Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      Let your reputation grow with Reviews AI
      Moz Local

      Let your reputation grow with Reviews AI

      Learn more
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    4. Could another site copying my content hurt my ranking?

    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.

    Could another site copying my content hurt my ranking?

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    3
    4
    849
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • Wagster
      Wagster last edited by

      Earlier this week I asked why a page of mine might not be ranking locally.  (https://moz.com/community/q/what-could-be-stopping-us-from-ranking-locally). Maybe this might be part of the answer – another firm has copied huge chunks of my website copy:

      **My company: **https://idearocketanimation.com/video-production-company/

      The other company: http://studio3dm.com/studio3dm-com/video/

      Could this be causing my page to not rank? And is there anything I can do about it, other than huff and puff to the other firm? (Which I am already doing.)

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • TucsonAZWebDesign
        TucsonAZWebDesign last edited by

        Nigel's right in saying that despite everyone loving to say duplicate content has no negative impact on you it definitely does. I've recently had some creep online stalker clone throw away websites of some of my recent backlinks in an effort to cause me ranking issues. I submitted them all to Google for fishing/credential harvest accounts.

        REAL LINK
        activerain com
        **FAKE LINKS **
        activerain net 
        activereign net
        REAL LINK
        seoeffect com
        FAKE LINKS
        demo-seoeffect nl
        REAL LINK
        stripperweb com
        FAKE LINKS
        clarxidad gq
        tirtas cf
        hascrafot ga

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
        • Wagster
          Wagster last edited by

          Thanks, I've done exactly as you've suggested.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • Nigel_Carr
            Nigel_Carr last edited by

            Hi William

            It looks like they have done this to deliberately target you. It doesn't make any sense as it wouldn't be great for them either. The fact is that you are the copyright owner and whatever people may say about copied content not affecting you, duplicate content does and you now both have a virtually identical page.

            This is bound to affect you - duplicate content is a no no and whilst Google may elevate you above the other page- which sits in a directory it will still have an effect.

            I would open a copyright dispute with Google - pretty simple to do: Here:

            https://support.google.com/legal/troubleshooter/1114905?hl=en

            Hit 'web search' and I have a legal dispute that is not mentioned above.

            Get it removed.

            Regards

            Nigel

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
            • 1 / 1
            • First post
              Last post

            Got a burning SEO question?

            Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


            Start my free trial


            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.

            • See all categories

            Related Questions

            • TaraLP

              Will changing category URLs on site hurt SEO?

              Hi Moz Community, We're looking to replace some URLs on our Wordpress site and I want to make sure we won't hurt our SEO with the changes. The site is lushpalm.com When we originally launched our site we created pages (which are linked to in our main menu) to essentially display our categories. We did this as a workaround because we didn’t like the URL to have the word “category” in it. Now we would like to make some changes and we want to make sure we’re not going to hurt our SEO in any way by accidentally duplicating content or otherwise. We want to fix our structure and now link to our category pages from our main menu, BUT we want to change the URL of the category page so that it doesn’t have “category” in it, essentially renaming it the name of the page currently linked to in our main menu. So basically, the category lushpalm.com/category/surf-trips, would be renamed with the URL lushpalm.com/surf-trips and the current page that is at lushpalm.com/surf-trips would be therefore replaced. My questions are: If we did this, would that mean that the previous “lushpalm.com/category/surf-trips” would cease to exist? Or is there some imprint of that out on the web? And if it is then would it re-direct to the new page? Would replacing the current page URL with a category hurt our current SEO in any way? Would this change cause any duplicate pages somehow? Thanks so much for your help!

              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TaraLP
              1
            • binhlai

              If my website do not have a robot.txt file, does it hurt my website ranking?

              After a site audit, I find out that my website don't have a robot.txt. Does it hurt my website rankings? One more thing, when I type mywebsite.com/robot.txt, it automatically redirect to the homepage. Please help!

              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | binhlai
              0
            • KaranX

              Submitting Same Press Release Content to Multiple PR Sites - Good or Bad Practice?

              I see some PR (press release) sites where they distribute the same content on many different sites and at end they give the source link is that Good SEO Practice or Bad ? If it is Good Practice then how Google Panda or other algorithms consider it ?

              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KaranX
              0
            • adzhass

              Google cache is showing my UK homepage site instead of the US homepage and ranking the UK site in US

              Hi There, When I check the cache of the US website (www.us.allsaints.com) Google returns the UK website. This is also reflected in the US Google Search Results when the UK site ranks for our brand name instead of the US site. The homepage has hreflang tags only on the homepage and the domains have been pointed correctly to the right territories via Google Webmaster Console.This has happened before in 26th July 2015 and was wondering if any had any idea why this is happening or if any one has experienced the same issueFDGjldR

              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | adzhass
              0
            • ColeLusby

              Sites in multiple countries using same content question

              Hey Moz, I am looking to target international audiences. But I may have duplicate content. For example, I have article 123 on each domain listed below. Will each content rank separately (in US and UK and Canada) because of the domain? The idea is to rank well in several different countries. But should I never have an article duplicated? Should we start from ground up creating articles per country? Some articles may apply to both! I guess this whole duplicate content thing is quite confusing to me. I understand that I can submit to GWT and do geographic location and add rel=alternate tag but will that allow all of them to rank separately? www.example.com www.example.co.uk www.example.ca Please help and thanks so much! Cole

              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ColeLusby
              0
            • Kingalan1

              Domain Authority: 23, Page Authority: 33, Can My Site Still Rank?

              Greetings: Our New York City commercial real estate site is www.nyc-officespace-leader.com. Key MOZ metric are as follows: Domain Authority: 23
              Page Authority: 33
              28 Root Domains linking to the site
              179 Total Links. In the last six months domain authority, page authority, domains linking to the site have declined. We have focused on removing duplicate content and low quality links which may have had a negative impact on the above metrics. Our ranking has dropped greatly in the last two months. Could it be due to the above metrics? These numbers seem pretty bad. How can I reverse without engaging in any black hat behavior that could work against me in the future? Ideas?
              Thanks, Alan Rosinsky

              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan1
              0
            • MSWD

              Splitting a Site into Two Sites for SEO Purposes

              I have a client that owns a business that really could be easily divided into two separate business in terms of SEO.  Right now his web site covers both divisions of his business. He gets about 5500 visitors a month.  The majority go to one part of his business and around 600 each month go to the other. So about 11% I'm considering breaking off this 11% and putting it on an entirely different domain name.  I think I could rank better for this 11%.  The site would only be SEO'd for this particular division of the company.  The keywords would not be in competition with each other. I would of course link the two web sites and watch that I don't run into any duplicate content issues. I worry about placing the redirects from the pages that I remove to the new pages.  I know Google is not a fan of redirects.  Then I also worry about the eventual drop in traffic to the main site now.  How big of a factor is traffic in rankings? Other challenges include that the business services 4 major metropolitan areas. Would you do this?  Have you done this?  How did it work? Any suggestions?

              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MSWD
              0
            • WSOT

              How get rid of duplicate content, titles, etc on php cartweaver site?

              my website http://www.bartramgallery.com was created using php and cartweaver  2.0 about five years ago by a web developer.  I was really happy with the results of the design was inspired to get into web development and have been studying ever since.  My biggest problem at this time is that I am not knowledgable with php and the cartweaver product but am learning as I read more.  The issue is that seomoz tools are reporting tons of duplicate content and duplicate title pages etc.  This is likely from the dynamic urls and same pages with secondary results etc.  I just made a new sitemap with auditmypc I think it was called in an attempt to get rid of all the duplicate page titles but is that going to solve anything or do I need to find another way to configure the site?  There are many pages with the same content competing for page rank and it is a bit frustrating to say the least.  If anyone has any advice it would be greatly appreciated even pointing me in the right direction. Thank you, Jesse

              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WSOT
              0

            Get started with Moz Pro!

            Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

            Start my free trial
            Products
            • Moz Pro
            • Moz Local
            • Moz API
            • Moz Data
            • STAT
            • Product Updates
            Moz Solutions
            • SMB Solutions
            • Agency Solutions
            • Enterprise Solutions
            • Digital Marketers
            Free SEO Tools
            • Domain Authority Checker
            • Link Explorer
            • Keyword Explorer
            • Competitive Research
            • Brand Authority Checker
            • Local Citation Checker
            • MozBar Extension
            • MozCast
            Resources
            • Blog
            • SEO Learning Center
            • Help Hub
            • Beginner's Guide to SEO
            • How-to Guides
            • Moz Academy
            • API Docs
            About Moz
            • About
            • Team
            • Careers
            • Contact
            Why Moz
            • Case Studies
            • Testimonials
            Get Involved
            • Become an Affiliate
            • MozCon
            • Webinars
            • Practical Marketer Series
            • MozPod
            Connect with us

            Contact the Help team

            Join our newsletter
            Moz logo
            © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
            • Accessibility
            • Terms of Use
            • Privacy

            Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.