Someone wants to syndicate my content but I'm afraid
-
I GOT THE FOLLOWING EMAIL:
Hi, I visited your site and would like to connect regarding nSphere syndicating your content into our search platform. We are interested in syndicating your content into our network.
There’s no cost for this, we ask you to place a module on your site that reads your content and syndicates it into our network of millions of users. You only need to place a simple JavaScript code on your site. I have the code, but I would like to speak or email with you first. This module acts as search tool for your users as well. Can you email me or send me your number and a good day/time to connect?
Thank you in advance.
Matthew Mantyla | nSphere
Director of Media IntegrationI'M AFRAID OF DUPLICATE CONTENT. SHOULD I JUST IGNORE THIS; IS IT SPAM; OR COULD THIS BE AN OPPORTUNITY? I'M THINKING I SHOULD BE SUSPICIOUS OF THE FACT THAT HE DIDN'T EVEN PROVIDE A URL.
-
Hi Marisa,
Thanks for your inquiry.
We created a local search tool which matches relevant content with local information and data. The tool is an option for websites to use, we would at NO time use anyone's content without them requesting us to use it or without their permission.
Also, all of the content that is included in the search algorithm is dynamically pulled at time of the search.
If you wish to see a demo, please let me know and I'd be happy to connect with you to show you.
Kindly,
Matt Mantyla -
I almost started a relationship with nSphere, so this is really interesting, but we pulled out at the last minute because of duplicate content concerns and I also was concerned whether their techniques were really white hat or not.
They were proposing a different kind of project for my site than syndication, more to do with local search, but they were interesting to deal with.
From my many hours of discussions with them, I can tell you that they seemed like a legitimate company, having done work with Car & Driver and Kiplingers's, and they did appear transparent in their dealings for the most part, but then at the last minute of our talks and negotiations of the the work they would be doing, they mentioned something about a linking module that I would add to my site which threw me off.
Definitely be diligent if you speak with them. The jury is undecided at this point as far as I'm concerned, but we pulled out of working with them. They were really nice about it and were very professional and polite. But I'm still not convinced whether what they were proposing would have been hurt or helped my site.
-
I'd say I'm inclined to agree with you guys. I'd just ignore it but now my concern is what if he syndicates my content without my permission? I guess he probably won't since he wants me to place some module on my site.
-
There is actually a great SEOmoz video from rand on duplicate content. What would scare me here is "place a module on your site that reads your content and syndicates it into our network of millions of users"
Syndication of your content can be really helpful if you do it carefully and sparingly.
-
If that message arrived in my inbox I would delete it.
Read their email... it does not say exactly how they will use your content.
Go to their website. They do not say exactly how they will use your content. They say nothing but yada yada yada yada.
What is this "module" on your website going to be doing?
No way!
-
If I were you, I'd schedule a call and ask questions. Like what the benefits of having your content syndicated across the network is outside of name recognition, how they handle duplicate content problems, how they ensure your content is used properly, etc, etc. Put the onus on them to alleviate your fears. Chances are it won't be that beneficial for you.
With regards to your fear of not providing a URL, this is probably a form mass-email to pre-identified targets that was just badly executed. Call nSphere directly, and ask to speak to him. See how that goes.
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
-
Content Duplication Issue On Content Publishing Site
I am running Free Article Posting site but I discover people are posting their content which already has been published on different sites before. What should i need to do in order to save my site from Google penalty.3 waiting for your kind help in this regard Thanks in advance
Content Development | | Mustansar0 -
What makes high quality content?
Content is becoming more and more important in rankings and I was wondering what exactly Google defines a good content. Any ideas?
Content Development | | EJDekkers0 -
My Boss tells me personal narrative content isn't read online and bad for SEO, anyone else disagree? b/c I do!
I am in a constant debate that content 1st person or 3rd person doesn't make a difference in terms of SEO and what people on the web want to read. What do you all think? Does it make a difference?
Content Development | | GoAbroadKP0 -
Duplicate Legal Content
Oftentimes lawyer websites will publish laws (codes, statutes, regulations, case law, etc). They add no value to the text, it's just copy pasted. Therefore, the same text/content may be on potentially hundreds of websites. Does google interpret this as duplicate content, or does it recognize government content as special? I want to have the laws on my website as well, however I am debating whether to add no follow tags or not. Or I'm thinking about adding value to the content by breaking down the specific law. However, even then at least 50% of the content on the page will still be the law, and I'm not sure if that is enough to be considered duplicate content.
Content Development | | irnikij0 -
Is paid content a good or bad thing
Hi, over the past couple of years we have turned down thousands of request from companies to have paid editorial on our sites, I have always turned this down but i have seen some sites accept this and would like to know your stance on this. In newspapers and magazines which i have worked in both, they have paid editorial all the time, so i am just wondering what google thinks of paid editorial. look forward to hearing your thoughts
Content Development | | ClaireH-1848860 -
Stolen Content and a Panda Penalty
Hey Folks Question for those folks that have spent some time helping people with the recent penalties and the like. I have a client who has a clear Panda Penalty, huge drop in traffic on the initial Panda date and a further drop on the second date. Much smaller incremental drops on subsequent recent updates as well. From digging in it seems fairly cut and dry - copyscape shows another 250 or so sites with content from this site and there are nearly 2000 external URLs with duplicate content across these sites. We are talking complete, shameless copies of all of the text, sometimes the images as well. The client claims the content is all 100% unique and is his content and that the other blogs must have stolen his content resulting in the penalty - which, if it is true, and I have no reason to suspect otherwise, kind of sucks. Now, many moons ago, way before Penguin or Panda (maybe around 2006) I had a client that had suddenly lost all traffic and their historical rankings. No funny business, it was a small company, had been online since around 2000 and they were pretty much the first of their kind and always did very well from organic search. As it turned out, the content from the site had not really changed since it was set up and as lots of companies had sprung up offering a similar service they had seen their content copied wholesale, across many sites, all over the world. We attempted to contact many of these sites and got some results but many were just old, abandoned copy cat sites on advert supported hosting that had ceased to trade so we maybe got rid of about 20%. Well, in the end we just decided to rewrite the content, we did this and sure enough, the site bounced back to it's previous standing and has been pretty much there ever since. Now that was kind of easy, the site had maybe 20 pages, and it needed a sprucing up but in this case the site has around 500 pages so doing a rewrite is not going to be so easy. Problem is, I don't see removal requests being particularly successful either. So, I see the options and steps as being. Contact all the sites and request the removal of the content use the Google content removal facility:
Content Development | | Marcus_Miller
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/removals File a DMCA takedown for anything remaining Report Scraped Pages to Google:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dGM4TXhIOFd3c1hZR2NHUDN1NmllU0E6MQ&ndplr=1 Submit a spam report for all sites involved ? Submit a reconsideration request to let Google know what we have been doing (unlikely In a nutshell, do everything we can to get this content removed and then documenting this to Google in the hope we catch hold of someone who hears our plight. Interestingly enough, this is a sensitive one, so no URL but I would welcome any thoughts or experiences any of you may have had with similar problems. There is a little extra info here from Matt Cutts + Barry Schwartz that kind of tallies with my approach above but would really like to hear any feedback. http://www.seroundtable.com/google-stolen-content-13243.html Cheers all Marcus0 -
Content
Hi, We produce research report on same topic every year (e.g. cost of patrol in different part of the country) and publish them to a new url every time. What is the best way to do it? create new page every year or update the existing research report with modification Considering long term benefits. Thanks
Content Development | | APH0 -
Blogger - Multiple partial duplicate content and canonical
In Blogger, have at least three pages produced for each post - main post, archive and tag - each has their own canonical tag - are these considered duplicate content by Google? Not sure the best way to handle this.
Content Development | | holdtheonion0
