Forum Moderators: phranque
I was just checking to see who was linking to my site using the info:domain.com command in Google (same thing can be found by searching for your business name in quotes) and found several directories that have my site listed but also have another page set up just for listing my site with my business name in the title of the page. There is a link to my site with my description on the page but with my business name in the title this site appears to be stealing my content and also page rank for my business name, i.e., if I search for my business name those sites will be coming up in the list--not only as a link but also because that name is in the title of their own page--competing with mine.
In fact some "directories" are using my whole title in the title of their page that lists my site.
Anyone else see this?
What exactly are they doing?
There is a link to my site with my description on the page but with my business name in the title this site appears to be stealing my content and also page rank for my business name, i.e., if I search for my business name those sites will be coming up in the list--not only as a link but also because that name is in the title of their own page--competing with mine.
It's not Page Rank that they're stealing, because that's the rank that Google assigns your site according to how many other sites link to you, and how many link to them in turn. What they're taking is your ranking in the SERPs, which isn't a entitlement even though most people would expect to find a business at the top position for its own name. Similarly you might expect an author's official homepage to be at the top spot for their name, but that is isn't always the case.
There's nothing new about the sort of directory you describe, there are a lot of "scraper directories" that surf the grey area between fair use and content theft. They often operate by choosing keywords and automatically creating pages using the first 50 or so words from each site that ranks well for that phrase, and by having thousands of interlinked pages.
Your PR is not affected but you might lose traffic.
