Lycos Retriever - its scraped results are ranking

why is it shown first?

[soapystar]

Theres much discussion as to why when searching for original text scrappers are shown before your own website. However what should be a nobrainer surprises me. Searching for original text this time google shows Lycos Retriever before the original website. Given that this is known scrapped material why would google not show the original website for that content before the scrapped version? Its not as though theres even a point of confusion of where the text originated since Lycos Retriever has no original text.

[tedster]

Here's a related thread from last July: [webmasterworld.com...]

[randle]

Given that this is known scrapped material why would google not show the original website for that content before the scrapped version?

Google really seems to be struggling with this issue right now. Over the past 30 days we are seeing many sites with "borrowed" content ranking higher than the original. As crazy as it sounds it almost seems to helping some sites.

[soapystar]

tedster thanks i saw that thread but it didnt really deal with why google shows it above the site that wrote the original content....

randle im with you on this one...its become for me the most common factor in penalised pages..that scrapers and content 'borrowers' rank above, normally by 100s of places, the orginal writers of that text. Its said that this can happen when the original page is under a penalty so demoting it below the scraper. Im not sure i buy into that one because this is so widespread now. I have my own ideas and theories on this but the Lycos Retriever issue is the one that gets me. There isnt even an issue for google to try and decide which was the original content site since retriever doesnt have any original content. You search for your own text in quotes and where only two pages exist they still show lycos first.

[fishfinger]

What about answers.com scraping Wikipedia? That really sticks in my throat because they are a big big business and Google knows damn well what they're up to. Monetising other people's content on your site for ad bucks is a crummy thing to do - that they do it so blatantly and haven't been banned shows real hypocrisy on Google's part.

[soapystar]

well it would be in the same context if the identical wiki atricles were buried in the serps..but their not....are we saying that only white listed sites are not in danger of being buried by scrapers?

[fishfinger]

Or maybe that if you have the cash / 'authority' you can get away with scraping.