Remove Scraped Content?
-
There is a site I work for that has content that, when you search in Google a snippet of text from, they are not the top result for. I believe what has happened is that they had written blogs and articles and added them to their site and article directories at the same time and the article directories got cached first.
If we're not coming up first for our article, that means we are not believed to be the original author, correct?
Should I remove all content from our site where this is happening, even though we actually did create these articles?
-
I explained the answer to this in the second part of my original post.
-
I would hope you had a link, when possible, back to your site. If not, then the page should be dated by creation and last update which Google can see. Although I would not leave anything up to guess work, but make sure you have links, and I would even put the date it was posted onto the post on your site like news article are. Just another indicator.
I would not remove the content if in fact, it did originate from you.
-
Yes, it was intentionally distributed. I would like to know whether the duplicate content on our site is being seen (by Google) as copied, not original, scraped, pulled from another source because we're so lazy we can't come up with any material of our own??
If this is the case, I will be removing the content, as the quality of the content sucks and there is quite a bit of it. Please, do not respond "if the content sucks, then why have it on your site..."
-
The term "scraped content" is most often used for content that has been grabbed from your website by a visiting robot.
Based upon your posting, the duplicate content that you are talking about was intentionally distributed.
-
Then how do you determine if Google is seeing content as scraped? As you know, Google has made it very clear recently how they feel about scraped content.
-
If we're not coming up first for our article, that means we are not believed to be the original author, correct?
Search engines can not identify original authors. (unless you use the rel="author" attribute and then they are merely taking your word for it) They only know which page with the content was discovered first. The content could have been on other pages first or the content could have been published first offline. Search engines don't have divine powers
The page that ranks first in the SERPs is the one that has the best combination of relevance, domain authority and other ranking factors. Has nothing to do with authorship.
Should I remove all content from our site where this is happening, even though we actually did create these articles?
I would not do that if the content is valuable for your visitors, has acquired links from other sites or if the content is pulling traffic from search.
The take-away from this is not to give your content away if you want to rank for it in search. Giving it away can create strong competitors and feed existing competitors.
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
-
2 Domains, 1 Brand - Content Marketing Strategy Question
I have a customer that has two separate locations for the same business on two different URLs (both connected via Landing Page). I cannot change this. They are in the powersports industry (snowmobiles, ATVs, motorcycles, dirt bikes, etc). The locations are about 10 miles from one another, essentially sell the same brands & products (there are 1 or 2 exceptions), have the same target audience (local & from out-of-state), and have the same goals. They currently rank #1 and #2 for their industry in their area. They now want a content marketing strategy. I face limitations with the CMS (no blog abilities and technical issues that are out of my control), and content marketing can really only consist of custom graphics & custom page creation. Typically, custom pages are utilized by creating Brand Pages describing the major brands to built out authority in those categories, and then try to branch out from there to create individual product-category pages with more unique content to answer more of a question based on the intent. I am very concerned about creating content that will be too similar between the two locations and will thus compete with the other location, so I am thinking I should devise a completely different strategy for 1 location over the other. Is that a good idea? I think with the smaller location, I choose the typical route of creating brand pages, product pages, etc, and then with the bigger location, try to focus on unique content such as buyer's guide, local SEO ideas about the area, FAQs, testimonials, etc. Thoughts/ideas?
Content Development | | Crichardson19900 -
What are some good examples of content marketing done well for clothing online retailers?
Hello, I am working on planning for a redesign of a eCommerce clothing website. Looking for some inspiration on some good examples of clothing companies using their content well. The design does not have to be the best, it can be just very well done use of blog type content or video. Thank you in advance for taking time to respond!
Content Development | | srbello0 -
We want to move Content from one domain to another
We have a large amount of unique content on a domain we are no longer using/promoting. Its been sat there for a couple of years. Its literally wasted content on a non used or promoted domain. We want to move it to a busy site of ours. Are there any best practices or pitfalls we should be aware of?
Content Development | | Simonws0010 -
Why did Moz remove thumbs down from blog posts?
You may have already noticed one of the decisions we made when we redesigned the Moz Blog:
Content Development | | Trevor-Klein
We removed thumbs down from the posts. And it was largely in the name of transparency. Wait, HUH? You took away a method of critique, and you're calling that transparent? Yes. Here's the scoop: Thumbs down are one of the most cryptic, uninformative, and often passive-aggressive forms of feedback on the Internet today. By removing the mud from the water, we make the entire picture clearer. It's so easy to see a handful of thumbs down on a post (we would almost always get 1-2), and begin hypothesizing what went wrong. We shouldn't have published that one. The topic was too tangentially relevant; it was too long or too hard to follow. There wasn't enough evidence to support the claims. We could dive into analytics, attempting to glean clues about what happened, but in reality, any one of the following are reasons someone might thumb a post down: The title is confusing The topic is one that I'd like to deny exists (algo update, e.g.) The milk I poured on my cereal this morning had gone bad, and I need to take out this frustration somehow I once had a falling-out with the author of this post I still have a bad taste in my mouth about yesterday's post, which is skewing my thoughts about this one I found one of the comments offensive My finger slipped on my phone while I was trying to thumb this post up (we've confirmed this happens) I didn't like the author's self-promotion in this post I saw the new Star Wars trailer, and am terrified that Disney might think including Jar Jar's long-lost brother in the new film is a good idea. I hate everything right now. Okay, the last one might be a stretch. But you get the idea. Sometimes a post would receive a disproportionate amount of thumbs down simply because the author was proposing an idea that wasn't popular, no matter its importance. One great example: Carson Ward wrote a fabulous post in 2012 titled "Guest Blogging – Enough is Enough," divining what Matt Cutts would write about nearly 17 months later. The response? 45 thumbs down – one of the most maligned posts in the history of the Moz Blog. Authors have emailed us in a tizzy, asking if their thumbs down meant they weren't quite right for the Moz audience, and in replying to them we came to this overarching realization: We didn't know why they got thumbs down, and we couldn't find out with any certainty, but more often than not it just didn't really matter. We were confident in their points and their presentation, and real criticism would nearly always show up in the comments. All that said, we love it when people offer up constructive criticism. We always take it to heart, and hearing directly from you all is the best way we can improve. For that reason among many others, we'll always have the comments below the post. If you feel like a post wasn't up to snuff, please take a moment and tell us why in those threads (please keep it TAGFEE). One last note: Thumbs down remain available on comments, though that's a temporary stop-gap while we work on a more informative system for flagging comments that are offensive, or facepalm-worthy attempts at links (they're nofollowed anyway!), or otherwise inappropriate for our community. We'd love your questions or comments on this change, and hope you're enjoying the new look of the Moz and YouMoz blogs!11 -
Need suggestion to place longer content on products category page
Hi All, I wanted to place longer content on products category page, Currenty I am showing product listing first and then small description at the end of listing.I don't want to add longer content either bottom or top. I want to make two tabs at the top of each category pages like Products | Informtion In Product section (after clicking on it) I want to display all products listing & in Information tab (after clicking on it) 2-3 paragraphs of webpage content but I'm afraid If I will place the content in this way Google won't index content and my purpose of adding webpage content to target long tail keywords won't fulfill. Please suggest me if you have any better idea & let me know what I am going to do would be good or not in SEO perspective. Thanks
Content Development | | Alick3000 -
Typepad.com blog migration & duplicate content
I've migrated a typepad.com blog with a bunch of content (but little traffic) onto a hosted WordPress site under my own domain name (the way I should've done it in the first place). Now I don't want to confuse Google that the new site is duplicating content from the other site, so would I be better off with: 1) meta-refresh redirecting each typepad.com post to the same post on the new blog, or 2) just killing the typepad.com blog entirely so Google will not find duplicate posts anywhere. In favor of #2 is the fact that these posts get very little traffic today. I figure I will lose more traffic from duplicate content ranking penalties than from losing the posts themselves in the original blog. What do you think?
Content Development | | chriscrabtree0 -
How Google judge about duplicate content?
With recent Search engines updates one thing is clear we cannot ignore content. Content marketing definitely going to be most important part of our SEO strategy. I have few doubts about content marketing (circulation of content over web) where I want suggestions of community members. There would be different thoughts so I would like to have as many as responses to know what majority thinks: When we are writing guest posts, does article needs to be unique with each and every blog we are writing or we can safely circulate one good piece of content to 10-15 blogs who are interested in our creative. We have written a good blog post for our own domain. Apart from social sharing should it be posted to other related blogs too or it should be unique to our domain only. Social sharing, mentions, like of blog matters in rankings?Seems yes they do but need to know what majority thinks. Finally what is the safe number to circulate your content over web.
Content Development | | EG0CENTRIX0 -
Content placement
Does content placement on a page have any effect, bring up top as opposed to bottom as opposed to embedded within? On my product detail page it comes up last after image, social section and add to cart
Content Development | | Dirty1