or not)? I'd be curious.

-iphigenie (August 06, 2007, 05:14 AM)

Whenever I googled for software I got very fed up of pages of results from these scraping sites.  They all include the same short descriptions of the software, with no reviews or discussion or comparison, and sometimes no links to the software home pages.  I got so fed up that a couple of weeks ago I created a custom google search which exclude these sites.  I can modify it any time by "including" sites (which are then emphasized in the search results) or by adding more excluded sites.  It works very well for me.

Here are my excluded sites so far:

   download3000.com
   topshareware.com
   softsia.com
   cleansofts.com
   softlandmark.com
   shareme.com
   bestfreewaredownload.com
   safesite.com
   freewarepub.org
   hotlib.com
   freesoft411.com
   freeware-guide.com
   bluesofts.com
   freeware-market.com
   softslist.com
   dirfile.com
   brothersoft.com
   filebuzz.com
   softplatz.com
   redsofts.com

[iphigenie]

Ah, none of those are in my bookmarks 

[Darwin]

Excellent idea suleika and thanks for the list of sites. This will help me to do the same - the scaping sites make me a bit crazy, too (not that I'm calling you crazy, mind!).

[mouser]

nice idea suleika, i like the idea of creating a custom google software search thing which excludes bad sites.

let me say i don't fully understand the objection to software listing sites taking info from public web pages describing the software.  to me this isn't really something i expect to be asked for permission about.

however for me this feature is key:

sometimes no links to the software home pages

this is completely unacceptable to me.  any software listing site that doesn't have a prominent link to the original web page of the program is not one to be trusted.