Site been plagiarised - duplicate content
-
Hi,
I look after two websites, one sells commercial mortgages the other sells residential mortgages.
We recently redesigned both sites, and one was moved to a new domain name as we rebranded it from being a trading style of the other brand to being a brand in its own right.
I have recently discovered that one of my most important pages on the residential mortgages site is not in Google's index. I did a bit of poking around with Copyscape and found another broker has copied our page almost word-for-word.
I then used copyscape to find all the other instances of plagiarism on the other broker's site and there are a few! It now looks like they have copied pages from our commercial mortgages site as well.
I think the reason our page has been removed from the index is that we relaunced both these sites with new navigation and consequently new urls. Can anyone back me up on this theory?
I am 100% sure that our page is the original version because we write everything in-house and I check it with copyscape before it gets published, Also the fact that this other broker has copied from several different sites corroborates this view.
Our legal team has written two letters (not sent yet) - one to the broker and the other to the broker's web designer. These letters ask the recipient to remove the copied content within 14 days. If they do remove our content from our site, how do I get Google to reindex our pages, given that Google thinks OUR pages are the copied ones and not the other way around? Does anyone have any experience with this? Or, will it just happen automatically? I have no experience of this scenario!
In the past, where I've found duplicate content like this, I've just rewritten the page, and chalked it up to experience but I don't really want to in this case because, frankly, the copy on these pages is really good! And, I don't think it's fair that someone else could potentially be getting customers that were persuaded by OUR copy.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Amelia
-
Hi David,
I hope you had a good weekend?
Thank you for all your help! I reported them to Google using the link you posted and already the other site's URLs that had copied us have been removed and our pages have been put back in the index.
I have to say I am absolutely astounded that Google responded so quickly!
Yes, that is us on Google + and my personal Google + is here: https://plus.google.com/u/0/+AmeliaVargo/posts/.
Thank you again for your help thus far, and for your kind offer of more help should we need it!
Have a great day,
Amelia
-
Glad I could help. I really hope you get this all sorted out. Good news is, you found the problem and are working to fix it, which is much better than most people would have been able to do. Have high hopes!
"the two pages they've copied are really important sales pages (remortgage and first time buyer) so for us, it's a massive shame. "
There is still a way to promote those pages, just not using Google organic to do so. Modify some of the content, create a press release, promote that page using social networks, and drive interest to that page and your site the old fashioned way. PPC is always an option as well. Remember, there are many ways to get traffic, don't lose hope or the vision.
On a side note, is this your company?
https://plus.google.com/u/0/+TurnkeymortgagesCoUk/postsI can add you to my circles, so if you have any more issues or need additional help just let me know.
-
I just wanted to post up a message to everyone who has helped me with this problem.
First of all, please accept my sincere thanks. I REALLY appreciate everyone's contribution.
Now, I just wanted to tell you all what, as a company, we've decided to do.
- We've written letters to: The company that copied us, their web designer and their host, asking them to remove the copied content within 14 days of the letters.
- We've 'reported' them to Google, via one of the links that David posted (https://support.google.com/legal/troubleshooter/1114905?hl=en)
- We've reported them for scraping, using the link that Paddy posted
Hopefully, this problem will go away, but I hate to think how much business we may have lost as a result - the two pages they've copied are really important sales pages (remortgage and first time buyer) so for us, it's a massive shame.
Best wishes, and I hope you all have a great weekend!
Amelia
-
Thank you David.
-
Once their version is removed/rewritten, resubmit your site to Google in every way that you can.
1. Fetch as Google
2. Change sitemap created dates to current day
3. Change crawl frequency in sitemap to daily
4. Check for proper 301 redirects from old pages, when you moved/modified the site to separate branding.
5. Submit the URL in question to Google, and letting them know that someone has copied your site's content. They should be able to see that your was created first.Here are a few links to help:
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/dmca-notice <<< start there
https://support.google.com/legal/troubleshooter/1114905?hl=en
http://blog.kissmetrics.com/find-remove-stolen-content/
http://www.orclage.com/report-remove-stolen-duplicate-content-google/
-
Thank you Paddy! Much appreciated, and thank you for helping me again!
-
Ahh, good one.
-
Don't forget about this:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1Pw1KVOVRyr4a7ezj_6SHghnX1Y6bp1SOVmy60QjkF0Y/viewform
-
Thank you, you've helped me no end.
Have a great weekend
-
It really depends on the web host whether they will follow it or not. Some that are soley based in the UK might not. If they have US based servers or the site is hosted in the US more than likely they will. It is worth a shot though, I try to rattle as many cages as possible. Here is a little info on filing them in the UK https://www.teneric.co.uk/marketing/copyright-infringement.html
-
Hi Lesley,
Yes, I redirected everything using 301 redirects - page to page. I also used the change of address tool in webmaster tools for the site that changed domains.
I don't know if using DMCA will be appropriate - isn't that a US-only thing or can site owners in the UK use it too? If I can, I will use it.
Thank you for responding - I really do appreciate your help.
Best wishes,
Amelia
-
After they drop out of the searches google will index your site as a the canonical site with that content on it. So that part happens manually. Also, when you relaunched, did you redirect everything from the old site? That helps preserve link juice and at the same time gives search engines a pointer that the address of a page has changed to this new address.
One thing I would suggest is having a DMCA take down notice draft and sent to the host as well. If the other people you send letters to tell you to go pound sand, normally the host does not.
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
-
Penalty for duplicate content on the same website?
Is it possible to get a penalty for duplicate content on the same website? I have a old custom-built site with a large number of filters that are pre-generated for speed. Basically the only difference is the meta title and H1 tag, with a few text differences here and there. Obviously I could no-follow all the filter links but it would take an enormous amount of work. The site is performing well in the search. I'm trying to decide whether if there is a risk of a penalty, if not I'm loath to do anything in case it causes other issues.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoman100 -
SEO for video content that is duplicated accross a larger network
I have a website with lots of content (high quality video clips for a particular niche). All the content gets fed out 100+ other sites on various domains/subdomains which are reskinned for a given city. So the content on these other sites is 100% duplicate. I still want to generate SEO traffic though. So my thought is that we: a) need to have canonical tags from all the other domains/subdomains that point back to the original post on the main site b) probably need to disallow search engine crawlers on all the other domains/subdomains Is this on the right track? Missing anything important related to duplicate content? The idea is that after we get search engines crawling the content correctly, from there we'd use the IP address to redirect the visitor to the best suited domain/subdomain. any thoughts on that approach? Thanks for your help!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PlusROI0 -
Product descriptions & Duplicate Content: between fears and reality
Hello everybody, I've been reading quite a lot recently about this topic and I would like to have your opinion about the following conclusion: ecommerce websites should have their own product descriptions if they can manage it (it will be beneficial for their SERPs rankings) but the ones who cannot won't be penalized by having the same product descriptions (or part of the same descriptions) IF it is only a "small" part of their content (user reviews, similar products, etc). What I mean is that among the signals that Google uses to guess which sites should be penalized or not, there is the ratio "quantity of duplicate content VS quantity of content in the page" : having 5-10 % of a page text corresponding to duplicate content might not be harmed while a page which has 50-75 % of a content page duplicated from an other site... what do you think? Can the "internal" duplicated content (for example 3 pages about the same product which is having 3 diferent colors -> 1 page per product color) be considered as "bad" as the "external" duplicated content (same product description on diferent sites) ? Thanks in advance for your opinions!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kuantokusta0 -
Duplicate page content query
Hi forum, For some reason I have recently received a large increase in my Duplicate Page Content issues. Currently it says I have over 7,000 duplicate page content errors! For example it says: Sample URLs with this Duplicate Page Content http://dikelli.com.au/accessories/gowns/news.html http://dikelli.com.au/accessories/news.html
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sterls
http://dikelli.com.au/gallery/dikelli/gowns/gowns/sale_gowns.html However there are no physical links to any of these page on my site and even when I look at my FTP files (I am using Dreamweaver) these directories and files do not exist. Can anyone please tell me why the SEOMOZ crawl is coming up with these errors and how to solve them?0 -
Can videos be considered duplicate content?
I have a page that ranks 5 and to get a rich snippet I'm thinking of adding a relevant video to the page. Thing is, the video is already on another page which ranks for this keyword... but only at position 20. As it happens the page the video is on is the more important page for other keywords, so I won't remove it. Will having the same video on two pages be considered a duplicate?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Brocberry0 -
Duplicate content mess
One website I'm working with keeps a HTML archive of content from various magazines they publish. Some articles were repeated across different magazines, sometimes up to 5 times. These articles were also used as content elsewhere on the same website, resulting in up to 10 duplicates of the same article on one website. With regards to the 5 that are duplicates but not contained in the magazine, I can delete (resulting in 404) all but the highest value of each (most don't have any external links). There are hundreds of occurrences of this and it seems unfeasible to 301 or noindex them. After seeing how their system works I can canonical the remaining duplicate that isn't contained in the magazine to the corresponding original magazine version - but I can't canonical any of the other versions in the magazines to the original. I can't delete the other duplicates as they're part of the content of a particular issue of a magazine. The best thing I can think of doing is adding a link in the magazine duplicates to the original article, something along the lines of "This article originally appeared in...", though I get the impression the client wouldn't want to reveal that they used to share so much content across different magazines. The duplicate pages across the different magazines do differ slightly as a result of the different Contents menu for each magazine. Do you think it's a case of what I'm doing will be better than how it was, or is there something further I can do? Is adding the links enough? Thanks. 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Alex-Harford0 -
What is the best way to allow content to be used on other sites for syndication without taking the chance of duplicate content filters
Cookstr appears to be syndicating content to shape.com and mensfitness.com a) They integrate their data into partner sites with an attribution back to their site and skinned it with the partners look. b) they link the image back to their image hosted on cookstr c) The page does not have microformats or as much data as their own page does so their own page is better SEO. Is this the best strategy or is there something better they could be doing to safely allow others to use our content, we don't want to share the content if we're going to get hit for a duplicate content filter or have another site out rank us with our own data. Thanks for your help in advance! their original content page: http://www.cookstr.com/recipes/sauteacuteed-escarole-with-pancetta their syndicated content pages: http://www.shape.com/healthy-eating/healthy-recipes/recipe/sauteacuteed-escarole-with-pancetta
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | irvingw
http://www.mensfitness.com/nutrition/healthy-recipes/recipe/sauteacuteed-escarole-with-pancetta0 -
Two Brands One Site (Duplicate Content Issues)
Say your client has a national product, that's known by different brand names in different parts of the country. Unilever owns a mayonnaise sold East of the Rockies as "Hellmanns" and West of the Rockies as "Best Foods". It's marketed the same way, same slogan, graphics, etc... only the logo/brand is different. The websites are near identical with different logos, especially the interior pages. The Hellmanns version of the site has earned slightly more domain authority. Here is an example recipe page for some "WALDORF SALAD WRAPS by Bobby Flay Recipe" http://www.bestfoods.com/recipe_detail.aspx?RecipeID=12497&version=1 http://www.hellmanns.us/recipe_detail.aspx?RecipeID=12497&version=1 Both recipie pages are identical except for one logo. Neither pages ranks very well, neither has earned any backlinks, etc... Oddly the bestfood version does rank better (even though everything is the same, same backlinks, and hellmanns.us having more authority). If you were advising the client, what would you do. You would ideally like the Hellmann version to rank well for East Coast searches, and the Best Foods version for West Coast searches. So do you: Keep both versions with duplicate content, and focus on earning location relevant links. I.E. Earn Yelp reviews from east coast users for Hellmanns and West Coast users for Best foods? Cross Domain Canonical to give more of the link juice to only one brand so that only one of the pages ranks well for non-branded keywords? (but both sites would still rank for their branded keyworkds). No Index one of the brands so that only one version gets in the index and ranks at all. The other brand wouldn't even rank for it's branded keywords. Assume it's not practical to create unique content for each brand (the obvious answer). Note: I don't work for Unilver, but I have a client in a similar position. I lean towards #2, but the social media firm on the account wants to do #1. (obviously some functionally based bias in both our opinions, but we both just want to do what will work best for client). Any thoughts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | crvw0