The Daily Omnivore

Article spinning is a search engine optimization technique by which blog or website owners post a unique version of relevant content on their sites by rewriting and replacing elements to provide a slightly different perspective on the topic. Many article marketers believe that article spinning helps avoid the feared penalties in the Search Engine Results pages (SERP) for using duplicate content. If the original articles are plagiarized from other websites or if the original article was used without the copyright owner’s permission, such copyright infringements may result in the writer facing a legal challenge, while writers producing multiple versions of their own original writing need not worry about such things.

Website owners may pay writers to perform spinning manually, rewriting all or parts of articles. Writers also spin their own articles, manually or automatically, allowing them to sell the same articles with slight variations to a number of clients or to use the article for multiple purposes (e.g. content and marketing). There are also a number of software applications which will automatically replace words or phrases in articles.

Brandjacking is an activity whereby someone acquires or otherwise assumes the online identity of another entity for the purposes of acquiring that person’s or business’s brand equity. The term combines the notions of ‘branding’ and ‘hijacking’, and has been used since at least 2007 when it appeared in a Business Week article. The tactic is often associated with use of individual and corporate identities on social media or Web 2.0 sites.

While similar to cybersquatting, identity theft, and phishing, brandjacking is usually particular to a politician, celebrity or business and more indirect in its nature. A brandjacker may attempt to use the reputation of its target for selfish reasons or seek to damage the reputation of its target for malicious or for political reasons. These reasons may not be directly financial, but the effects on the original brand-holder may often include financial loss – for example, negative publicity may result in the termination of a celebrity’s sponsorship deal, or, for a corporation, potentially lead to lost sales or a reduced share price.

Cybersquatting (also known as domain squatting) is registering, trafficking in, or using a domain name with bad faith intent to profit from the goodwill of a trademark belonging to someone else. Some cybersquatter offer to sell the domain to the person or company who owns a trademark at an inflated price.

Some put up derogatory remarks about the person or company the domain is meant to represent to encourage the subject to buy the domain from them. Others post paid links via Google and other advertising networks. The term is derived from ‘squatting,’ which is the act of occupying an abandoned or unoccupied space or building that the squatter does not own, rent or otherwise have permission to use.

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Typosquatting (URL hijacking), is a form of cybersquatting, and possibly brandjacking which relies on mistakes such as typographical errors made by Internet users when inputting a website address into a web browser. Should a user accidentally enter an incorrect website address, they may be led to an alternative website owned by a cybersquatter. Once in the typosquatter’s site, the user may also be tricked into thinking that they are in fact in the real site; through the use of copied or similar logos, website layouts or content.

In 2006, controversial evangelist Jerry Falwell failed to get the U.S. Supreme Court to review a decision allowing Christopher Lamparello to use ‘www.fallwell.com.’ Relying on a plausible misspelling of Falwell’s name, Lamparello’s gripe site presents misdirected visitors with scriptural references that counter the fundamentalist preacher’s scathing rebukes against homosexuality. In Lamparello v. Falwell, the high court let stand a 2005 lower court finding that ‘the use of a mark in a domain name for a gripe site criticizing the markholder does not constitute cybersquatting.’