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
-
Regarding internal duplicate content
Suppose two of my webpages from the same site are having 30% to 35% common content. The reason behind this common content is that I put same data and images (in the main content area) since both pages are partially related. But, title tag, meta description, h1 tag, urls are different.
On-Page Optimization | | b.me
My questions are Can Google consider it as duplicate content?
Can it hamper the ranking of my pages ?
How can I deal with it?0 -
Why does keyword fluctuate in Google - I.E rank 48 - 13 - not ranked
Hello, I would like some advice on Google ranking, my site sportingdesires had a few keywords rank and now their not ranked for those keywords. Am still in the process of on-page and am not too bothered about them ranking high, more of a curiosity I suppose. am not expecting them to reach any where near top due to tough competition. Am just starting from top of website down to individual products ( this will take about 10 years lol ) sorting out seo issues. then will concentrate on link building & content engagement maybe i over optimised the page take a look at AC Milan club shop for example Kindest Regards, ste
On-Page Optimization | | sportingdesires0 -
General drop in rankings
We've made a LOT of improvements to our on page SEO and we've been on the right track, but since about 26/7 our rankings appears to have gone down. Since early 2015 we've reworked a lot of the copy on our site to improve the unique/duplicate ratio, we've redone a lot of urls that didn't make any sense. We've improved image alt-text and file names. We've reduced image size on most of the site and we have disavowed spam links (obvious ones like nike shoes and oakley glasses). We've basically improved on-site SEO as much as we can with headers and whatnot. We've been hacked 4 times since January and we had two partial manual penalties from Google, but they were quickly dealt with and we've switched server to one that is both safer and a lot faster. Most of the hacked content seems to have disappeared from Googles index but not all of it. We have also tried our best to deal with URL parameters and we've made 301's out of hundreds of URLs with duplicate content from old slideshows that basically only had an image. And there's even more things we've done like working a lot more with social media, but despite all that were loosing ranking every week and our SEOlytics SVR is at its lowest since early 2014. And we've never (afaik) bought links or anything like that. Obviously we're doing something wrong but frankly we're running out of ideas. We've lost rankings on individual important phrases but there's site-wide general drop.
On-Page Optimization | | Emil_780 -
Site Not Ranking for Key Term
Question for my fellow Mozers I have a ranking question that I cannot put my finger on. I have a site (visitplano.com) where the client wants to rank for the keyword "Plano". I can't say if the site was previously ranking for this keyword, but I looked into the basic SEO practices and found that the keyword is incorporated in: Domain Title Content There is a lack of internal linking and anchor text within the content External links - 1,558 DA - 46 PA - 55 Currently, the website does not rank for the keyword "Plano". Could someone shed some light on why they aren't ranking or what I may be missing? I would greatly appreciate your help.
On-Page Optimization | | flcity150 -
Duplicate content
Hello, I have two pages showing dulicate content. They are: http://www.cedaradirondackchairs.net/ http://www.cedaradirondackchairs.net/index Not sure how to resolve this issue. Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks.
On-Page Optimization | | Ronb10230 -
Does hosting server location affect my local google page rank
Hi All, This is my first (of many I would say) questions. My clients site is in Ireland but the hosting service is in Canada. So when i use the MozBar it states that the IP is in Canada. Will this affect my page ranking in Dublin, Ireland? The company is a plumbing service so we would only want local Dublin customers. Thanks so much and I hope someone can help me out. cheers, Aidan
On-Page Optimization | | aidanlawlor0 -
Duplicate Page Content Issues
How can I fix Duplicate Page Content Issues on my site : www.ifocalmedia.com. This is a WP site and the diagnostics shows I have 115 errors? I know this is damaging to my SEO campaign how do I clear these? Any help is very welcome.
On-Page Optimization | | shami0 -
Why is our site dropping in Domain Authority
Hi all, I have a question. I have been working SEO on our site www.betxpert.com for the last 4-6 weeks and I have been looking forward to seeing the new DA and PA numbers. However today, our DA is now 30...where it was 31 or 33 a couple of days ago. How come the decrease? I have only improved the site i should say... Hope someone can shed a little light on the issue... -Rasmus
On-Page Optimization | | rasmusbang0