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
-
How to deal with this duplicate content
Hello our websites offers prayer times in the US and UK. The problem is that we have nearby towns where the prayer times are the same and the pages (exp : https://prayer-times.us/prayer-times-lake-michigan-12258-en and https://prayer-times.us/prayer-times-lake-12147-en) are in duplicate . Same issue for this page https://prayer-time.uk/prayer-times-wallsend-411-en How can we solve this problem
On-Page Optimization | | Zakirou0 -
Duplicate Content for Event Pages
Hi Folks, I have event pages for specific training courses running on certain dates, the problem I have is that MOZ indicates that I have 1040 duplicate content issues because I'm serving pages like this https://purplegriffon.com/event/2521/mop-practitioner I'm not sure how best to go about resolving this as, of course, although each event is unique in terms of it's start date, the courses and locations could be identical. Will Google penalise us for these types of pages, or will they even index them? Should I add a canonical link to the head of the document pointing to the related course page such as https://purplegriffon.com/courses/project-management/mop-management-of-portfolios/mop-practitioner. Will this solve the issue? I'm a little stuck on what to do for the best. Any advice would be much appreciated. Thanks. Kind Regards Gareth Daine
On-Page Optimization | | PurpleGriffon0 -
Will "internal 301s" have any effect on page rank or the way in which an SE see's our site interlinking?
We've been forced (for scalability) to completely restructure our website in terms of setting out a hierarchy. For example - the old structure : country / city / city area Where we had about 3500 nicely interlinked pages for relevant things like taxis, hotels, apartments etc in that city : We needed to change the structure to be : country / region / area / city / cityarea So as patr of the change we put in place lots of 301s for the permanent movement of pages to the new structure and then we tried to actually change the physical on-page links too. Unfortunately we have left a good 600 or 700 links that point to the old pages, but are picked up by the 301 redirect on page, so we're slowly going through them to ensure the links go to the new location directly (not via the 301). So my question is (sorry for long waffle) : Whilst it must surely be "best practice" for all on-page links to go directly to the 'right' page, are we harming our own interlinking and even 'page rank' by being tardy in working through them manually? Thanks for any help anyone can give.
On-Page Optimization | | TinkyWinky0 -
How much content does Google Crawl on your site?
Hi, We've had a debate around the office where some people believe that Google only crawls the first 150-200 words on a page and some people believe that they priority content that is above the fold and other people believe that all content has the same priority. Can you help us? Thanks,
On-Page Optimization | | mdorville
Matt0 -
Footer Content
We currently have footer content contained in a single php include file and is included in every page and contains the following: Most recent 3 tweets from our twitter feed Snippets of our 3 most recent blogs posts navigation links to our main pages (essentially the same as our main navigation in the header) Is this good/bad?
On-Page Optimization | | NeilD0 -
Content Update
Hello, If I update the existing content i.e.I added some content to the already existing indexed content in a post,how will it effect SEO wise? Venkee
On-Page Optimization | | Venkee0 -
Google Ranking Dropped
Hi We launched a new website on the12th Feb 2012, it appeared on google page one for the search term "compare travel insurance" . Last week it changed ranking to page 49 of google ranking. my site is www.1234compare1234travel1234insurance1234ireland1234.com Take out the 1234 for my site address, some people have mentioned that it was honeymooned to page 1 due to being a new site with new content. Can anyone tell me if it looks as if I've done something wrong and been penalised by google? If not are there any SEO advice I could use to improve ranking? All comments and advice appreciated. Regards Paul
On-Page Optimization | | CocoMagenta1 -
Duplicate Content
Hi I have Duplicate content that i do sent understand 1 - www.example.dk 2- www.example.dk/ I thought i was the same page, whit and without the / Hope someone can help 🙂
On-Page Optimization | | seopeter290