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.
Other websites copy content and giving a link back
-
Hi,
I've just noticed a few back links in Google Search Console, I was excited. But when I saw the backlinks, 2 other websites that had completely copied my content and then gave a backlink to my website.
Is this bad for SEO and would google penalise my website for this?
-
In my opinion it is bad to allow infringing content to appear on other websites. These are duplicate content. It is possible that they will outrank you in the SERPs or result in your page being filtered from the search results. Also, if you work hard to produce this content then you want people coming to your site to see it - not to the websites of others. If it appears on websites all over the web then why should people visit your website? Finally, if these folks use the content and give you an attribution link, that communicates to everyone who sees it that your content is available for reuse.
Google says that they are good at recognizing the original source of content, however, I know from experience that they are far from perfect. Some SEOs believe Google, and advise clients to distribute their content as a way of earning links. I would not listen to them.
We tell infringers to take our content down and when they don't comply we either submit DMCA to Google, their revenue source and their hosting - or we have an attorney send them notice. We are sending out three notices today.
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
-
What are the SEO implications of high quality backlinks from US-based websites to UK-based websites?
Hi everyone, quick question I hope someone could help me with: We're representing a client based in the UK. As part of their overall strategy we've been linkbuilding. At the moment, about 80/90% of the links we've gained come from UK-based sites, with 10/20% coming from US-based websites. The US based websites are very good (think New York Times and genuine, relevant blogs with good readerships). An external search analyst/consultant has contacted the client to say that the US links will be harming the site, because the links are from websites in the US and not the UK. We believe that if 80/90% of the links were from the US this could indeed cause harm as it could indicate to search engines that our client is in the US when it's not (which might compromise their chance of ranking in .co.uk versions of search engines) however because it's only 10/20%, and because the linking sites are very good, we believe that they will getting all of the benefits of the positive metrics without any meaningful negatives. We just wanted to get a few opinions on this to see if people think that we're mistaken, and would be glad to hear any opinions contrary to our own.
Link Building | | GoUp0 -
Duplicate contents with competitors websites
Hello, I have use the http://copyscape.com to check the duplicate content and found that my website have some errors duplicate contents with other competitors website. But a problem is, I could not define the reason of this (my website copied the competitors website or they copied of mine) To solve this issues, should I modify a unique my contents (this is difficult) or anyone have a good solution for this problem? Please give me advice? Thank you!
Link Building | | JohnHuynh0 -
What is a good ratio of total links to linking root domains?
Is 100 total links for every linking domain too high? I suppose I could also look at ratios of sites that are doing well in the rankings.
Link Building | | ProjectLabs0 -
Are links with space considered to be the same as links with %20?
I wonder if Google would consider those three links to be the same? http://www.example.com/test page.html http://www.example.com/test page.html http://www.example.com/test+page.html
Link Building | | lucek0 -
How can I find all the outbound links from a website domain?
I want to find all the outbound links (basically whatever comes in <a>tag) from a domain (say www.abc.com) as well as all the subdomains under it (say abc.com/a etc). Open Site Explorer provides the inbound links from a website but does not provide any functionality to get all the outbound links from a website. Is it possible to do?</a> <a>Thanks in advance. Deepak Jain</a>
Link Building | | Deepak_Jain0 -
Link Detox and Link Removal
I have a question about which links to remove after running a link detox from Link Research Tools. First a little back story. I had had an SEO company link building for one of the websites I own. But I have recently stopped working with them. In the last month my rankings have near dropped off the charts. I have just recently gotten access to Google webmaster tools and noticed an unnatural link warning from back in March. So yesterday I ran link detox and it reported 19 toxic links, 120 suspicious links, and 24 healthy links. It's rather obvious that I should remove all of the toxic links. They all from sites that have been deindexed by google. But my question is a about the suspicious links. What should my criteria be for removing them? Am I better off removing them all and leaving my site with only 24 healthy links or should I personally comb through them and remove only the worst of the worst so that I leave my site with a few more links? I'd really like to get the site ready to resubmit to google as soon as I can. Thoughts? yyCOf.png
Link Building | | CobraJones950 -
Does the ratio of external nofollow links to external "do follow" links matter in terms of SERPs ranking?
My site has an external link nofollow:dofollow ratio of approximately 1:1 That is, there are about as many nofollow external links as "do follow" external links. I have an impression that the ratio of no-follow to "do follow" links is a factor in the way that our website shows up in SERPs. I have the impression from reading a variety of sources, and from looking at Seomoz, that calculate "trust" factors as if they mattered (in SERPs), that seem to value a relatively low nofollow:dofollow ratio. Am I correct about that? Thanks,
Link Building | | tcolling
Tim PS - I don't know whether or not this matters, but our website is at: www.trustworthycare.com - Tim0 -
Asking other websites to link your website when the want to be in your directory
Hello, We have 3 web directories, and I wonder if it is legal for search engines to ask people who want to be in the directory to link to a particular website in order to be in our directory. I mean, it is free adding the url in the directory but if they lwant to be in the directory they have to ink to a website we have decided.
Link Building | | teconsite.com
Is this correct, or is punishable? Thanks!0
