Being the exploratory sort that I am (read: I'm still working on this article's word count), I decided to check out the tag cloud. So I clicked on "SEO" and was promptly greeted by some more surprises.
Notice the first and third links listed here, in the Weblinks section of 123People's results. Yes, they lead to articles by me, but the site is not SEO Chat. When I followed the link, I found that my entire article was there - lifted and attributed, but with no link back to the original source. This, my friends, is content theft - not by 123People, of course, but by the site that displayed it, and to which 123People so helpfully led me.
Nor was this the only example of content theft I found. Paging through the web links turned up at least four other links that led to my content published on sites without SEO Chat's (or my) permission. For the record, we NEVER allow one of our articles to be published online completely on any site other than our own. We do permit (when asked nicely) site owners to publish the first paragraph of an article with a link back to the full article on our own web site. So I knew we hadn't granted permission for republishing these articles.
The feature that allows you to receive email updates on particular names and searches now makes sense to me. If you're a writer who is concerned about theft of your intellectual property, you can receive alerts for new uses of your name. You can do this through Google, too, of course, but at least in theory the results from 123People should be more focused. (Whether this is true in practice remains to be seen).
Search Engine News 
