Copycat websites
-
Hello,
Do you know if there is anything you can do against a copycat website?
By copycat I mean a website which uses our brand / domain name to steal our brand traffic.
The reason I ask is a new site recently launched with which is optimised to take some of our brand traffic:
Site tile - www.my<ourbrandname>.co.uk</ourbrandname>
Description - For when I need <ourbrandname></ourbrandname>
They gave no physical address or email addresses to funnel customers through an enquiry form which got me suspesious so when I checked the IP address in the MOZ Toolbar and did a WhoIs check on the IP address it brought up one of our main competitors websites.
Anyone got an experiences of this and know what can be done?
-
Hi Opt,
I'm going through old questions that are still unanswered in Q&A. Do you have an update for us of how this turned out? Anything that can be helpful to other people in the same situation? I'm curious to know what happened.
Thanks!
-
If they refuse to take it down we would adopt Lewis-SEO idea first, seems like the easiest and quickest route.
It's a shame situations like this arise really and there is no official way to deal with it. We wouldn't really go down the blackhat route but it is a good stick to use as an for them to stop.
That was an interesting read on the link (why would anyone refuse links in their T&Cs!?)
-
I should have said that Lewis-SEO offered some really good advice, mine was more a fallback (maybe a little bit before the blackhat option. ) if that failed.
Yeah you could always reciprocate, then offer a ceasefire when things started to get daft.
Purely by chance (and I really don't put this forward as a serious option) this appeared on hacker news a few minutes ago and I thought it was quite a coincidence.
http://liveatthewitchtrials.blogspot.com/2011/03/search-engine-deoptimization.html
-
Thanks Tompt, ill check out those links to see what can be done but like you say I guessed the legal route would likely be costly although we may have to do it if he starts climbing up the rankings quickly.
Lewis-SEO contacting the webhost is a good idea, I have got their details and may give it a go.
As a quick update since posting originally our MD spoke to their owner who said he will consider taking it down on the threat of us doing the same to them (as we have more resources and with them having a unique, none keyword, name I guess that isnt a route they would choose) <seo wars="">:)</seo>
-
We're in the UK and took down a guy that was sitting on one of our domains (the then system admin had let it lapse) . It was incredibly costly (much more than just buying the domain from them was (but by that point he'd put the directors back up)). Ours was a different situation though, he was just squatting sending traffic to competitors, he wasn't a direct competitor.
Since we're discussing a .co.uk domain you can go to nominet and go through their dispute resolution service.
http://www.nominet.org.uk/disputes/
With this potentially useful section of the faq
http://www.nominet.org.uk/disputes/drs/faq/#rightstest
I can't offer you too much hope though, any legal stuff is always costly and often not worth the cost.
-
I'd kindly ask them to remove it with the veiled threat of legal action.
If they decline then I would approach their webhosts, which can often be worked out from the Whois record, and ask them to remove the offending site giving them the full details.
If none of that works then perhaps you could go blackhat on them (not that I would condone that)
-
Just did another whois from a different site using the domain name and the Registrant field states our competitors company name.
Guess we will have to call them and see what their reasoning is.
-
I think the first thing to do is contact your competitor (if you're certain is it they who are behind this) and ask them in a kind and open email to remove this kind of aggressive advertising. If they are unwilling to comply with this request, you might want to consider legal steps against them.
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
-
Search website bar
I've noticed when you search business such as Pier 1, William Sonoma, they offer a "Search william-sonoma.com" search bar within the organic search. You can see it when you google William Sonoma. So, the question is, how does that get displayed? Is it something a business can include or is it something that Google will provide if they feel the need too? Appreciate any feedback. Thanks.
Branding | | Kdruckenbrod0 -
How to measure adwords campaing success on an non ecommerce/leads website
Hello,
Branding | | teconsite
We have a website of a furniture company that runs an Adwords campaign. This company has a lot of distributors. They have several objetives: people explore the online catalog people visit the distributor page (where they can find the nearest distributor in his/her area) people share the pictures and info in social media. (For example: pictures in pinterest) people watch videos new distributors contact them to be a new distributor and so on. As this is not an eccommerce website they can not buy We have created objectives in analytics to meassure those engament results.
My question is how to measure this in Google Adwords...
If I import GA objetives into adwords, I get conversions rates of 350% and even more, and the number of conversions is to high. For example. If one objetive is to visit Distributors page (the one where users can see a map and search for the nearest distributor), I find with a lot of conversions of this type. I was thinking in importing some objectives and giving them a value in $ and instead of evaluating conversion rates, evaluate ROAS. But I really would like to know, what you are doing with this kind of companies. How do you measure the campaign success when most of the objetives are measuring engagement. Please, could you give me any advice? Thank you!0 -
Competitors' dummy websites --- What SEO (or other?) strategy is this?
I work for an e-retailer. I've noticed that at least one of our competitors (and, I think, a second as well) has set up a neutral "third party" website that attempts to provide unbiassed information about different manufacturer's products. Of course, their products always win out over the competitor in these comparisons. But this one site (and another whose corporate backer I can't seem to figure out) is keyworded so poorly, and not branded at all. There are very few (if any) links to the corporate sponsor, or links, period. It's definitely not serving to have "Little Brand x" appear next to "Big Brand Y" in search results, either (again, really poorly keyworded). Other SEO seems really minimal. What do you think their strategy is? Is it a dumb waste o' money or something really smart that I'm not picking up on? Your insights most appreciated!
Branding | | Novos_Jay1 -
Is Rel=author appropriate for non-article type pages, a.k.a. business websites
I understand I can use Rel=author with Google+ for article's I write, and I understand I can use the same code for regular websites, which I'm still waiting to see show up in the SERPs, but my question is as follows... Is Rel=author appropriate for regular business websites (since we are business owners, not authors of articles), or is there some other Schema.org tag that should be used which will also show our images in the SERPs? I'd like my business logo to show up in the SERPs for my business page and my personal photo to show up for my blog pages.
Branding | | Twinbytes0 -
Video Hosting Question - host on website via wistia type solution or upload to youtube and embed?
I have a client that owns a Video production company. They have a lot of video examples of all their different types of services i.e. commercial production, TV broadcast production, business videos, training videos, etc. Where should I host their portfolio of videos, should I: A: Use a paid video hosting solution like wistia B. Upload to youtube or vimeo and embed to my own site The only videos titles with keywords that I could see bringing any type of conversions for their business would be their demo reels, for example: "Atlanta Corporate Video Production Demo Reel." The other videos would be the name of the video "Court TV: Cop On Trial For Killing Wife" and therefore wouldn't bring the kind of visitors that are searching for a video production service. This is why I'm curious about what the best hosting option is. Any advice would be a great help.
Branding | | RonMedlin0 -
The Franchise Challenge: How should I handle 200 franchisee websites?
Hi all.. this is not a question about how this can be done but which is better for SEO. Franchises make up 8% of the USA small business market. This is no small potatoes. But everything about Google seems designed for the unique, stand-alone business (Places, Analytics, Adwords, Duplicate Content Rules, etc.) ... I think about this issue a lot so wanted to put it to the community. Imagine a franchisor with 200 locations. This company licenses its brand and business operations system - that's what a franchise is. So each local franchisee starts out with a "content ready" website template which they are required to use for brand compliance. (Each local franchisee has a Google Place page and a Local Website in their territory.)Assuming each solution has the same number of local citations around 50% duplicate content on its services pages (e.g. branding text)... which of the following does Google like best? A single, customized CMS (e.g. Drupal) which places each franchisee site in a subfolder of the TLD. Highly duplicated services pages are given canonical pointers to the main site's version.
Branding | | scottclark
domain.com/location A single, customized CMS (e.g. Drupal) which places each franchisee in a subdomain of the TLD. Highly duplicated services pages are given canonical pointers to the main site's version. location.domain.com A multi-manager dashboard (e.g. ManageWP) which operates an individual Wordpress installs on a single server (dedicated self-install server, sites share IPs)
_localdomain.com _ A multi-manager dashboard which operates an individual Wordpress install on multiple, diverse servers (e.g. shared hosting on diverse hosts.)
localdomain.com I know that the best case would be for each franchisee individually to be so motivated to set up their own site and properly use brand elements, get links, etc. but this is impractical (trust me.)~~~~~~(*update 4/4/13 - I have written a blog post which describes what I think is the ideal franchise web marketing & SEO program and would welcome additional comments!)0 -
Social boxes on website - facebook comments feature
Hi everyone, does anyone know where i can install a comments box which when people see a post of page they can add a comment - which also goes to facebook? however i would like to preapprove this? I have seen this kind of thing on websites and wondered how it is done? im assuming it can help obtain more social noise? Any help much appreciated.
Branding | | pauledwards0 -
Anybody use Twibbon to promote a website/cause/event?
I stumbled across Twibbon today - it's a service that basically creates an easy way for you to brand your Twitter/Facebook pictures, and to allow others to promote your cause as well. I'm not sure if I'm late to get on board here or if this is a relatively new thing, but it seems pretty cool. I can definitely see this really working out for promoting philanthropic causes. It would also work really well for events - imagine if every speaker at an SEO conference used Twibbon to brand their Twitter/Facebook? I think it would really help with branding, for both individuals and businesses.
Branding | | AnthonyMangia1