Scraping Website and Using Our Clients Info
-
One of our clients on Moz has noticed that another website has been scraping their website and pulling lots of their content without permission. We would like to notify Google about this company but are not sure if that is the right remedy to correct the problem. They appear in search results on Google using the client's name so they seem to be use page titles etc with the client's name in them. Several of the SERP links link to their own website but it pulls in our client's web page. Was hoping anyone could perhaps provide some additional options on how to attack this problem?
-
Consult an attorney to get up-to-speed on copyright, infringement, and fair-use. Filing DMCAs or taking other actions that exceed your rights or infringe on the fair-use of others can result in a lawsuit against YOU.
Infringement by an upstanding company is usually done by an employee, a content writer, or an SEO who is ignorant about copyright law. Rarely they can be guilty of willful infringement, which can result in both civil and criminal actions.
If upstanding people or organizations are infringing, you can send informal infringement complaints yourself or have them sent by an attorney. It is often better to notify them of the infringement and get it stopped before it increases.
The quickest way to deal with spammy infringers is the DMCA to Google that SEAN suggests. You can also send DMCA to their host. If they are monitized by adsense you can complain to Adsense and they might turn off the ads on infringing pages or turn off the ads to the entire site.
I am not an attorney, but have used them frequently. They usually cost less than you fear and are usually worth more than you pay them.
-
Thanks for input Sean. I will definitely file the complaint and see what happens. Appreciate the input!
-
**They absolutely should notify Google! ** you should file a DMCA complaint with Google:
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/legal-removal-request?hl=en&pid=0&complaint_type=1
Google is very reluctant to do anything resembling work typically but if you file the complaint accurately and all your ducks are in a row, they'll de-index the copyrighted content.
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
-
I lost traffic from my website and the rankings also gone down... What should I do?
I've started working on a project recently (for 20 days) and it got average 1800 visitors per day and the ranking were seemed good. When I started that project, I saw that there were too many plugins installed. I removed unnecessary plugins and keep the importance ones. And I started modify some pages considering SEO perspective. Few days ago I created a backlink in reddit; from where I got way too much traffic in the site at the time and the server gone down. So I have to change the server. Now I see the drastic drop down in both ranking and the traffic. I am wondering if the ranking affected when I changed the server? Or Is there any other way to check why my ranking and traffic gone down?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | HuptechWebseo0 -
How to find Spam Website?
Hi guys, I'm seo newbie and really want to find websites that hurt seo ranking to avoid get link. Which tools or trick can help me to find those site?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | denakalami0 -
Site Footer Links Used for Keyword Spam
I was on the phone with a proposed web relaunch firm for one of my clients listening to them talk about their deep SEO knowledge. I cannot believe that this wouldn’t be considered black-hat or at least very Spammy in which case a client could be in trouble. On this vendor’s site I notice that they stack the footer site map with about 50 links that are basically keywords they are trying to rank for. But here’s the kicker shown by way of example from one of the themes in the footer: 9 footer links:
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | RosemaryB
Top PR Firms
Best PR Firms
Leading PR Firms
CyberSecurity PR Firms
Cyber Security PR Firms
Technology PR Firms
PR Firm
Government PR Firms
Public Sector PR Firms Each link goes to a unique URL that is basically a knock-off of the homepage with a few words or at the most one sentences swapped out to include this footer link keyword phrase, sometimes there is a different title attribute but generally they are a close match to each other. The canonical for each page links back to itself. I simply can’t believe Google doesn’t consider this Spammy. Interested in your view.
Rosemary0 -
Exact match domain - should i use one
i have the domain "region"familyholidays.co.uk for an upcoming site. i was pleased as its memorable and tells the user what its about. i am targetting keywords such as: region family holidays region family hotels region famliy cottages region family campsites is it something i should avoid because of potential penalties. i will be adding plenty of good content and doing all the offsite things but dont want to start with a handicap with an emd? thanks neil
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | neilhenderson0 -
Why have bots (including googlebot) categorized my website as adult?
How do bots decide whether a website is adult? For example, I have a gifting portal, but strangely here, it is categorized as 'Adult'. Also, my google adsense application to run ads on my site got rejected - I have a feeling this is because googlebot categorized my site as adult. And there are good chances that other bots also consider it an adult website, rather than a gifting website. Can anyone please go through the site and tell me why this is happening? Thanks in advance.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | rahulkan0 -
Strange client request
I have a client who attends an internet marketing meetup. I have been once myself. Good group of people but most seem lost when it comes to SEO and can't tell Black from White! Well today my client emailed me and in the email she mentioned doing a trick to the title tags. Client: "there is a trick to use with the title by putting keywords in quotes and parenthasis. I'm sure you know how to do that little trick. If we do it in the title and in the first few lines of the verbage it will soar us near the top and hopefully on the first page of Google." a few sentences later "We could use a tad more content on the first page ( with parantesis and quotes) to boost us up in the ratings. At least it is an easy trick to do." I have never heard of this. Has anyone else heard about this. Please share thoughts. It sounds completely bogus to me but I will be the first to admit that i don't know everything! However i would like to have more than just my opinion when I talk to my client. Let me know what you think.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | NateStewart0 -
Website that just got hit....Need some tips or ideas...
Hey guys, The website of the company i work hit in the PR update two days ago . A little history , the site was notice by Google about spam links around 5-6 months ago .
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | WayneRooney
Since then there is a company that cleans all the spam links and manage all the disavow process. In the last penguin update ( about two months ago ) the site jumped like crazy in the ranking and stayed there ever since... In the last three months we create less than ten links to the site, and we have focus all our work to improve
the optimization of the site.
It should be noted that the company is investing a lot in social networks and all the work in the past 3 month are White and clean... Now, two days ago in the PR update (more or less) the site just dropped , but when i say dropped , it's 200 keys that was in page 1-2 that just want out to page 5-6-7. Like the website is gone, i never see something like this... The things that pass through my head: A lot of the links the linking to the site with high PR lost their pr and now they are worthless, but still this drop ? its to extreme.
Or that Google received the disavow and just disavow a lot of links.... Does anyone have any ideas or tips on the subject ? Thank you0 -
Is this website being punished by Google?
Hi, I just took over the SEO for a friend of mine's website. Is this website being punished by Google? It has a strong link score, the homepage needs work as far as Key wording goes but it does not appear in Google's top 100 for any keyword. I am not sure that the last SEO company did some harm. Can anyone give me some tips on getting my friend back into the mix? www.wallybuysell.com
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | CKerr0
