Stolen Content and a Panda Penalty

[Marcus_Miller]

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.

1. Contact all the sites and request the removal of the content
2. use the Google content removal facility: 
   https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/removals
3. File a DMCA takedown for anything remaining
4. Report Scraped Pages to Google:
   https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dGM4TXhIOFd3c1hZR2NHUDN1NmllU0E6MQ&ndplr=1 
5. Submit a spam report for all sites involved ?
6. 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

Marcus

[Marcus_Miller]

Hey, I used copyscape to locate all the content and have suggested copyscape sentry going forward. The problem is for this site the scale of the copying, it seems to go back several years and is pretty widespread.

Cheers!

Marcus

[Marcus_Miller]

Hey Egol

Well, this was kind of my initial suggestion to the client. I simply don't think that the pain and suffering and ultimately waiting to get this resolved is worth the effort and a rewrite is likely the easiest (if still painful option).

I guess, I just want to give this guy all of the options, and my advice so if they want to have a shot at getting the content taken down then they can have at least have a go. This way, I can advise, show the various pathways and my experience but they can choose how to tackle the issue.

At times, this job is a lot like dealing with my kids, I give advice based on years of painful experience, they choose the difficult path, what can you do?

For some folks, the fact that this happens is too much for them to take on board and despite it being exactly what it is - I do understand the 'digging your heals in' approach to wanting to get other sites to take it all down - i also from painful experience know that sometimes you just have to take your punches and get on with a rewrite.

Thanks for the input!

Cheers!
Marcus

[akhlis]

Well DMCA will hurt more  than help. (the time you lose) but what you can do is to grad a copyscape account, upgrade it at pro and keep track of all your unique content. If your sales are based on this factor is worth trying. Also have a look at the hosting providers, they may have the same rules.

Act as fast as copyspace announce you there is a problem. Now you may ask me how to act? Well all the steps are listed above. Google rules still apply for filling a DMCA request at chillingeffects they can remove content from google search results.

Take a look at this screenshot Is in romanian, but it says that Chillingeffects took actions are removed x pages/websites duo to DMCA.

[akhlis]

Glad to hear. Please give us updates on how everything is going.

[EGOL]

I sell a few specialty outdoor sport items that are branded by a US company but manufactured in China.   Several years ago I wrote unique, detailed descriptions for these items that were much more detailed than the brand owner's.

My pages used to rank really well for the generic item names (similar to "rock climbing shoes").   Then at least 100 "made in China" websites grabbed my descriptions and posted them verbatim.   My rankings tanked in Google.  I didn't even get much long tail from google.

I felt that it was a waste of time to contact all of those websites and try to get them to stop using my content.  They are outside of the USA and they would probably laugh at a DMCA.

So, I have a choice of rewriting that content or discontinuing sales.

[Marcus_Miller]

Hey, great advice, many thanks. The hosting provider is a great idea, allows us to go in via the back door, I like it.

[akhlis]

I may not be a guru, but if the story is true (uniquer content), there are several steps you can take to regain the traffic and lose the penality. I'm glad to see the steps already listed on your comment, but there are too many and I would recommend you to focus on this 3 steps +1 extra step.

1. Remove any website which stole the content from your client using the link you have provided.

2. File a DMCA - This is a must! Stolen content is stolen so you have all the rights to file a DMCA.

3. Report the scrapped content. Now here is the catch. Give clear informations. Google staff will not sit to check the original post dates, names of who made the content or anything else so besure to offer this informations, even screenshots if you/your client have. Also have a look on waybackmachine and if the pages are stored there be sure to give the link to it!

You need to do all this work to prove your client content is unique and it was scrapped/copied.

Extra Step: Try to find where are that websites hosted and file a DMCA to the hosting provider (fastes way). Let them know they are hosting website which have copied/scrapped content and that you are going to take all the actions against them if they do not take that website/page down. 95% of the hosting providers have a rule which says "no illegal content allowed".

This is how I normally act with this kind of situations.

I may not be to helpfull in your situation, but this is how I normally act.