Forum Moderators: not2easy
another webmaster has copied / stolen my homepage - exactly - and has "stolen" my no1 / top 10 positions in google.
I had these top positions for about 1 year, good solid performing website / pages.
I have sent google an email to their help@google.com address, asking for their help.
This "webmaster" obviously liked my work so much he has stolen it / the cahed version in google shows "my page" at their web address (a bit stupid!) but the searh results now have given his site my old positions.
CAN ANYBODY PLEASE HELP.
[edited by: WebGuerrilla at 9:18 pm (utc) on Dec. 3, 2002]
[edit reason] Edited to comply with Tos and Charter [/edit]
Digital Millennium Copyright Act [google.com].
Read the instructions carefully. They seem to act on these rather swiftly if you follow the instructions exactly.
With redirection, if a 301 Permanent redirect isn't specified the default is 302 - which will show the URL of the redirected domain with the contents of the site it's pointed to. When people take a domain and park it pointed to another site it can show as a 302 - I just had someone do that and not only Google had the new domain with the contents of the first, but Alta Vista and FAST have it also.
I once had a real estate company's domain pointed to a cookie site - it was an error, they certainly had no intentions of selling cookie mix. It was nothing more than a DNS problem.
The owner of that domain might be upset that their domain is pointing where they don't want and selling your stuff. It may be as simple as them making a change at the registrar or host. Look up the whois for that domain and contact the owner, it may not be their fault at all.
My site had various top 10 positions, which I monitored and these were rock solid positions, with just the occasional move of 1 or 2 places, for 5 top keywords, we had position 1, 1, 3, 6, 7 & 10, these were almost set in stone, as my site uses no "trickery" has 300 incoming links PR6 etc.... So I felt I had done a good - secure job.
From what you say about the server (my tech knowledge is low on this stuff) this competitior would have had to set up this 301 or 302 - a clear sign of dishonest intent...
I would suppose that after the google update, he switched this redirect so the url/****.htm pointed to his home page...
So with the google update, using / stealing my homepage design (word for word - even the source code) his url/***.htm has the exact positions that my site had - with my site having dropped considerably - entirely due to this foulplay.
The owner of the other domain, who now conveniently points the url/***.htm at his homepage is laughing all the way to the bank, we are talking about daily sales of £2,000 - $3,000
...........
So this unscrupulous - clever character appears to have "manipulated" the search results with redirects etc..
The search results show my homepage in the cache / description but the url is the competitiors url/***.htm which when clicked is "redirected" to the competitors homepage.
From what you say about 301 / 302, I believe thiese are clear signs, from somebody who knows about 301 / 302 and monitoring their logs to ensure that this "crime" can be accomplished.
..............
He had the cheek to respond to my emailed complaint, to say it was googles fault, if that was the case, what was he doing with a redirect from url/***.htm to my homepage, which then he conveniently changed to redirect to his homepage, once google had cached my homepage and he had my top positions....
any thoughts
I can't see any way to make certain at this point, and we're certainly not internet or copyright attorneys here. The best you can do is gather all your documentation, including screenshots, and notify their host.
There's really nothing further that can be done, aside from doing some PFI for quicker correction, following what's already been suggested and getting legal counsel if necesary.
Good luck with it all colintho, it's understandable that it has to be very aggravating. Let us how how it turns out.
