Someone pointed their website to my servers

copyright violation

[mohitj1]

Day before yesterday I found out on copyscape.com that there is a 100% copy of my website online. I found out after careful analysis that someone pointed their website to my ip address using forwarding via masking which caused duplicate content issue.

My website was # 1 on Google for several keywords. I was thinking my ranking dropped to # 5 because of fluctuation due to penguin 3.0 but the main cause was duplicate content.

ACTION I TOOK: I filed a dmca complained with my hosting provider and Google. As a result hosting provider took action by bringing the website offline. On the other hand I asked my developer to redirect my website from the copied url to a 404 page.

The problem I am facing now is that my ranking dropped to #11 today. Wondering why did this happen even though the duplicate content issue is resolved.

Another doubt I have is how will Google check if duplicate content exists online because the website how was pointing to my website is offline now.

I am frustrated. It feels bad to drop to #10 after being on # 1 on Google for so long.

Can someone help ?

[mohitj1]

Right now I have just 3 links:

www.

http:

& https:

Should I just pull out old sitemap from other versions other than https ? My site actually doesn't have www. before it. It is [example.com....]

[lucy24]

Include forms in wmt even if you never actually use them. Paradoxically, that's the only way to tell google you don't like this form!

[not2easy]

Step 1: Make sure that if someone follows an old link to any of the old URLs that they end up on the https: version of your site. (301, not 302)

Step 2. In GWT go to each site except the https: one and delete the old sitemap. _{(I know there are people who skip this part, but Google never forgets a sitemap unless you take it away from them and it has made a big difference in the "forever 404's" when I have done this.)}

Step 3. Use the links in GWT to let Google know that the

http://

has moved to

https://

and the

http://www

has moved to

https://

_{(Got it, Lucy, thanks!)}

Step 4. (I would do this 24 hours later so they can digest the news) Delete those unused accounts in GWT.

[mohitj1]

You were right. I just delete sitemap from non http version. www version did not have sitemap.

Do you recommend deleting all links except https in 24 to 48 hrs ?

[mohitj1]

301 redirect and canonical was already taken care of right from day 1.

[not2easy]

If there's no sitemap and you can't land on those old URLs (non-https) then you have taken care of it. All you really need to do is wait. Keep in mind that there is no guarantee that even if everything is done 100% perfectly that you will again have the position that you have had in SERPs. It happens. A lot.

[mohitj1]

Thanks so much for your help !