Copying a successful content website

Does google always find websites that do this

[sadelb]

If somebody has a good affiliation website with lots of content in a general niche, if somebody a week later makes exactly the same site, switches things a little, will they get caught by google and be penalized or will this person also have a good chance for good search engine position like the other site.

[monkeythumpa]

Google may ban you, your ISP may boot you but more importantly you can be sued for copyright infringement and damages if you copy just a passage from another site, let alone a whole site. You have to be pretty boring if you can't come up with your own content for a site.

[Freedom]

sadelb, if it were that easy, everyone would be doing it. And quite frankly, the internet deserves better then ANOTHER regurgitated copy cat website. Don't be lazy, be original and create a website with new information not available anywhere else.

[sadelb]

I'm not talking about me.... I would never do that...But I see people that do that all over the web and I notice their positions are actually pretty high as well.. It was something that confused me.

[engine]

Mod note: Yes, please be nice to sadelb on this subject, they didn't say they were going to do it.

[chicagohh]

In the last 2 weeks I found that 2 of my sites had been completely copied. I also found over 10 other sites that were copied entirely be this same person. The copies seem to have been set up in late December.

The infringer also started an aggressive link campaign for each of these sites - log file spamming, auto link requests etc.

In each case, the original sites either no longer rank for any of their terms or they rank very, very poorly. In all instances the copied sites outranked the originals. My sites were close to 2 years old and have been pretty consistent in the SERPs.

One week ago the internet host suspended the account of the infringer and the sites that copied mine were no longer available, but they are still showing up in the Google SERPs.

I didn't think it would be this easy, but it happened to me.

Of course the dropping in the SERPs could be due to Allegra, but that still wouldn't fully explain the copycat sites rise in the SERPs.

[sadelb]

do people that copy the same formats of sites with different content get penalized also? Format meaning same way the website is set up.. What if you see a site that you believe has a great template, setup that would be perfect for your idea. could that get you in trouble with the serps?