help - someone has stolen my website!

[jamo]

I was looking on google and noticed a url in adwords which had the name of my website as a .com rather than the .co.uk that i run. I clicked on the link and it went to a geocities hosted page and it was a total rippoff of my site - EXACTLY THE SAME. it has a shopping cart as well that can collect peoples credit card details but there is no contact information. I think the people who have set it up are fraudsters and will be using peoples card details. I am really worried about this ad have e-mailed adwords and geocities as well as the shopping cart provider but who knows how long they will take to respond. I have a really good google position and i am concerned that this may effect it - should i contact google?. If anyone has any advice on what i can do it will be very gratefully recieved.

thanks

[Rosalind]

I have a really good google position and i am concerned that this may effect it - should i contact google?.

Possibly, look into whether you can make a DMCA complaint.

[kaled]

Write to the hosting company. Most will delete the site immediately if you provide sufficient information that they can be sure which of the two sites is genuine.

Kaled.

[photon]

Take a look at the checklist in this post [webmasterworld.com] in the Content, Writing and Copyright forum library.

And welcome to WebmasterWorld!

[jamo]

the problem with my situation is that the site in question is hosted on geocities and i do not know of any way to find their contact information as they have nothing like that on the copied version of my site. I have contacted geocities but no response yet - i could be waiting forever unless anyone knows of a relevant direct dial phone number or e-mail address

[Tropical Island]

Contact AdWords support direct ASAP.

Their direct phone number is 1-866-2GOOGLE or 001-866-246-6453.

You want these guys out of AdWords as quick as possible.

[bcolflesh]

[sg.yahoo.com...]

#23 has the information you need.

<edit>
Some more info here:
[help.yahoo.com...]
</edit>

[The Grizzler]

Get a lawyer on it straight away. Hit them hard.

We have had a similar experience and found that Google was extremely slow to respond to our DMCA compaint and in any event their response was not satisfactory.

[jamo]

i just got hold of adwords on that number and they will be removing the link. I have registered complaints with geocities but got no luck calling them. Hopefully this site will be down quickly.

thanks everyone for your help!