undefined
Skip to content
Moz logo Menu open Menu close
  • Products
    • Moz Pro
    • Moz Pro Home
    • Moz Local
    • Moz Local Home
    • STAT
    • Moz API
    • Moz API Home
    • Compare SEO Products
    • Moz Data
  • Free SEO Tools
    • Domain Analysis
    • Keyword Explorer
    • Link Explorer
    • Competitive Research
    • MozBar
    • More Free SEO Tools
  • Learn SEO
    • Beginner's Guide to SEO
    • SEO Learning Center
    • Moz Academy
    • SEO Q&A
    • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
  • Blog
  • Why Moz
    • Agency Solutions
    • Enterprise Solutions
    • Small Business Solutions
    • Case Studies
    • The Moz Story
    • New Releases
  • Log in
  • Log out
  • Products
    • Moz Pro

      Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

    • Moz Local

      Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

    • STAT

      SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

    • Moz API

      Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

    • Compare SEO Products

      See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

    • Moz Data

      Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
    Moz Pro

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

    Learn more
  • Free SEO Tools
    • Domain Analysis

      Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

    • Keyword Explorer

      Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

    • Link Explorer

      Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

    • Competitive Research

      Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

    • MozBar

      See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

    • More Free SEO Tools

      Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

    What is your Brand Authority?
    Moz

    What is your Brand Authority?

    Check yours now
  • Learn SEO
    • Beginner's Guide to SEO

      The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

    • SEO Learning Center

      Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

    • On-Demand Webinars

      Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

    • How-To Guides

      Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

    • Moz Academy

      Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

    • SEO Q&A

      Insights & discussions from an SEO community of 500,000+.

    Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
    Moz API

    Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

    Find your plan
  • Blog
  • Why Moz
    • Small Business Solutions

      Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

    • Agency Solutions

      Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

    • Enterprise Solutions

      Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

    • The Moz Story

      Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

    • Case Studies

      Explore how Moz drives ROI with a proven track record of success.

    • New Releases

      Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

    Surface actionable competitive intel
    New Feature

    Surface actionable competitive intel

    Learn More
  • Log in
    • Moz Pro
    • Moz Local
    • Moz Local Dashboard
    • Moz API
    • Moz API Dashboard
    • Moz Academy
  • Avatar
    • Moz Home
    • Notifications
    • Account & Billing
    • Manage Users
    • Community Profile
    • My Q&A
    • My Videos
    • Log Out

The Moz Q&A Forum

  • Forum
  • Questions
  • Users
  • Ask the Community

Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

  1. Home
  2. SEO Tactics
  3. On-Page Optimization
  4. Stolen Content reposted on other sites. How does this affect ranking?

Moz Q&A is closed.

After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

Stolen Content reposted on other sites. How does this affect ranking?

On-Page Optimization
6
8
3.3k
Loading More Posts
  • Oldest to Newest
  • Newest to Oldest
  • Most Votes
Reply
  • Reply as question
Log in to reply
This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
  • brianflannery
    brianflannery last edited by Aug 31, 2014, 5:24 PM

    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?

    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
    • justin-brock
      justin-brock @JVRudnick last edited by Sep 30, 2014, 3:02 PM Sep 30, 2014, 3:02 PM

      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.

      ePQ7IPQ.jpg

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • topic:timeago_earlier,28 days
      • JVRudnick
        JVRudnick last edited by Sep 2, 2014, 3:01 PM Sep 2, 2014, 3:00 PM

        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>

        justin-brock 1 Reply Last reply Sep 30, 2014, 3:02 PM Reply Quote 1
        • CommT
          CommT last edited by Sep 1, 2014, 2:05 PM Sep 1, 2014, 2:05 PM

          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.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
          • KeriMorgret
            KeriMorgret @EGOL last edited by Aug 31, 2014, 7:53 PM Aug 31, 2014, 7:53 PM

            As long as it wasn't that boss of yours forcing you to work!

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
            • EGOL
              EGOL @KeriMorgret last edited by Aug 31, 2014, 7:50 PM Aug 31, 2014, 7:50 PM

              This question was about one of my personal rants.  I couldn't help myself.  🙂

              KeriMorgret 1 Reply Last reply Aug 31, 2014, 7:53 PM Reply Quote 2
              • KeriMorgret
                KeriMorgret @EGOL last edited by Aug 31, 2014, 6:45 PM Aug 31, 2014, 6:45 PM

                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!

                EGOL 1 Reply Last reply Aug 31, 2014, 7:50 PM Reply Quote 2
                • EGOL
                  EGOL last edited by Aug 31, 2014, 7:38 PM Aug 31, 2014, 6:31 PM

                  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.

                  KeriMorgret 1 Reply Last reply Aug 31, 2014, 6:45 PM Reply Quote 5
                  • 1 / 1
                  1 out of 8
                  • First post
                    1/8
                    Last post

                  Got a burning SEO question?

                  Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                  Start my free trial


                  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.

                  • See all categories

                  Related Questions

                  • zlbvasgabc

                    site speed

                    seo on page optimization

                    i use mid-quality pic and... but my site speed is low
                    any suggestion?
                    my site is:
                    https://bandolini.ir/

                    On-Page Optimization | Mar 16, 2024, 1:41 PM | zlbvasgabc
                    0
                  • MirzaeeMustafa

                    How Do SSL Certificates Affect On SEO?

                    Does really a SSL certificate affect on SEO? How? Why? According to my hosting provider (ganje.host), "https" improves SEO! As I know, It decreases speed. So how does it improve SEO when my speed is slower than before?

                    On-Page Optimization | Mar 11, 2024, 12:09 PM | MirzaeeMustafa
                    0
                  • whiteonlySEO

                    Hi, Does having orphan pages on my site negatively affect my seo? Thank you.

                    Hi, I have quite a few orphan pages on my site and we see that our rankings have fell significantly over the past 6 months. Can this have be negatively affecting our rankings? Thank you.

                    On-Page Optimization | Feb 21, 2017, 2:13 PM | whiteonlySEO
                    0
                  • accessintel

                    Thoughts on archiving content on an event site?

                    I have a few sites that are used exclusively to promote live events (ex. tradeshows, conference, etc). In most cases these sites content fewer than 100 pages and include information for the upcoming event with links to register. Some time after the event has ended, we would redesign the site and start promoting next years event...essentially starting over with a new site (same domain). We understand the value that many of these past event pages have for users who are looking for info from the past event and we're looking for advice on how best to archive this content to preserve for SEO. We tend to use concise urls for pages on these sites. Ex. www.event.com/agenda or www.event.com/speakers. What are your thoughts on archiving the content from these pages so we can reuse the url with content for the new event? My first thought is to put these pages into an archive, like www.event.com/2015/speakers. Is there a better way to do this to preserve the SEO value of this content?

                    On-Page Optimization | Feb 17, 2016, 2:10 AM | accessintel
                    0
                  • tprg

                    Does CTR Affect Ranking & Authority? Can PPC Influence That Too?

                    Hi everyone, Good CTR and bounce rate seem to affect rankings positively, but what about domain authority? Is that something built entirely on links and semantics, or does CTR play a factor too? Consider a homepage ranking for its brand name. Switching off any brand PPC will increase the natural listing's CTR. Would that have a positive SEO impact on the homepage/domain?

                    On-Page Optimization | Mar 28, 2014, 12:14 PM | tprg
                    0
                  • LeahHutcheon

                    Duplicate Content for Men's and Women's Version of Site

                    So, we're a service where you can book different hairdressing services from a number of different salons (site being worked on). We're doing both a male and female version of the site on the same domain which users are can select between on the homepage. The differences are largely cosmetic (allowing the designers to be more creative and have a bit of fun and to also have dedicated male grooming landing pages), but I was wondering about duplicate pages. While most of the pages on each version of the site will be unique (i.e. [male service] in [location] vs [female service] in [location] with the female taking precedent when there are duplicates), what should we do about the likes of the "About" page? Pages like this would both be unique in wording but essentially offer the same information and does it make sense to to index two different "About" pages, even if the titles vary? My question is whether, for these duplicate pages, you would set the more popular one as the preferred version canonically, leave them both to be indexed or noindex the lesser version entirely? Hope this makes sense, thanks!

                    On-Page Optimization | Jul 23, 2013, 8:33 AM | LeahHutcheon
                    0
                  • Amosnet

                    Do images on a CDN affect my Google Ranking?

                    I have recently switched my images to a CDN (MaxCDN) and all of the images within my post are now get loaded directly from the CDN. Will this affect my Google ranking? Do Google care if the image is hosted physicaly on the domain?

                    On-Page Optimization | Feb 29, 2012, 1:53 PM | Amosnet
                    0
                  • RishadShaikh59

                    Sister Sites or Joint Family?

                    A large News Media Group has a Tv Channel, print newspaper, radio channel (for music primarly) and an online website that includes the newspaper content and other original content in different media. My question is, is it better to have independant websites for these different mediums or have all the content on one big website. Currently the newspaper and blog are online as one whereas the radio channel has its own website and the television has its own. So should we maintain sister sites and cross link to each other or have one big happy family under one house? Best, Rishad.

                    On-Page Optimization | Feb 22, 2011, 4:33 AM | RishadShaikh59
                    0

                  Get started with Moz Pro!

                  Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                  Start my free trial
                  Products
                  • Moz Pro
                  • Moz Local
                  • Moz API
                  • Moz Data
                  • STAT
                  • Product Updates
                  Moz Solutions
                  • SMB Solutions
                  • Agency Solutions
                  • Enterprise Solutions
                  Free SEO Tools
                  • Domain Authority Checker
                  • Link Explorer
                  • Keyword Explorer
                  • Competitive Research
                  • Brand Authority Checker
                  • MozBar Extension
                  • MozCast
                  Resources
                  • Blog
                  • SEO Learning Center
                  • Help Hub
                  • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                  • How-to Guides
                  • Moz Academy
                  • API Docs
                  About Moz
                  • About
                  • Team
                  • Careers
                  • Contact
                  Why Moz
                  • Case Studies
                  • Testimonials
                  Get Involved
                  • Become an Affiliate
                  • MozCon
                  • Webinars
                  • Practical Marketer Series
                  • MozPod
                  Connect with us

                  Contact the Help team

                  Join our newsletter
                  Moz logo
                  © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                  • Accessibility
                  • Terms of Use
                  • Privacy

                  Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.