Adam
Original Message Follows:
-------------------------
Name: Adam Moran
Email:
Destination: spam
Comments: Dear Support
Earlier this week I checked a position for our site
[xxxxx.co.uk...]
We were listed first in the results using the phrase xxxxx.
I have checked today and our position has dropped altogether.
Instead a German music site is listed in first position.
Normally it can be excepted that sites are dropped or move further down.
The problem is that when I conduct a URL search to see if we are in the index i.e. type in
URL:http://www.xxxxx.co.uk
The same German site appears instead of our site.
[xxxxxx.de...]
This has led me to think that this site has Hyjacked our listing in the
search engine which is counted as spam and replaced it with a doorway page into their site.
I would like to hear a responce to this, as this unfair practise. Plus they should be removed/banned from the index.
Kind Regards
Adam
Here is the responce
While we are sympathetic to the problem you explain below, AltaVista is not in the business of determining the copyright validity of the sites that are included in the AV search index. Our search index merely references sites in order of their relevancy to a given request, and not their legality.
If we started to police web sites in the manner you are requesting, we would spend all of our time evaluating the claims of various web sites, and would have very little time to run our own business.
Even so, we encourage you to protect your rights in your designs, and to pursue an injunction or other type of restraining order to prevent your competitor from stealing your copyrighted designs. If you are able to procure such an order that third parties are pirating your intellectual property and have been ordered to desist from doing so, please send a copy of that to: General Counsel, AltaVista Company, 1070 Arastradero Road,
Palo
Alto, CA 94304, and we will promptly comply with your request.
Good luck to you.
Wow thanks Guys......
Ensure you have suitable and correct copyright notices in your documentation/html and follow this up with a simple request for the other party to correct the error. Give them a reasonable timescale to make the correction.
If they have not made the correction, you may then need to consult a web-savvy solicitor to take things further. Again, often a solicitors' letter is usually good enough to show you mean business.
So far (touching a piece of wood) each case i've had to deal with has been put right within a matter of hours. It seems that just making the other party aware you "know" is enough to put things right.
As far as the SE is concerned, i'm sure they would not knowingly do anything out of order, although I have had instances of our site clicking through to a different website from the one listed in the search returns. Not AV. It was in fact an error in the SE and, as far as i'm aware, is now corrected.
The worst instance of theft is if it is a competitor. That makes my blood boil.
Hope it's all sorted.
"The problem is that when I conduct a URL search to see if we are in the index i.e. type in
URL:http://www.xxxxx.co.uk
The same German site appears instead of our site.
[xxxxxx.de"...]
This doesn't look like hijacking, it looks like a DB error at Altavista similar to the problem that Marcia has just reported here:
[webmasterworld.com...]
Adam: What happens if you do host:www.xxxxx.co.uk ?
If you S-mail me your url and the phrase you used I will sink my teeth into this.
By the way, I was interested in the line "If we started to police web sites in the manner you are requesting, we would spend all of our time evaluating the claims of various web sites, and would have very little time to run our own business", which I view similarly to a newspaper saying "If we tried to find out if all our stories were true, we would have little time to write them". With the youth of the web and with a belief that national laws cannot be applied to the web, this may not seem an obvious parallel.
