How to get back Google rankings after a site was stolen

after someone steals your site.

[docdanger47]

I need some help. I was checking my log files for keywords used by our visitors. On one particular search phrase I found that someone had stolen our site and their pages ranked higher than ours.

The pages they stole are still on their server and cached in Google. I called the offenders and they said they are going to remove the pages.

I feel that Google has seen the duplicate content and has penalized our site, but gave the offenders higher rankings.

The reason I feel that we have been penalized is that all of our SERP's have dropped dramatically.

What should I do?

Thanks!

[born2drv]

As far as I know for duplicate content; the page with the most pagerank/links wins, and the others are discounted.

So try to get more inbound links and higher pagerank in the meantime, and hope this guy pulls your duplicate content off his site. If he doesn't, then contact google. I'm sure there's a form you can fill out or something from their site. Good luck!

[Jenstar]

You can file an infringement notification with Google. All the information can be found here:
[google.com...]

If the offenders who stole the content do not remove it as they said, you can also send a C&D (cease and desist) letter to the infringer. You can also contact the infringer's host as well.