Website 'stolen', no contact details
-
Hi all,
Wondering if anyone could help out here, good a very strange issue....
Went into Google Webmaster Tools and looked at the incoming links to a client's site (new client, only just gained access to WMT) and noticed 2563 links coming from a domain. Upon viewing said domain it is a 100% copy of the clients site, I mean 100%; the phone numbers, email address etc are still pointing to the client's site.
Everything is the same, the pages, the navigation etc. When I click on a link on the copy site it loads the same pages but at their site, the internal linking points to the version of the pages on their site. It seems to be an ongoing thing because the last time the client updated their blog was last week and this is on the copy site.
Obviously this cannot be helping with regard to seo. The client knows nothing about it so not come from them. The copy site is indexed in Google!!.
The first thing to do is to contact these people and ask what they are doing. This is proving to be easier said than done, the contact details (as mentioned above) on the pages still point back to the client and the whois gives no details.
What would be the first step to take here? Obviously there is the whole legal area about stolen content but that can wait until we have the site down and out of Google. Is there somewhere in Google to report things such as this?
I will speak to client and if they are happy I will share both the domains in question, they know I am seeking alternative opinions
Many thanks
Carl
-
Thanks for the reply. We went down the route of blocking the other domains from accessing the server in the end. Hopefully the duplicate versions of the website won't cause too much trouble.
One thing am considering is adding the domains to webmaster tools and removing them from google, that should help with duplicate content issues. If they are pointing to our server and accessing our files then we may as well exploit that for a webmaster tools verification action
-
Grumpy C,
Though this is new to you I can assure you that it is a VERY common issue we find in the SEO world. In other words, get used to it.
A cross-domain rel canonical tag should fix you right up, but in the long run I'd look into 301 redirecting or just removing those other domains:
http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=139394
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/rel-confused-answers-to-your-rel-canonical-questions
We used to call these "mirrored domains" which may help you when searching for more information on them. One thing I find useful in locating mirrors is called a "Reverse IP Lookup". You can find free tools all over the place for this. Here's one: http://www.yougetsignal.com/tools/web-sites-on-web-server/ . Before you get all freaked out when using this tool remember that shared hosting is very common so having multiple sites on the same IP is fine. What is not fine is if there are several of the SAME sites out there, as you are now dealing with.
Good luck!
-
Thanks will look into that. Would be so much easier if this client owned all the domains, they all seem to be owned by different people and not linked to each other in any way
-
We had exactly the same issue with a client. They had simply re-hosted their site under at least 10 other domain names they owned in the misguided perception that this would improve their SEO.
They were all hosted on the same server as your latest response seems to state, and we tracked them all down by doing a reverse IP lookup using this tool.
We then had to ammend the clients DNS records for the duplicate sites and 301 them to the true site. The same site later recieved a link penalty and we then parked those domains ratyher than redirected.
-
Thanks for the responses, everyone. The situation gets even more random. It would appear that the content is not stolen, but rather the 'copy' domain (and indeed two more, at least) are not only pointing to client's server but also the same directory as their site. The are all loading the same files!!! Must admit, this is a new one to me.
The client IT dept claim so far...they purchased a new ip for their server and are using that. The previous ip used to belong to another host, so it appears, and there were sites pointed to that ip. When the ip was moved to client's site the sites pointing to it now point to the new server. This is just about understandable, how these domains are accessing the files on the server is a mystery. It's a windows server so not my area of expertise.
Oddly enough the two domains which seem to have had their server moved are registered for another 3 years still, so one would assume they are wanted domains, whoever owns them
It's definitely been an interesting Tuesday morning so far!!! Still the afternoon to come so I wonder how many more websites can find sharing client's files!!
Not sure where this leaves me now with regard to calling it spam/theft. All the domains appear to be resolving to exactly the same place,yet only one of them is owned by the client.
-
you could also contact the hosting company of the site, they might take down the site for you, or aleast contact the fake site owner
-
Hi Carl,
Auch, this is probably not a use case you ever wanted to fix for you clients. However I would suggest filing a DCMA request based on the copyright of your texts/ images used on your client site. This will, hopefully, at least remove the copied site out of Googles index.
Filing such a request could be done here: http://support.google.com/bin/static.py?hl=en&ts=1114905&page=ts.cs
Good luck!
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Looking for list Pro's & Con's of removing Folder from URL?
Hi We have a sub-folder ("/shop-by-department/") which is pretty much useless on our site and I'm looking to remove it. But the team want a list of the Pro's & Con's in doing so. So for example I'll be changing www.example.ie/shop-by-department/furniture/beds/product-a to www.example.ie/furniture/beds/product-a I know there will be an intial hit as Google adjusts to the change but think it's definitely the way to go. I was lookng for a complete list of the Pro's & Con's to send onto the team. It'll be going to the traditional marketing (print, radio, etc.) too so can ve top-level points too. Hope you can help! Thanks
Web Design | | Frankie-BTDublin0 -
Any second opinions as to why our organic search website traffic hasn't recovered from website rebrand (domain change, website redesign)?
I am hoping to see if anyone in the Moz community would be able to help troubleshoot or lend any advice on a major organic search traffic issue we've been experiencing over the last 8 months. In a nutshell, we decided our ~4.5-year-old business needed to undergo a rebrand in October 2015. After changing domains & redesigning our website (more below), our search-driven sessions have dropped 20% in 2016 v.s. 2015. We made quite a few on-site modifications (with some success) post-redesign but are still deep in a rut and not sure what more we can do to recover. I've listed my theories below as to why we're still suffering this hit. If anyone could weigh in on these and/or share any other troubleshooting ideas, I would greatly, greatly appreciate it (and owe you a lunch/beverage of your choice the next time I'm in your city!). ****Backlinks - despite our efforts to 301 all links, I sense we have lost many backlinks. According to Open Site Explorer, our old domain has 1,172 backlinks (some from some very authoritative pages domains), 1,068 of which are passing link equity. In contrast, our new domain has 367 backlinks, 321 are passing link equity, and very few overlap with our old domain. Domain Age - we may have lost much of our reputation with Google as our new domain is much younger than our old domain (1-year-old v.s. 5.5 years old). Domain Name - although I thought to have common keywords in one's domain was a myth, I am now questioning that belief. Our old domain contained a popular, topical keyword and our new domain is derived from a term that is topical, but very uncommon. New URLs - our developer has insisted all links were moved to the new domain, but I have a hunch they were not. When conducting a "site search" (i.e. "site:websitename.com"), the new domain returns 7,740 results. Prior to our switch, a site search with the old domain yielded 30,000+ results. 404s - we found and fixed 100-200 404'd links after the domain switch. We still see a few pop-up today and I'm wondering if this is a red flag in Google's eyes. For a little more background too, here are the nitty gritty details with a rough timeline: Pre-October 12, 2015 - registered new domain and designed the new website on Wordpress, while researching a range of articles and resources for a successful site migration (e.g. this and this Moz guide). October 12, 2015 - flipped the switch on the website design, domain, minor content reorganization, and social handles. We announced the change to our audience via an article, newsletter, and social; informed Google Webmaster Tools (GWT) of the new address, 301'd all links from the old to the new domain, and submitted new sitemap in GWT. October 12 - 16, 2015 - traffic is normal, everything seems to be okay. October 17, 2015 - search traffic drops by 54% v.s. the same day of week pre-rebrand. October 26, 2015 - search traffic rises, so now only down by 30% v.s. the same day of week pre-rebrand. November/December 2015 - re-added numerous elements from the old website such as category, tag, and page pagination and a few sidebar modules that linked to other important pages and tags. Search traffic rises slightly in November (down 27% year-on-year), dips again in December (down 31% year-on-year). January 2016 - today (June 17, 2016) - we published more content on a daily basis and search traffic fluctuates around the 20% versus the same period in 2015. January 2016 - down 23% year-on-year February 2016 - down 17% year-on-year March 2016 - down 20% year-on-year April 2016 - down 21% year-on-year May 2016 - down 21% year-on-year June 2016 (until the 17th) - down 23% year-on-year Thank you all in advance for your time and help, please let me know if you have any questions!
Web Design | | nick490 -
Questioning people that left the website?
If we have a pop up on our site and new customers have subscribed to get 5% off (which i believe shows intent) and they do not purchase would you contact them and find out why they have not purchased to get a better understanding of issues with the website, If so I believe it needs to be more than the standard email of further discount (for example receive an extra 10% discount) or standard do you need help email (we need to either talk direct with them or offer something for there help such as 50% off) Any help would be appreciate in finding our pain points on the site www.fastprint.co.uk.
Web Design | | BobAnderson1 -
What is the longest you would go back to ressurrect links that should have been 301's?
I have never thought of anything beyond a site that was possibly developed a month or two ago, but an interesting possible client has come along and begs a question. They had their site "redesigned" in April 2014 and it appears whomever did the work did not realize what a 301 was for. Using ahrefs or MajesticSEO, they have gone from roughly 15,000 referring pages to 500 and the time line perfectly intersects the redesign. Sooooo, just wondering if any of you geniuses has ever gone back that far to try and pull off a 301.... I am actually just thinking of a link building / content marketing plan but thought it was an interesting question. Thanks for the help, Robert
Web Design | | RobertFisher1 -
Are jobsite themes harder to optimize than say a traditional website?
Until recently I have enjoyed a great deal of success with SEO on my websites and clients websites. SEO is more of a hobby than a profession for me however I am really struggling with my latest website www.securityjobsuk.co.uk - The keywords are easy, 1. security jobs and 2. security vacancies. The site has vanished off radar completely since I used the jobify theme. Has anyone had similar experience with job boards? Do they require more TLC / expert attention?
Web Design | | SJUK0 -
404's and a drop in Rank - Site maps? Data Highlighter?
I managed an old (2006 design) ticket site that was hosted and run by the same company that handled our point of sale. (Think, really crappy, customer had to click through three pages to get to the tickets, etc.) In Mid February, we migrated that old site to a new, more powerful site, built by a company that handles sites exclusively for ticket brokers. (My site: TheTicketKing. - dot - com) Before migration, I set up 301's for all the pages that we had currently ranked for, and had inbound links pointing to, etc. The CMS allowed me to set every one of those landing pages up with fresh content, so I created unique content for all of them, ran them through the Moz grader before launch, etc. We launched the site in Mid February, and it seemed like Google responded well. All the pages that we had 301's set up for stayed up fairly well in rank, and some even reached higher positions, while some took a few weeks to get back up to where they were before. Google was also giving us an average of 8-10K impressions per day, compared to 3000 per day with the old site. I started to notice a slow drop in impressions in mid April (after two months of love from Google,) and we lost rank on all our non branded pages around 4/23. Our branded terms are still fine, we didn't get a message from Google, and I reached out to the company that manages our site, asking if they had any issues with their other clients. They suggested that I resubmit our sitemaps. I did, and saw everything bump back up (impressions and rank) for just one week. Now we're back in the basement with all the non branded terms once again. I realize that Google could have penalized us without giving us a message, but what got me somewhat optimistic was the fact that resubmitting our sitemaps did bring us back up for around a week. One other thing that I was working on with the site just before the drop was Google's data highlighter. I submitted a set of pages that now come back with errors, after Google seemed to be fine with the data set before I submitted it. So now I'm looking at over 300 data highlighter errors when I'm in WMT. I deleted that set, but I still get the error listings in WMT, as if Google is still trying to understand those pages. Would that have an effect on our rank? Finally I do see that our 404's have risen steadily since the migration, to over 1000 now, and the people who manage the CMS tell me that it would have no effect on rank overall. And we're going to continue to get 404's as the nature of a ticket site would dictate? (Not sure on that, but that's what I was told.) Would anyone care to chime in on these thoughts, or any other clues as to my drop?
Web Design | | Ticket_King0 -
What do YOU look for when reviewing technical website criteria?
Wanted to get everyone's thoughts on this. One of my clients was asking me what they thought of a certain website design company. They wanted to use this company because their designs were very beautiful but wanted to be sure that contracting them would be the right decision. After I made my formal review and recommendation I thought this might be a great topic of discussion for the amazing SEOMOZ community. So, what factors do you look at when determining which design firms are worth their weight?
Web Design | | JusinDuff0 -
Multilingual Website. Best SEO Strategy
Hello.
Web Design | | teconsite.com
We have a client that will extend his business to severak countries in Europe.
So far its main market was the Spanish one. In this market it works with his own domain that is the same that its brand name. The domain does not contain any important keyword but it has been working for 11 years: www.efutgol.com. In Spain has a good ranking. It ranks number 1 or number 2, it fluctuates. But it also sells to France and Portugal. In the France market they used a domain with exact match with the French keyword that they are interested in: www.equipementsfootball.com/. The same strategy www.equipamentosfutebol.com in Portugal. Both have number 1 for the main keyword in those Countries for that keyword Now they are going to sell in more countries.
The problem is that each website have a different CMS what makes necessary double maintenance. We are going to unificate in only one domain, one single design, one single CMS all websites. But were have doubts about SEO consequences of doing that What is the best thing for URLs?
www.efutgol.com/fr/ .....
www.efutgol.com/es/
www.efutgol.com / pt What should we do with the domains that are so well positioned in france and portugal? 301 redirect will work? What should we expect? What would you do? What things we should consider to keep the current position?0