Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Stolen Content reposted on other sites. How does this affect ranking?
-
Visitors often copy and paste my content and post it elsewhere... on Facebook, on Tumblr, on forums and sometimes on competing websites... but they don't link to me.
How does Google treat this duplicated content?
What is the best way to handle it? File DCMA claims or ask them for a link?
-
JVRudnick, your story reminds me of this cool new site you can use to see whether the NSA are watching you: http://AreTheNSAWatchingMe.com/.
Also reminds me of the T-shirt I wore yesterday.
-
As usual, Egol perfectly answered...but thought I'd just add....
That just a year ago, I did file a DMCA and eventually wound up (honest!) talking to someone from Homeland Security in the US as the firm I was after apparently was being "watched!" While I do believe we're all being watched, that experience did worry me a bit...
My content was taken down - but by the .gov of the firm in which the owners of same lived - least that's the answer I got...if you can trust that anything you hear from the ones in charge is believeable.... <knocks on="" desk="">testing testing...you guys still listening in???
:-)</knocks>
-
I think Egol has covered it.
We recently did a DMCA, and it was really quick. Our case was cut and dried though, we're financial services so have to hold a record of everything we publish for our regulator so it was really easy to prove. I did dob the other company in to iStock photo as well though because they are still showing an image we paid for and it's cropped exactly the same as the way our designer did it so we can only assume the other company did steal it.
-
As long as it wasn't that boss of yours forcing you to work!
-
This question was about one of my personal rants. I couldn't help myself.
-
It's Labor Day weekend. Shouldn't you be chasing down a BBQ grill and a beer instead of Q&A questions EGOL?
Appreciate your thoughtful answers on a holiday weekend!
-
Visitors often copy and paste my content and post it elsewhere...
Congratulations! You must have great content!
... but they don't link to me.
Those weasels!
This happens with my content a lot. It makes me mad.
How does Google treat this duplicated content?
They claim that they know where the content originated, but they are either overestimatin' their abilities or just lyin' about them. Some people will argue in Google's favor but they don't know what they are talkin' about. (If you are one of these people, I'll not argue with you, you can keep belivin' it. I know I am right.)
What is the best way to handle it? File DCMA claims or ask them for a link?
These weasels probably don't have public whois and no contact info on their website. If they do have contact info on their website it is probably phony.
If you can send them a message (and a human reads it) the message will probably be ignored, maybe even laughed at. If you get a reply it will probably be the verbal equivalent of being flipped off. Some people just don't understand copyright. Some people understand copyright or are located where they can abuse the copyright of people in your country. They have built a business out of stealing your content and mine. They often have thousands of websites with your content and mine. They are making tons of munny.
If you file a DCMA, you better have absolute knowledge that the content truly belongs to you and that they are not displaying it under a valid "fair use", because they can sue you if you play this the wrong way.
The remaining people who steal your content, just don't know that they are stealing. They think that anything on the web is fair game. A lot of the stolen content is on legit websites. They hired an SEO who hired someone else, in a country where copyright is not thought about, and they grabbed your content, slapped it on somebody's website and said that they wrote it just for the client.
Good luck. Be careful. Find a way to keep the blood pressure down. Buy a punchin' bag. My experience is, chasing weasels only gets you tired, most of them are only out after dark and you will never find them.
So, you can see that I think that this is harmful and it is really hard to do anything about it.
ADDED: Got so busy in my rant I forgot to answer....
How does this affect ranking?
If you have a healthy, vigorous site, having a few pieces of stolen content on other websites will probably not hurt you if they are weak websites. However, it can tank your rankings if the content is on strong websites - stronger than yours. Also, it can kill your rankings if it is on lots of weak websites.
Examples:
I was selling some products that were made in China. My content got grabbed by hundreds of Chinese websites publishing in English. My rankings tanked. Tanked. The result was that I gave thousands of dollars worth of outdoor gear to Goodwill.
I had several articles about commodities (like what is traded on exchanges). They ranked in the top three of google for searches on those commodities. Tens of thousands (I am not joking) of spam commodities websites grabbed my articles or pieces of my articles and republished them. My articles disappeared from google even though I had held those great rankings for a couple of years and they were on PR6 pages. Fortunately, they have recently returned to good rankings and I am making money from them again but lost great revenue for a couple of years.
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
-
Google ranking content for phrases that don't exist on-page
I am experiencing an issue with negative keywords, but the “negative” keyword in question isn’t truly negative and is required within the content – the problem is that Google is ranking pages for inaccurate phrases that don’t exist on the page. To explain, this product page (as one of many examples) - https://www.scamblermusic.com/albums/royalty-free-rock-music/ - is optimised for “Royalty free rock music” and it gets a Moz grade of 100. “Royalty free” is the most accurate description of the music (I optimised for “royalty free” instead of “royalty-free” (including a hyphen) because of improved search volume), and there is just one reference to the term “copyrighted” towards the foot of the page – this term is relevant because I need to make the point that the music is licensed, not sold, and the licensee pays for the right to use the music but does not own it (as it remains copyrighted). It turns out however that I appear to need to treat “copyrighted” almost as a negative term because Google isn’t accurately ranking the content. Despite excellent optimisation for “Royalty free rock music” and only one single reference of “copyrighted” within the copy, I am seeing this page (and other album genres) wrongly rank for the following search terms: “free rock music”
On-Page Optimization | | JCN-SBWD
“Copyright free rock music"
“Uncopyrighted rock music”
“Non copyrighted rock music” I understand that pages might rank for “free rock music” because it is part of the “Royalty free rock music” optimisation, what I can’t get my head around is why the page (and similar product pages) are ranking for “Copyright free”, “Uncopyrighted music” and “Non copyrighted music”. “Uncopyrighted” and “Non copyrighted” don’t exist anywhere within the copy or source code – why would Google consider it helpful to rank a page for a search term that doesn’t exist as a complete phrase within the content? By the same logic the page should also wrongly rank for “Skylark rock music” or “Pretzel rock music” as the words “Skylark” and “Pretzel” also feature just once within the content and therefore should generate completely inaccurate results too. To me this demonstrates just how poor Google is when it comes to understanding relevant content and optimization - it's taking part of an optimized term and combining it with just one other single-use word and then inappropriately ranking the page for that completely made up phrase. It’s one thing to misinterpret one reference of the term “copyrighted” and something else entirely to rank a page for completely made up terms such as “Uncopyrighted” and “Non copyrighted”. It almost makes me think that I’ve got a better chance of accurately ranking content if I buy a goat, shove a cigar up its backside, and sacrifice it in the name of the great god Google! Any advice (about wrongly attributed negative keywords, not goat sacrifice ) would be most welcome.0 -
On Site Question: Duplicate H2...
Hi All A few on-site audit tools pull information on duplicate H2 tags on pages. This implies it's a bad thing and should be fixed - is that the case? On one of my sites the tag-line is in H2 in the header, so appears on every page... Just wondering if this is something worth fixing. Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | GTAMP0 -
SEO audit on a beta site
HI there, Is there much point conducting an SEO site audit on a site that has not yet launched and is protected behind a login? Presumably none of the usual SEO tools (Moz, Screaming Frog etc) can crawl this site becuase it is all locked behind a login. Would it be better to launch it and then do a site audit? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | CosiCrawley0 -
Duplicate content penalty
when moz crawls my site they say I have 2x the pages that I really have & they say I am being penalized for duplicate content. I know years ago I had my old domain resolve over to my new domain. Its the only thing that makes sense as to the duplicate content but would search engines really penalize me for that? It is technically only on 1 site. My business took a significant sales hit starting early July 2013, I know google did and algorithm update that did have SEO aspects. I need to resolve the problem so I can stay in business
On-Page Optimization | | cheaptubes0 -
ECommerce Filtering Affect on SEO
I'm building an eCommerce website which has an advanced filter on the left hand side of the category pages. It allows users to tick boxes for colours, sizes, materials, and so on. When they've made their choices they submit (this will likely be an AJAX thing in a future release, but isn't at time of writing). The new filtered page has a new URL, which is made up of the IDs of the filter's they've ticked - it's a bit like /department/2/17-7-4/10/ My concern is that the filtered pages are, on the most part, going to be the same as the parent. Which may lead to duplicate content. My other concern is that these two URLs would lead to the exact same page (although the system would never generate the 'wrong' URL) /department/2/17-7-4/10/ /department/2/**10/**17-7-4/ But I can't think of a way of canonicalising that automatically. Tricky. So the meat of the question is this: should I worry about this causing issues with the SEO - or can I have trust in Google to work it out?
On-Page Optimization | | AndieF0 -
Duplicate content on partner site
I have a trade partner who will be using some of our content on their site. What's the best way to prevent any duplicate content issues? Their plan is to attribute the content to us using rel=author tagging. Would this be sufficient or should I request that they do something else too? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | ShearingsGroup0 -
Duplicate Content for Men's and Women's Version of Site
So, we're a service where you can book different hairdressing services from a number of different salons (site being worked on). We're doing both a male and female version of the site on the same domain which users are can select between on the homepage. The differences are largely cosmetic (allowing the designers to be more creative and have a bit of fun and to also have dedicated male grooming landing pages), but I was wondering about duplicate pages. While most of the pages on each version of the site will be unique (i.e. [male service] in [location] vs [female service] in [location] with the female taking precedent when there are duplicates), what should we do about the likes of the "About" page? Pages like this would both be unique in wording but essentially offer the same information and does it make sense to to index two different "About" pages, even if the titles vary? My question is whether, for these duplicate pages, you would set the more popular one as the preferred version canonically, leave them both to be indexed or noindex the lesser version entirely? Hope this makes sense, thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | LeahHutcheon0 -
Best practice for franchise sites with duplicated content
I know that duplicated content is a touchy subject but I work with multiple franchise groups and each franchisee wants their own site, however, almost all of the sites use the same content. I want to make sure that Google sees each one of these sites as unique sites and does not penalize them for the following issues. All sites are hosted on the same server therefor the same IP address All sites use generally the same content across their product pages (which are very very important pages) *templated content approved by corporate Almost all sites have the same design (A few of the groups we work with have multiple design options) Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks Again Aaron
On-Page Optimization | | Shipyard_Agency0
