What do I do about sites that copy my content?
-
I've noticed that there are a number of websites that are copying my content.
They are putting the full article on their site, mentioning that it was reposted from my site, but contains no links to me.
How should I approach this? What are my rights and should I ask them to remove it or add a link?
Will the duplicate content affect me?
-
are they a competitor? If they replaced all the legitimate signals with their own, it's much more likely to be a spam site, or a dirty-tricks competitor or just a dirty-tricks site in general. In that case, I'd demand removal under DMCA and filing with Google for a removal from the Google index.
-
Hi Alan,
Thanks for your reply, I do have the rel:author set up on my site.
I have just checked the copy site page and they have replaced it with their own author tag and they have rel='canonical' set to their page.
The page copy has the same URL and the full content copied.
Their site has the full contact details, so I guess I will contact them.
What in your opinion should I ask for? The removal? A link to my site? Allow them to only use a excerpt from my site?
-
John,
Copying content is a frequent reality of the web. Several things need to be considered when deciding whether anything should be done about it.
When you perform a search for the title of a page in question, does their content show up above yours or near yours in organic search results?
Are the sites copying the content competitors of yours?
If either of those is a "yes", and your content is actually unique and yours, you can file a take-down request with Google.
You should also contact the site owners and instruct them to remove the content in accordance with the DMCA if you're in the U.S. and If their contact information is available. If it's not readily available on their site and you can't find them on Twitter or LinkedIn, you can do a Whois search on the domain name to see if there is contact info and it's not set to private registration.
You can even contact their hosting provider.
I also recommend you implement Google's authorship markup on your content as it is posted, to help Google understand you are the original author. Though this does not guarantee theft of content.
Ultimately, if it's spammers and they're not ranking for anything you care about in direct competition with your content, as long as you have the authorship markup in place, there's not much you can do about it beyond what I've described.
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
-
Blog with all copied content, should it be rewritten?
Hi, I am auditing a blog where their goal is to get approved to on ad networks but the whole blog has copied content from different sources, so no ad network is approving them. Surprisingly (at least to me), is that the blog ranks really well for a few keywords (#1's and rich snippets ), has a few hundred of natural backlinks, DA is high, has never been penalized (they have always used canonical tags to the original content), traffic is a few thousand sessions a month with mostly 85% organic search, etc. overall Google likes it enough to show them high on search. So now the owner wants to monetize it. I suggested that the best approach was to rewrite their most visited articles and deleted the rest with 301 redirects to the posts that stay. But I actually haven't worked on a similar project before and can't find precise information online so I'm looking to know if anyone has a similar experience to this. A few of my questions are: If they rewrite most of the pages and delete the rest so there is no repeated/copied content, would ad networks (eg. adsense) approve them? Assuming the new articles are at least as good quality as the current ones but with original content, is there a risk on losing DA? since pretty much it will look like a new site once they are done They have thousands of articles but only about 200 hundred get most visits, which would be the ones getting rewritten, so it should be fine to redirect the deleted ones to the remaining? Thanks for any suggestions and/or tips on this 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ArturoES0 -
Content Help for Dealers
What type of content would anyone recommend writing for power sports dealers (ATV dealers, Motorcycle Dealers, Jet Ski Dealers, etc) or outdoor power equipment dealers (tractors, lawn mowers, etc) when they're website consists mainly of inventory pages? These dealers are trying to improve brand awareness, but creating content that answers searchers' questions/intent is tough and I want to make sure I am on the right track. I'm trying to create unique content. I am optimizing existing pages and then so far I've been writing brand pages, describing the brands, advertising that they carry this brand, creating links and call-to-actions to the inventory pages,etc. I want to first create authority and crawlable content for this brand. From there, I have been trying to create product category pages, describing the top products under that brand and working to creating product comparison content instead of simply describing it. Why Buy type of stuff, but that gets tricky to make unique. Any suggestions on unique content or better strategies versus just brand descriptions, product descriptions/comparisons, etc? I also want to make sure that creating multiple pages focused on one brand and an overall category isn't cannibalization of a topic. Obviously each page is slightly different and gradually going into more detail, but I want to make sure. Any recommendations on types of content or different strategies would be helpful! Also - I should mention that I am limited by the platform. I cannot create/utilize a blog page or anything like that. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Crichardson19900 -
301 redirecting a site that currently links to the target site
I have a personal blog that has a good amount of back links pointing at it from high quality relevant authoritative sites in my niche. I also run a company in the same niche. I link to a page on the company site from the personal blog article that has bunch of relevant links pointing at it (as it's highly relevant to the content on the personal blog). Overview: Relevant personal blog post has a bunch of relevant external links pointing at it (completely organic). Relevant personal blog post then links (externally) to relevant company site page and is helping that page rank. Question: If I do the work to 301 the personal blog to the company site, and then link internally from the blog page to the other relevant company page, will this kill that back link or will the internal link help as much as the current external link does currently? **For clarity: ** External sites => External blog => External link to company page VS External sites => External blog 301 => Blog page (now on company blog) => Internal link to target page I would love to hear from anyone that has performed this in the past 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Keyword_NotProvided0 -
Duplicating content from manufacturer for client site and using canonical reference.
We manage content for many clients in the same industry, and many of them wish to keep their customers on their individualized websites (understandably). In order to do this, we have duplicated content in part from the manufacturers' pages for several "models" on the client's sites. We have put in a Canonical reference at the start of the content directing back to the manufacturer's page where we duplicated some of the content. We have only done a handful of pages while we figure out the canonical reference potential issue. So, my questions are: Is this necessary? Does this hurt, help or not do anything SEO-wise for our ranking of the site? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | moz1admin1 -
Why is this site not indexed by Google?
Hi all and thanks for your help in advance. I've been asked to take a look at a site, http://www.yourdairygold.ie as it currently does not appear for its brand name, Your Dairygold on Google Ireland even though it's been live for a few months now. I've checked all the usual issues such as robots.txt (doesn't have one) and the robots meta tag (doesn't have them). The even stranger thing is that the site does rank on Yahoo! and Bing. Google Webmaster Tools shows that Googlebot is crawling around 150 pages a day but the total number of pages indexed is zero. It does appear if you carry out a site: search on Google however. The site is very poorly optimised in terms of title tags, unnecessary redirects etc which I'm working on now but I wondered if you guys had any further insights. Thanks again for your help.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | iProspect-Ireland0 -
Why is this site not ranking?
http://www.petstoreunlimited.com They get good grades from the on-page tool. The links are not amazing, but are not super spammy. Yet it ranks for nothing they target Any reason why?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Atomicx0 -
What happens when I redirect an entire site to an established page on another site?
Hi There, I have a website which is dedicated to selling ONE product (in different forms) or my main brand site. It is branded similarly, targets similar keywords, and gets some traffic which convert to leads. Additionally, the auxiliary site has a Google Rank 2 in its own right. I am thinking of consolidating this "auxillary" site to the specific product page on my main site. The reason I am considering doing this is to give a "boost" to the main product page on our main site which has many core keywords sitting with SERP ranking of between 11-20 (so not in first 10) Because this auxiliary site it gets traffic and leads in its own right, I don't want this to be to the detriment of my leads overall. Question is - if I 301 redirect the entire domain from my auxillary site to the equivalent product on my main site am I likely to see a large "boost" to that product page? (i.e. will I likely see my ranking rise from 11 - 20 significantly)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | love-seo-goodness0 -
Are there certain times of the day that it is better to update content or blogs? How do I find out what time is best for a particular site?
Trying to figure out how to best optimize timing of new content... including blogs and other on page content?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AaronSchinke0