Identical webpages

[drewlewis]

Hello All,

I seem to have shot myself in the foot again, and the only medicine I can find appears on these pages. On one of my web sites I recently watched my PR value drop from 4 to 0. I think the problem came about because I placed most of the site photographs (about 129) on their own web page in order to eliminate the right click/save function. I did this after seeing a number of my photos show up on other sites. Each of these pages contained a header, a logo, a picture, and a back button. Basically all pages were identical except for the picture.

(1) Am I right was this most likely the problem?

(2) About how long after I correct this error will I have to wait until the penalty goes away?

(3) If I put a noindex, nofollow meta tag on these pages would that solve the problem?

Thanks,
Drew

[allanp73]

>(1) Am I right was this most likely the problem?
Yes, it sounds like this is the problem. It won't be a penality in this case but your pages would be removed for duplicate content. Best thing to do is add text to each page (possibly describing the picutre) to make the pages unique.

>(2) About how long after I correct this error will I have to wait >until the penalty goes away?

You will have to get Google to crawl the pages again. Once Google does its update you'll be fine again.

>(3) If I put a noindex, nofollow meta tag on these pages would that >solve the problem?

This sort of prevents what I said in (2). You want Google to crawl in order update its information and show it that the pages are now unique.

I hope this helps.

[drewlewis]

Thank you very much Allanp73, that does help greatly. Your response brings two more questions to mind.

(1) Do you think a sentence or two would suffice to differentiate each page? If we copied a paragraph or so of descriptive text from the page that linked to the photograph would that be considered duplicated content?

(2) You stated that "It won't be a penalty in this case but your pages would be removed for duplicate content." It was my assumption that a PR0, like we received on our main page indicated a penalty for our site, while a gray bar indicated that a page had been dropped. Was my assumption wrong?

Thanks,
Drew

[allanp73]

You are correct you probably were penalized or one other possibility is the sites were given a reduced pr. I had about 300 pages that were pr0 last month which are now pr1. Mainly this was the case because they were new pages and the same except for what the database supplied to them. During a previous crawl my database was down, so the pages all looked the same. After a another crawl the problem was resolved, however, the pr is still recovering. I don't know what your linking structure looks like exactly so it is hard to say for certain what happened in your case.
I would recommend very different text for each page. This can be achieved using the title, description, dimensions, etc.
More different = more safe

[deft_spyder]

Can I add that those descriptions should be keyworded and relevant. If you can discuss a particular kw phrase on each of those pages, have the picture of course be relevant, title the page that kw phrase, and do everything else with that in mind, you could have some very nice pr pages.

Also, if you mention a kw phrase on another page that is represented by another focus page, contextually link those by using kw text.

I have done this and each of my kw phrase focused pages now is tops, relevant, and not spam.

[allanp73]

Very good point... Don't forget the keywords and may be some nice h1 for kick :)

[Alphawolf]

drewlewis,

I know you are concerned about the SE aspect having posted here. But I thought sharing this from my site would enlighten a bit.

It's in regards to disabling the right mouse click...

Disabling a user's functionality is never a wise idea. It would make sense if it accomplished something, but it doesn't.

Instead, this will irritate a user who uses the right mouse button to access valid functions of their Windows PC. Functions such as, "Create Shortcut", "Add to Favorites" and "Print" are routinely used for valid reasons.

There is no right click on an Apple computer since an Apple system has one mouse button. The only thing one accomplishes by adding 'no right click' scripts is making the page longer to download.

We recognize people who want this 'feature' implemented are trying to protect their images and content from being stolen. However, there are several other ways a person can get your content besides the right click of the mouse on a Windows PC.

Methods of stealing your website contents include:

• File-->Save As through the Internet Explorer menu will save the entire website to a person's local computer. Similar functionality is in Netscpae.
• Accessing the files in their temporary Internet Files (Cache) folder.
• Getting a screen capture by pressing the PrintScreen button on the keyboard.
• Using specialized programs designed to 'rip' or download entire websites.

The right click disable is considered a rather ignorant attempt to protect your content by most skilled PC users.

You may be inviting a mischievous kid to pay more attention to your website than he otherwise would by disabling the right mouse button.

Disabling the right mouse click accomplishes nothing but the irritation of your users. When they attempt to add your website to their favorites or print part of your website for legitimate use they will get frustrated.

How can you protect your images and content from being stolen? Realistically, if your content if publicly accessible you can not prevent your images or content from being stolen off your website.

Of course, you can have areas of your website that are 'Memberes Only' and require someone to register with you before accessing the content.

The bottom line is that if it's publicly accessible people can steal it.

PS- you can get programs to add an invisible watermark to your images. How did you find other sites that stole your pictures?

AW

[drewlewis]

Hi Alphawolf,

Thanks for your comments. I am familiar with digatly marking photographs and have used Digamarc in the past. The problem is that that dosen't stop anyone from stealing the pictures for their own site and it's difficult to recover any money by going to court. As for people downloading my photos for their own use well I really don't have a problem with that.

I don't want to hide my gallery behind a members only page as very few people would see it. Also I should make note of the fact that my gallery site consists of about 20 percent nudes and it's this twenty percent with which I am having a problem.

I should also mention that I have not had a problem with the big sites copying my photographs. It seems to be small time website operaters that can't afford to buy content that steal my images.

As for how I've found most of the sites using my photographs. Easy, using a Google image search using relavent terms. Most of these same webmasters try very hard to get their site listed with Google

Thanks,
Drew

[deft_spyder]

try a completely visible watermark, that obscures a portion of the image that would be a pain to remove. at least make it cost them to steal it, and obvious that they did so.

this is like having the club on your car.... it wont stop the better theives, but it will slow them, and may make them move on to the easier prey (and theres alot of avaliable prey out on the web)

[drewlewis]

Hi Deft_spyder,

What you say is true, but from an artistic standpoint adding a visible watermark seriously detracts from the image. I think I would rather remove the nude images than deface them. That's just my quirkiness showing. You do offer a very good suggestion for most people.

Thanks,
Drew

[Alphawolf]

Also I should make note of the fact that my gallery site consists of about 20 percent nudes and it's this twenty percent with which I am having a problem.

Ah. OK. These are unique images- meaning your own? Why not put a tasteful "www.yourdomain.com" on the bottom of the picture? That would force people to cut off that part of the image or advertise your website. :)

As for how I've found most of the sites using my photographs. Easy, using a Google image search using relavent terms. Most of these same webmasters try very hard to get their site listed with Google

Are your images indexed by google images? Maybe that's how they got yours.

I know how much time and money I've paid for stock photos and would be annoyed if others stole the images.

Only solution I see (from now on) is to put an advertisement on your images. Could be like 25% opacity, but it would help I think.

AW

[Alphawolf]

What you say is true, but from an artistic standpoint adding a visible watermark seriously detracts from the image. I think I would rather remove the nude images than deface them. That's just my quirkiness showing. You do offer a very good suggestion for most people.

I know what you mean having been into travel photography a good while myself. Not quite art- but I thougth so for some of my pics.

If you have a logo consider getting one...

Nobody is telling you to make like a huge banner ad on each photo.

You could make it super small in bottom right corner...or so small/invisible that only you can see it.

Next time you go hunting for stolen images- and find people...send them an e-mail telling them there is a watermark there. They'd need to view like 3000% to see it...but it's there. :)

Good luck in getting yor PR back. You'll sort it out.

AW

[drewlewis]

AlphaWolf,

I your idea of putting a small banner across the bottom is a good one.
I think I will try that even though the image could be easily croped to remove the banner. As every one has said there are no easy answers.

I have a friend of mine who is a lawyer (to the extent that lawyers have friends). He charges me $25 to send a desist letter to the offending party. Sometimes I just send an email. Always they pull the picture down. But by then the damage is done and I don't have time to search for cheaters.

You are probably right about people finding my photos through a google image search. All of the photos involve water sports (surfing, sailing, swimming), some with nudity, so they are not hard to find, at least before I got hit with a penalty.

Avoiding having people find your images in a Google image search brings this topic full circle. By using the noindex, nofollow Meta tag, I hope I can avoid having my images show up in a Google image search, I wont have to clutter up the image pages with a bunch of text, and I won’t get penalized. Seems like a win,win,win approach. In reality the only page I want to show up in the search engines is the main page. But I would like a high PR value for that page.

Thanks,
Drew

[Alphawolf]

I your idea of putting a small banner across the bottom is a good one.

It can bring traffic to your site. I've...uh- happen to come across 'nude pictures' (HOW THEY GOT ON MY SYSTEM I'LL NEVER KNOW!) <g> and when i saw one I really liked I DID go to the website.

Actually stuff magazine and fmh magazine come to mind. It's very effective for them to put the url on all pics.

AW

[deft_spyder]

I hear you about messing with the picture. I was forced to put very large obnoxious watermarks on pictures of our show cars when supposed 'information booklets' on how to do our door conversion appeared on ebay with our images as examples.

I was just about to make wallpapers for our visitors, but instead of doing extra work for my visitors, I instead used that time to watermark everything and lower the experience for all. I did not like doing a complete 180 on user satisfaction.

Can I suggest that you slice the images as well? As far as optimization, it helps for downloading if done right, and they can just right click, they have to save them all, and then paste it back together, or get a lower res screen shot(if they just using print screen). The alt tag for each image should be kw'd as well, and each slice can have an alt tag too. :)

[hamster77]

You could also trying setting your photos as the background image in a table with a blank image on top. If someone right clicks to download the image they'll get the blank and not your photo.
Or you can set up a rollover image so that when someone puts the mouse over your photo to download it the image switches to a nice little copyright notice or something, which is what they'll get if they save.

I know that 'no right click' isn't ideal, but I did find on a couple of sites using this with a right click copyright message took the number of image thefts down to almost nothing immediately. Seems that far less people will save the whole page to get the image than just use a right click to save.

Now, does anyone have any suggestions how to stop people linking to your images and stealing your bandwidth...?

[Alphawolf]

deft_syder,

Can I suggest that you slice the images as well? As far as optimization, it helps for downloading if done right, and they can just right click, they have to save them all, and then paste it back together, or get a lower res screen shot(if they just using print screen). The alt tag for each image should be kw'd as well, and each slice can have an alt tag too.

Great idea. :)

[mrguy]

If someone wants your photos, all they have to do is disable the scripting feature in the browser and then it is as if that script does not exist and they can right click until their hearts content.

In other words, if they really want them, they will get them one way or another.

[jimh009]

Here's one suggestion that works ok for pictures - at least non-nude ones. Allow people to copy the images for their own web site - but in order to do so they must put a return link back to your site. I've gotten a number of "free links" this way.

Jim