Competitor scraped ecommerce product overview
-
I noticed by chance that the competitor of an ecommerce client has completely copied one of their product overviews, which is around 500 words in total.
The site does not outrank my client, but could the scraped content be harmful in any other way?
There are no links included within the text so there's no advantage in that sense.
Is Google's algorithm intuitive enough to figure out where the original content came from and attribute it to my client, or is there still the possibility that it could have a negative affect as duplicate content?
Any insights and suggestions much appreciated.
-
Paddy,
Thanks for clarifying. My mum is indeed very nice.
If we replace "my mom's blog" with "a slightly less trusted site, but still very similar in scale, topic, age, etc..." then you can see where it gets more difficult to base the decision on which has been crawled first.
But yes, I agree that being the first page crawled and indexed with that content must be a huge (though I think trust-based metrics would be more important) factor in the decision by Google's ranking algorithms.
-
But you mom's blog will get crawled far less frequently than page A as it has less authority, so the chances the your mum read copied and then posted on her blog before the main site was crawled and in time for her site to get crawled would be very unlikely. Other wise it would be very unfair that "bigger sites" get credit simply just by being bigger. But I get your point that being found first is the only factor, but I would think it would be a big factor if not the biggest (back links to the original article would be one I would think)
Btw i'm sure you Mom is a very nice person and would never steal a story of another site for her own blog
Note: I have come to this conclusion based on observation and logic (and others posting similar theories), but I don't have any conclusive proof, I wonder if anyone has do any research into it...
-
I have to disagree that the credit goes to whichever version was found "first". I think attribution of authoritativeness and/or origination is a bit more complicated than that. For example, if page A and B both have the same content and page A is found first, but page B has 20 high-quality external links on a domain with a lot of authority and page A only has 1 link and is on my mom's blog... I doubt Google is going to think my mom is the original just because her site was crawled first.
Yes it can be a problem and yes you should do something about it if you can prove that your client wrote the content and that it isn't just the same manufacturer supplied product description that everyone gets.
First ask the offending site to remove their copied content. If that doesn't work you can file a DMCA complaint here:
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/dmca-notice?pli=1&&rd=1
-
If google crawled and picked up the text on your site before your competitor then you get the "credit" for it, which logicly they should have since you had the text first, only problem if your competitor is a bigger site DA wise and they are crawled more often.
But e-commerce site copying text from other site has been happening for a long time, they are just not doing themselves any favours
edit: missed eyepaq post, but yeah, what he said
-
Hi,
A lot of higher authority sites (I am not talking about ny times but just, in a particular space, sites that have a higher authority then others) are copying lower authority sites and get credit for it from Google.
In your case -dose your competitor has more visibility and authority in general ? Was the copy session soon after your client released that particular page ? If both answers are yes, then there is a danger there. If not - there is nothing to be concerned of.
Most of the time, like you said, google's algorithm is intuitive enough to figure out where the original content came from but it's not perfect.
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
-
Writing cornerstone content for a shop (eCommerce) website
Hi there I am trying to optimise my site to the best that it can be. Since the most recent Google updates, everything that I reading is saying cornerstone content with lots of valuable content is a really good strategy as it tells Google what is the most important content on your site. Writing articles that are well structured and have give the user a detailed overview of that subject. Lots of top SEO's are saying 3000 words plus on these pages. My question is, how do I go about this with and eCommerce site? Obviously that majority of the keywords that I want to target are product related and these are the pages that I want to come up in the search. How do I go about creating cornerstone content for these pages? I am thinking that one of my cornerstone pieces of content would be "The Ultimate Guide to [my main product category]". But that product has numerous products related to it, all of which have their own keywords, so how would this help the products to rank? The site had two main product categories, with numerous products under each of those categories. The two main categories are targeting my best performing keywords, but currently the landing page for these is the main product category pages. I am really struggling to work out the best strategy here. The content that I have on my actual products pages is comprehensive and covers a lot of detail about that particular product and has started to rank for product keywords, but I am guessing Google wouldn't consider that to be cornerstone content. I hope this make sense. Any advice anyone can give would be really useful. Many thanks in advance
On-Page Optimization | | Clojobobo1 -
SEO Rankings Ebbs and Flows on Ecommerce Site - Normal?
Hey everyone, I should start by saying I'm very new to SEO (I'm actually just a copywriter that's taken on this role at an agency), so I apologize if I'm using some common terms incorrectly or if there's a lack of information. I've been optimizing my first ecommerce website (clothing company), and things were going very well last year. Strong surges in organic traffic, peaking in the summer. There was a drop before the holidays when the client dumped a ton of new product pages that weren't optimized. After optimizing the pages, the traffic went back up to its summer levels. Now, there's about a 10% drop in organic traffic since earlier this year, and a loss of just over 20% of keywords the site was originally ranking for. There's no sharp drop in the Analytics, but a steady decline. To give a better idea, the site was ranking for 5,270 keywords in February; it's dropped to 3,772 keywords in April. According to SEMRush, almost all the dropped keywords are the lower volume ones, maybe indicating long tail keywords? I'm really not sure what the cause of the drop is, as I've been following (I think) best on-page practices, which seems to have yielded results last year. One thing I should mention is the client has a unique product page for each variant of one product (so the same shirt will have 10 of the same pages, the only difference being the colour). Could Google be penalizing the site for duplicate content? It was fine last year though with that same site structure; I'm not sure how long it would take for Google to penalize a site for that. Sorry for the wall of text. I'd really appreciate any insight into this. Thanks Moz community!
On-Page Optimization | | EdenPrez3 -
Product Tags
So Opencart allows the use of product tags (please note, this are NOT meta tags) which I believe are used for when customers want to search for a product using the search function. So one of my tags could be ''star wars socks'', and when a customer types this into the search it brings up every product containing the tag for socks. This is all good and well, however, these tags appear on the product page itself, right below the Manufacturer/Brand, and above the price. Will Google look kindly on this or could it be considered as keyword stuffing? Or will Google know they're for search and ignore them? I just need to know whether or not removing them entirely will be a good or bad idea.
On-Page Optimization | | moon-boots0 -
Alt Tags on multiple product images
Hi I work on SEO for an ecommerce site and wanted to find out how important it is to optimise all images with alt tags. We have alt tags in place, however have not optimised descriptions for the following example images: Front of cupboard Back of cupboard Side of cupboard etc Is this dangerous for SEO if these images all have the same alt tag? We have thousands of products so it would be a huge job to update these, but if it's crucial for SEO we can work through our priorities. Thank you!
On-Page Optimization | | BeckyKey0 -
How can my national ecommerce site geo target specific states for specific pages?
If I am selling sports related products for sports/teams across the country, how can I target specific states or cities through various pages on my website. I am using adwords but would like to use increase organic search results.
On-Page Optimization | | briggsb0 -
Number of Words Product Pages
Hello, Can you give me some examples of how many words you use for product pages? I know it's going to vary and that quality is more important than number of words, but what's been optimal for you and why?
On-Page Optimization | | BobGW0 -
Duplicate Content for Spanish & English Product
Hi There, Our company provides training courses and I am looking to provide the Spanish version of a course that we already provide in English. As it is an e-commerce site, our landing page for the English version gives the full description of the course and all related details. Once the course is purchased, a flash based course launches within a player window and the student begins the course. For the Spanish version of the course, my target customers are English speaking supervisors purchasing the course for their Spanish speaking workers. So the landing page will still be in English (just like the English version of the course) with the same basic description, with the only content differences on that page being the inclusion of the fact that this course is in Spanish and a few details around that. The majority of the content on these two separate landing pages will be exactly the same, as the description for the overall course is the same, just that it's presented in a different language, so it needs to be 2 separate products. My fear is that Google will read this as duplicate content and I will be penalized for it. Is this a possibility or will Google know why I set it up this way and not penalize me? If that is a possibility, how should I go about doing this correctly? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | NiallTom0 -
How do websites display product attributes listed with their meta descriptions in Google SEPRs?
If you take a look at this SERP for "boys costumes" you can see that Amazon, HalloweenExpress and Target all have attributes listed such as "Products 1-25 of 500" or Kids Legolas _Costume. _ These are getting blended with their meta descriptions. How are they doing this? Anyone see any lifts in ranking or CTR by doing this? Thank you!
On-Page Optimization | | Troyville0