Copycat websites
-
Hello,
Do you know if there is anything you can do against a copycat website?
By copycat I mean a website which uses our brand / domain name to steal our brand traffic.
The reason I ask is a new site recently launched with which is optimised to take some of our brand traffic:
Site tile - www.my<ourbrandname>.co.uk</ourbrandname>
Description - For when I need <ourbrandname></ourbrandname>
They gave no physical address or email addresses to funnel customers through an enquiry form which got me suspesious so when I checked the IP address in the MOZ Toolbar and did a WhoIs check on the IP address it brought up one of our main competitors websites.
Anyone got an experiences of this and know what can be done?
-
Hi Opt,
I'm going through old questions that are still unanswered in Q&A. Do you have an update for us of how this turned out? Anything that can be helpful to other people in the same situation? I'm curious to know what happened.
Thanks!
-
If they refuse to take it down we would adopt Lewis-SEO idea first, seems like the easiest and quickest route.
It's a shame situations like this arise really and there is no official way to deal with it. We wouldn't really go down the blackhat route but it is a good stick to use as an for them to stop.
That was an interesting read on the link (why would anyone refuse links in their T&Cs!?)
-
I should have said that Lewis-SEO offered some really good advice, mine was more a fallback (maybe a little bit before the blackhat option. ) if that failed.
Yeah you could always reciprocate, then offer a ceasefire when things started to get daft.
Purely by chance (and I really don't put this forward as a serious option) this appeared on hacker news a few minutes ago and I thought it was quite a coincidence.
http://liveatthewitchtrials.blogspot.com/2011/03/search-engine-deoptimization.html
-
Thanks Tompt, ill check out those links to see what can be done but like you say I guessed the legal route would likely be costly although we may have to do it if he starts climbing up the rankings quickly.
Lewis-SEO contacting the webhost is a good idea, I have got their details and may give it a go.
As a quick update since posting originally our MD spoke to their owner who said he will consider taking it down on the threat of us doing the same to them (as we have more resources and with them having a unique, none keyword, name I guess that isnt a route they would choose) <seo wars="">:)</seo>
-
We're in the UK and took down a guy that was sitting on one of our domains (the then system admin had let it lapse) . It was incredibly costly (much more than just buying the domain from them was (but by that point he'd put the directors back up)). Ours was a different situation though, he was just squatting sending traffic to competitors, he wasn't a direct competitor.
Since we're discussing a .co.uk domain you can go to nominet and go through their dispute resolution service.
http://www.nominet.org.uk/disputes/
With this potentially useful section of the faq
http://www.nominet.org.uk/disputes/drs/faq/#rightstest
I can't offer you too much hope though, any legal stuff is always costly and often not worth the cost.
-
I'd kindly ask them to remove it with the veiled threat of legal action.
If they decline then I would approach their webhosts, which can often be worked out from the Whois record, and ask them to remove the offending site giving them the full details.
If none of that works then perhaps you could go blackhat on them (not that I would condone that)
-
Just did another whois from a different site using the domain name and the Registrant field states our competitors company name.
Guess we will have to call them and see what their reasoning is.
-
I think the first thing to do is contact your competitor (if you're certain is it they who are behind this) and ask them in a kind and open email to remove this kind of aggressive advertising. If they are unwilling to comply with this request, you might want to consider legal steps against them.
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
-
Are you ever handicapping yourself in search by using a subfolder over a new domain/website?
Hello Moz Community! We are building a separate hospital related to a single service line that is currently part of our main website. Traditionally all our hospitals are folded into one website with the same brand. Problem: Our organization's leaders want to market the new hospital as "Brand Name X" nationally, and not use our locally strong brand name at all. Therefore is the smarter long-term decision to begin building content on a new website with the new "Brand name X" even though it will take longer and be harder, than building it on our big, established website with a 60+ DA site? What I fear is our current website's DA won't matter much if people nationally are using Brand X, which isn't part of our traditional brand name? And they won't be using the traditional brand name at all. Example Scenario: We create a new hospital just focused on heart-related issues. Do we move the bulk of information for this new hospital from http://www.nebraskamed.com/heart, to a new website that will better rank with the new brand X and for just heart-related keywords? Or is it still better to try and stick with the same domain in a subfolder?
Branding | | Patrick_at_Nebraska_Medicine0 -
Hosted content vs Dedicated website (for large piece of content)
There is one question that keep bugging us and for which we are looking for a logical answer – to put it short, in which context(s) is it preferable to publish original content on a company website vs on a dedicated external platform with its own URL? To give a little more details: we an education company that provides languages course abroad and that functions like a specialised travel agency. Each trip is very specific – it depends on people's language level, objectives, budget, etc. – so we provide tailor-made advice for each of our students. Our site is not an e-commerce site, and a typical call-to-action is a request for a 1-to-1 interview with one of our agents, or a quote request for a language trip project. The top conversion for us is an enrolment for a language course abroad. We have a corporate websites structure where we have 1 website per locale where we operate, which means 14 websites in 7 different languages. We produce smaller pieces of content for these websites in a dedicated section – the rest of the website being mostly a presentation of our products, services and destinations – but here we intend to create a very large Quiz which will be based on multiple audio files. The content will be translated into multiple languages (likely 10 different languages) and will require some rather heavy development. We intend to add sections for scoreboards, stats, a log-in section (probably Facebook), etc. This sounds to us like something we should host on a specific URL, but then how can we make the most of the SEO benefits that we will (hopefully) get with such content? We plan to have an about section where we explain a little bit who we are, where we will probably link back to our corporate websites, but of course we want our project to live for itself and to be as far from commercial as possible – while still making the most of the SEO benefits. How can we do this in the most subtle / logical way? Would it be better to host our Quiz on our corporate domains? Thanks in advance for your advice. Maëlle
Branding | | ESL_Education0 -
Copy/pasting the article from another website and referencing correctly not to get penalized
Hi all I am looking at copy/pasting an article from another website which is very relevant to my business, is there a standard practise/best practise for SEO to do this and ensure Google doesn't think i am plagerizing content etc.. Link to source down the bottom? Using Quotations... making a page noindex or no follow etc?
Branding | | IsaCleanse0 -
Competitors' dummy websites --- What SEO (or other?) strategy is this?
I work for an e-retailer. I've noticed that at least one of our competitors (and, I think, a second as well) has set up a neutral "third party" website that attempts to provide unbiassed information about different manufacturer's products. Of course, their products always win out over the competitor in these comparisons. But this one site (and another whose corporate backer I can't seem to figure out) is keyworded so poorly, and not branded at all. There are very few (if any) links to the corporate sponsor, or links, period. It's definitely not serving to have "Little Brand x" appear next to "Big Brand Y" in search results, either (again, really poorly keyworded). Other SEO seems really minimal. What do you think their strategy is? Is it a dumb waste o' money or something really smart that I'm not picking up on? Your insights most appreciated!
Branding | | Novos_Jay1 -
Can we publish two guest posts on one domain with same pen name but different linking website?
Can we publish two guest posts on one domain with same pen name but different linking website? Actually I have been doing guest posts with pen name “Jane Andrew” for “abc.com”(bit old and well performing website). Now I need to post for a new website “xyz.com” on some old domains (where I have already published my articles) so the situation is that I want domains and pen name to remain same but linking website would be different. I had few questions in my mind regarding that and I would be grateful if you help me getting the required information. Is it right from SEO, branding and marketing point of view? How Google interprets this? Is there any harm for the old well performing website or for the new one? And also both websites are owned and managed by the same owner.
Branding | | shaz_lhr0 -
Is Rel=author appropriate for non-article type pages, a.k.a. business websites
I understand I can use Rel=author with Google+ for article's I write, and I understand I can use the same code for regular websites, which I'm still waiting to see show up in the SERPs, but my question is as follows... Is Rel=author appropriate for regular business websites (since we are business owners, not authors of articles), or is there some other Schema.org tag that should be used which will also show our images in the SERPs? I'd like my business logo to show up in the SERPs for my business page and my personal photo to show up for my blog pages.
Branding | | Twinbytes0 -
Blog - separate domain or current website?
I have created a business blog purely to gain higher rankings for particular keywords which then has links pointing to the product that I am trying to sell. My question... Is it better to have this blog hosted on the same domain or shall I move it to a separate domain which will help with backlinks? Any advice would be appreciated?
Branding | | petewinter0 -
Facebook Like my website or fan page??
Should I want people facebook liking my website or my fan page? Is there a way to link the two? Here is my dilemma... People liking my website will obviously have an effect on rankings within bing and google possibly. BUT - People liking my fan page will allow me to engage with them in the future about givaways, sales and so on. I'm stuck, is there a way to link these? Or if not, which do you recommend?
Branding | | Hyrule0