Competitor scraped ecommerce product overview
-
I noticed by chance that the competitor of an ecommerce client has completely copied one of their product overviews, which is around 500 words in total.
The site does not outrank my client, but could the scraped content be harmful in any other way?
There are no links included within the text so there's no advantage in that sense.
Is Google's algorithm intuitive enough to figure out where the original content came from and attribute it to my client, or is there still the possibility that it could have a negative affect as duplicate content?
Any insights and suggestions much appreciated.
-
Paddy,
Thanks for clarifying. My mum is indeed very nice.
If we replace "my mom's blog" with "a slightly less trusted site, but still very similar in scale, topic, age, etc..." then you can see where it gets more difficult to base the decision on which has been crawled first.
But yes, I agree that being the first page crawled and indexed with that content must be a huge (though I think trust-based metrics would be more important) factor in the decision by Google's ranking algorithms.
-
But you mom's blog will get crawled far less frequently than page A as it has less authority, so the chances the your mum read copied and then posted on her blog before the main site was crawled and in time for her site to get crawled would be very unlikely. Other wise it would be very unfair that "bigger sites" get credit simply just by being bigger. But I get your point that being found first is the only factor, but I would think it would be a big factor if not the biggest (back links to the original article would be one I would think)
Btw i'm sure you Mom is a very nice person and would never steal a story of another site for her own blog
Note: I have come to this conclusion based on observation and logic (and others posting similar theories), but I don't have any conclusive proof, I wonder if anyone has do any research into it...
-
I have to disagree that the credit goes to whichever version was found "first". I think attribution of authoritativeness and/or origination is a bit more complicated than that. For example, if page A and B both have the same content and page A is found first, but page B has 20 high-quality external links on a domain with a lot of authority and page A only has 1 link and is on my mom's blog... I doubt Google is going to think my mom is the original just because her site was crawled first.
Yes it can be a problem and yes you should do something about it if you can prove that your client wrote the content and that it isn't just the same manufacturer supplied product description that everyone gets.
First ask the offending site to remove their copied content. If that doesn't work you can file a DMCA complaint here:
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/dmca-notice?pli=1&&rd=1
-
If google crawled and picked up the text on your site before your competitor then you get the "credit" for it, which logicly they should have since you had the text first, only problem if your competitor is a bigger site DA wise and they are crawled more often.
But e-commerce site copying text from other site has been happening for a long time, they are just not doing themselves any favours
edit: missed eyepaq post, but yeah, what he said
-
Hi,
A lot of higher authority sites (I am not talking about ny times but just, in a particular space, sites that have a higher authority then others) are copying lower authority sites and get credit for it from Google.
In your case -dose your competitor has more visibility and authority in general ? Was the copy session soon after your client released that particular page ? If both answers are yes, then there is a danger there. If not - there is nothing to be concerned of.
Most of the time, like you said, google's algorithm is intuitive enough to figure out where the original content came from but it's not perfect.
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
-
Product Tag Value on SEO
Do product tags for ecommerce sites have any benefit to SEO? Or are they redundant? i.e. thespacecollective.com/astronaut-moldavite-pendant (tags appear below the product name on the right)
On-Page Optimization | | moon-boots0 -
Duplicated content by the product pages
Hi,Do you thing those pages have duplicate content:https://www.nobelcom.com/Afghanistan-phone-cards/from-Romania-235-2.htmlhttps://www.nobelcom.com/Afghanistan-phone-cards-2.htmlhttps://www.nobelcom.com/Afghanistan-Cell-phone-cards-401.htmlhttps://www.nobelcom.com/Afghanistan-Cell-phone-cards/from-Romania-235-401.html.And also how much impact will it have on a panda update?I'm trying to figure out if all the product pages, (that are in the same way as the ones above) are the reson for a Panda Penalty
On-Page Optimization | | Silviu0 -
Does pages with same products but with different orders count as duplication?
Let's say I got an e-commerce website. In that website I have 3 different pages: New products: display paged products order by created time descendingly Hot products: display paged products order by viewed Random products: display paged products randomly
On-Page Optimization | | vuquangchien
So are those 3 pages should be considered duplicated content? Should I canonicalize them to New product page (with paging), or should I create a new page without paging and point all of 3 pages above to that page (this page doesn't make sense from user experience but look good for crawler)?0 -
How often should we refresh or rewrite product descriptions?
is it good practice to rewrite our product descriptions every few months? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | onwardsandupwards0 -
Issues with Product Pages Getting Index In Google
I just started working here the other week and one of the big issue is that a lot of the product pages are not getting index in google. We have an xml.gz site map they submitted a long time ago. My guess is it might be something with not enough content on the pages? Here are a few example of pages that are not getting index in google. http://www.rockymountainatvmc.com/p/43/-/439/716/-/33097/Alpinestars-Dual-Motorcycle-Gloves http://www.rockymountainatvmc.com/p/47/-/201/803/-/28948/Camelbak-Blowfish-2013 http://www.rockymountainatvmc.com/p/46/-/203/836/-/6996/MSR-Head-Case http://www.rockymountainatvmc.com/p/44/54/208/764/80/1220/Galfer-Brake-Pad-Sintered-Metal There are 100's that are not indexed just trying to figure out what we need to do! We are working on new content to them all but we have over 5000 products so it will take a long time. We also have the reviews on the pages and are looking at starting a Q&A on page to help get more unique content.
On-Page Optimization | | DoRM0 -
Ranking for competitor brand terms
We're looking to rank for competitor brand terms and have created competitor brand pages for some of our main competitors. My question is where would be most effective to place these pages on our site? Also, would this be classed as grey hat?
On-Page Optimization | | Sayers1 -
Close URL owned by competitors.
The following example is exactly analogous to our situation (site names slightly altered😞 We own www.business-skills.com. It's our main site. We don't own, and would rather avoid paying for, www.businessskills.com. It's a parked domain and the owners want a very large sum for it. We own www.business-skills.co.uk and point it to our main site. We don't own www.businessskills.co.uk. This is owned by our biggest competitor. We also own www.[ourbrand].com and .co.uk, and point them to the main site. My question is - how much traffic do you think we may be missing due to these nearly-but-not-quite URL matches? Does it matter in terms of lost revenue? What sort of things should I be looking at to get a very rough estimate?
On-Page Optimization | | JacobFunnell0 -
How would you deal with eCommerce sorts?
I am reviewing a website that has different activities, and there are many ways to sort them. The issue is that the website is essentially displaying the same information, but in different sorts. Take a look at this search page: http://www.kijubi.com/AC-Fishing You are looking for fishing trips here, but you can sort it by city, region, and category. I have decided to "no index" some of these sorts, but I am afraid they might be picking up some long tail traffic on the city and region sorts. For example, "newport beach fishing trips", something like that. Any suggestions on how to deal with removing all of these duplicate sorts, while still maintaining the traffic that may be received by sorting with some long tail terms?
On-Page Optimization | | CindyAlbright0