Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
Today I discovered that some clown using an identical template, actually copied the content from my home page & four of the main pages and pasted them onto his site... word for word.
I don't know why I didn't do this earlier but I found it by putting qoutes around a line of my own content and running it through Google search.
We are in the process of taking care of this jerk-off and his site so I'm covered there.
But what I'm wondering is:
Now that the problem has been discovered and taken care of, how do I get my rankings back? Is there something I need to do or will it take care of itself now that the duplicate content has been removed?
It can take a little time, but I've seen things come back once the copied work has been taken down for awhile.
Unreal, sorry to hear about your troubles.
Since getting hit with the penalty, and based on the earnings history of the site, I estimate that I have lost $4000-$5000 of revenue. And that total will grow by the day until the penalty is lifted and my rankings are restored. If I even do get them back. There's no guarantee of that.
You guys can't even imagine what's going through my head right now.
I sent an E-mail to the site owner according to whois information, and did a cc: Legal advising them the stolen content needed to be removed IMMEDIATELY. When it wasn't, I filed a DMCA with their web host. The site - all of it - including pages not copied from my site, was gone in less than a day.
I later got a message from the site owner apologizing for the theft. He said he didn't realize he was doing anything wrong. IDIOT!
The site is still gone to this day, so I don't know if he got the message or what, but I remember how angry I felt when I discovered it.
I hope you get this resolved quickly.
WOW, I would be madder than a one-legged dog on an icy pond! Phew, I don't know what's going through your mind...but I can guess it won't garner you the Nobel Peace Prize at the very least.
[edited by: WiseWebDude at 7:14 pm (utc) on Dec. 29, 2006]
The most likely cause to weaken a site is tons of duplicate content caused by:
1: WWW/Non-WWW split site issues.
2: Site also indexed on the IP address.
3: Pages subjet to query string issues.
4: Pages subject to the / issue.
5: Pages subject to the automatic index vs specificly named index issue ( / vs index.html).
6: Pages indexed on port 443 (https).
The duplicate content get it right or perish thread was not in jest.
Once that tipping point is reached, well you've heard it here many times. CRUMP, CRASH.
[edited by: theBear at 7:35 pm (utc) on Dec. 29, 2006]
The most likely cause to weaken a site is tons of duplicate content caused by:1: WWW/Non-WWW split site issues.
2: Site also indexed on the IP address.
3: Pages subjet to query string issues.
4: Pages subject to the / issue.
5: Pages subject to the automatic index vs specificly named index issue ( / vs index.html).
6: Pages indexed on port 443 (https).
I need to go check my site to verify that I don't have any of this stuff. You would think that the supposed "geniuses" at Google would be able to determine 1, 4, 5, and 6 are really the same page in 99.999% or more of the cases fairly easily and treat them as the the same.
The most likely cause to weaken a site is tons of duplicate content caused by:1: WWW/Non-WWW split site issues.
2: Site also indexed on the IP address.
3: Pages subjet to query string issues.
4: Pages subject to the / issue.
5: Pages subject to the automatic index vs specificly named index issue ( / vs index.html).
6: Pages indexed on port 443 (https).The duplicate content get it right or perish thread was not in jest.
Once that tipping point is reached, well you've heard it here many times. CRUMP, CRASH.
theBear may be right but I also think based on what I am experiencing I think there may be a tipping point that is reached just from the amount of SPAM activity related to the site reached a tipping quantity. I say this because I am seeing the purest cleanest site in our market slowly drop its organic ranking. I haven't yet contacted them, they are still on page one and probably don;t realize they have a spam problem but at least three of us who have been on page one have been victimized by the SPAM activity. SO I am guessing that he is just dropping slower than us because he had a cleaner site. Basically I am agreeing with you that your vulnerability is dependent on Google quality standards but I disagree that if you meet those standards you are protected. I am making an educated intuitive guess that any site hit hard enough will fall. But I am open to the possibility that theBear is completely right and therefore am working diligently to clean up our sites of all other issues.
