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
-
A website for China - SEO & Marketing
I want to launch a website in China and have read that the best way forward for Baidu SEO is to host the site in China itself - does anyone have experience with doing that? It seems there are a few hoops to jump through, but I imagine I'm not the first to try?
Branding | | jo910 -
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 -
Are you ever handicapping yourself in search by using a subfolder over a new domain/website?
Hello Moz Community! We are building a separate hospital related to a single service line that is currently part of our main website. Traditionally all our hospitals are folded into one website with the same brand. Problem: Our organization's leaders want to market the new hospital as "Brand Name X" nationally, and not use our locally strong brand name at all. Therefore is the smarter long-term decision to begin building content on a new website with the new "Brand name X" even though it will take longer and be harder, than building it on our big, established website with a 60+ DA site? What I fear is our current website's DA won't matter much if people nationally are using Brand X, which isn't part of our traditional brand name? And they won't be using the traditional brand name at all. Example Scenario: We create a new hospital just focused on heart-related issues. Do we move the bulk of information for this new hospital from http://www.nebraskamed.com/heart, to a new website that will better rank with the new brand X and for just heart-related keywords? Or is it still better to try and stick with the same domain in a subfolder?
Branding | | Patrick_at_Nebraska_Medicine0 -
Can you recommend a Content Delivery Network for hosting 20 videos across the website?
We want to host multiple videos across our website and are considering which CDN provider to use, with an average of 18.8GB per month for visitors, we are considering the following companies, some offer a free trial. https://www.maxcdn.com/pricing/ http://www.cdn77.com/pricing https://www.cloudflare.com/plans Does anyone have any other recommendations regarding CDNs for video streaming or have experience in this area as any advice would be much appreciated.
Branding | | Muhammad-Isap0 -
Making the most from a Press Release being featured on news websites
We have recently sent out a press release to targeted publications and have been lucky enough to be featured on a hand full of quality news websites which all feature links to our main URL. A minor draw back is some of the sites have just used the press release with minimal changes so we are a tiny bit worried about duplicate content issues but the sites are all high quality with a Domain Authority of 65+. Anyway I am wondering how best to capitalise on these. A few ideas I have:- 1. Go to our Company Google Plus page and +1 them. 2. Go to our Twitter profile and favourite the "tweets" that have been sent out mentioning each article. 3. Go to our Facebook page and "Like" the articles on each of the sites. 4. Setup a Squidoo page called "My Company featured around the internet" and link to the news pages. 5. Setup a Tumblr page called " MY Company featured around the internet" and link to the news pages. We are not sure if featured the links/urls on our "Press" section will undermine any benefit of link juice - we were thinking of doing a PDF of the pages and hosting the PDF on our site.
Branding | | JohnW-UK0 -
If someone leaves a review on a website, is there any way to syndicate this out to 3rd party review sites?
a client of mine receives loads and loads of review on their website but few on 3rd party review type sites. i want to be able to push reviews left on client site out to these other sites. is this possible?
Branding | | Christoffa0 -
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 -
Hotel website domain
I work on a project for a hotel website and look up domain names right now. But I am now not sure wether I should go for a branding of the hotel name in the domain name (e.g. "bellavistahotel.com") or pick the location ("berlinhotel.com") or a mix (e.g. "bellavistaberlin.com). What would be your recommendation? The content (text, photos, videos) I have is a lot about the location and the hotel itself. I want to connect the Hotel page afterwards with Knowem to hundreds of social networks. My tendency is to go for a branding. Is that a good idea? Thanks for the help.
Branding | | reisefm0