Hi, folks -
I'm sure by now most of us have heard about
FamilyDiscovery.com, and how it
sends out its spiders to find your free online data pages, and then charges
researchers to locate and view them. There is another one called
http://www.genealogy-express.com that I'm told is the same type of site, though
I don't know for sure.
We probably will never be able to stop sites like this from popping up, from
time to time. So the best thing we can do is to protect our pages. We can do
that in one or both of the following ways:
1. Be sure EVERY page on your site contains your logo, and a link back to your
index page, preferably right at the top.
2. Place a "break out of frames" code on every page.
<center><b><font face="Arial"><font size=-2>Trapped in a
frame? Click <a
href="http://www.domainname.com/filename.htm" --><img
SRC="your-image.jpg"
BORDER=0 height=27 width=30 align=ABSCENTER></a>
to break free.</font></font></b></center>
You can place this code anywhere - right at top is the best.
I've even seen a couple of people place a notice similiar to: If you arrived
at this free page via a paid service, you've been ripped off." <g>
The logo, link, and code is a good idea even without places like FD, because
there will always be people who "deep link" to your data pages, without
properly identifying the link. Most who do that are just trying to find good
information for their visitors. But if your logo is present, a researcher will
know to whom the page belongs. From that point, the researcher can
explore/bookmark your site, and bingo, more customers for you. So deep-linking
is not always a bad thing. :-)
I think we can all agree that the net thrives on links. We just don't want
anyone making money from our hard work.
Ellen