How Do You Monitor & Deal With Plagiarism Of Your Content?
-
Hi everyone - hope you can help.
I have an e commerce store with lots of products. I write unique, original content for all of the products we sell. I must be doing a good job because I repeatedly find my content being used in blogs, word press sites, and pay per posts which then link back to competitors. I have the standard free copyscape logo pasted a the bottom of each page - hasn't deterred anyone.
I'm now thinking about using some sort of a cookie based software and installing the code on each page so that when they lift my content and use it, it will send a link back to that page on my site. I have called numerous plagiarizers in the past and threatened to sue using the "Digital Millennium Copyright Act" phrase in the course of my conversation. It's tiresome. It's work. I am thinking after many years of frustration, that if I can't beat them I might as well try using this type of cookie based script/software approach to at least garner a link out it. And if the abuser catches it then maybe he'll stop mid stream and think twice about using...I mean copying my content.
Is using this type of cookie/link back to us script a good or a bad idea? How do you all prevent your unique, original content from being used? And finally, if I'm looking at this from a positive link building standpoint (meaning, maybe I'm looking at it from the wrong angle), what is the best practice for garnering a link from this type of ongoing occurrence?
-
Check out Tynt, use an auto-linking plugin, or periodically drop manual links within your content. That won't stop people from copying, but it will at least you links from lazy copiers.
-
Report it to Google using your Google Webmasters: http://www.google.com/support/bin/static.py?page=ts.cs&ts=1114905&hl=en
<a>What Google product does your request relate to? > Websearch</a>
Please specify the nature of your request > I have an issue not mentioned above that is legal in nature
Choose from the following options > I have found content that may violate my copyright
Are you the copyright owner or authorized to act on his/her behalf? > Yes, I am the copyright owner or am authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed
Okay, mark this question as answered and give me a thumbs up. Also, since I helped you out, return the favor by answering a question for someone else. Happy times!
-
Why not just add anchor text to your works so that you are farming links without work?
-
Hiding links in content using CSS used to be a good way to do just what you want - gain a free in bound link from a scraper. Nowadays, most scrapers will also strip out links so the value is not there (it can still happen).
There are services such as CopyScape that will automate the work of catching plagiarizers. From what you describe, that seems like the best solution. Without an automatic solution you will need to send off the DMCA requests by hand.
Another option would be to block the scrapers at the IP level. This takes some time and skill, but there are turn-key solutions available.
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
-
Backlink Dilemma & Typewriters (Seriously...Typewriters)
Hi all. I have a bit of a unique issue. My company, Smith Corona **used **to be one of the world's premier typewriter manufacturers. However, we have completely got out of that business roughly a decade ago. Instead, we sell blank thermal shipping labels. As you might imagine, writing content and getting links about paper labels is not easy. Quite simply, no one cares about labels. They either stick or they don't. Typewriters is a whole different story. We still get tons of calls and emails everyday about them. There are online communities dedicated to them. I think if I even tried a little, I could get backlinks from people interested in typewriters. The problem is... that we don't do ANYTHING with them at all anymore. I would really just be pimping out our brand name in hopes of getting some cheap links. The real question is... do I even want these links? If they are semantically about typewriters and not labels, is it really helping my SEO efforts? Any advice is welcome. Thanks all!
Link Building | | smithcorona1 -
How Many Keywords & How Will They Take to Rank?
Hi Guys Just taken on a new site with around 80 keywords with no links because the site is new. Each page is optimised correctly, very user friendly with completely unique content for each and every page. I'm interested to know what would be your online marketing "plan" for such site to begin ranking. Thanks Gary
Link Building | | GaryVictory0 -
Disavow & nofollow from same IP
I'm a web developer, and as such, we run a bank of half a dozen dedicated servers. I have 2 questions with regards to nofollow links There's half a dozen sites linking back to us from the same bank of servers (across 3 different IP's but all in the same facility) because we have donated our web design services and we're a sponsor. It's not a paid link, it's a sponsorship. Should I still nofollow the link? I run a couple of personal blogs on the same bank of servers. There's an absolute tonne of original content and a handful of links back to my shop. Because I own both sites, should I nofollow these links as well? I am doing a massive cleanup before the Penguin pops his head out again.
Link Building | | sparrowdog0 -
Feedback & Advice on Blog Post
Hello Everyone, it's me again... After receiving feedback from many of you, we decided to add new and informative content to some of our more important blog posts. While the industry we're in isn't the most interesting and fun to talk about, we have always been told to just write high quality, helpful and useful content and people will find it and link naturally to it. We also believed that this would help improve the rankings of some of the inner pages on our site. So now we've spent numerous weeks updating specific posts, and still nobody links to it and still no significant rankings increase. I'd appreciate it if you would take a look at this particular post: http://goo.gl/8q4XQk and provide any kind of feedback or advice that you may have. Thanks...
Link Building | | Prime850 -
Content Marketing - Getting Webmaster to Link to Article
Hello, We're doing a niche article and we want to do a link building campaign around it. I'm not as interested in being linked to in resource sections - that will happen - but my question is for other links. What types of links am I looking for, is it guest posts - is that the best? If so, how do convince them to allow a guest post around an article? Thanks.
Link Building | | BobGW0 -
BOTW & Yahoo Directory
Hello! Typically how long does it take for these links to show up in Opensite Explorer? I sumbitted these approx 3-4 weeks, OSE has just updated, and I still cannot see in my link profile? Has anyone else experienced this? Thanks guys!
Link Building | | TP_Marketing0 -
Backlink's using duplicate content in article directories
I've had a link build report of all the links an SEO company have got us but a simple search for some of the content in Google with phrase match brings up about 3 pages of the same content posted to different article sites. I think it is doing something but will it just be penalised over time?
Link Building | | acs1110 -
Directories and duplicate content.
Part of our link building strategy for a dentist is to submit their site to several relevant directories. If I enter the same description in each directory, is it possible that Google will consider this duplicate content and prevent link juice from being passed back to the dentist's site? Thanks folks, Jason
Link Building | | OptioPublishing0