Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
No wonder my traffic from Google has tanked. I have invested hundreds of hours researching and writing these definitions and over 10 sites that have DIRECTLY COPIED my content rank higher than mine. And my website seems to be penalized somehow and filtered to the bottom. You can imagine that I am a little frustrated.
Any ideas on how I can remedy the situation?
[edited by: encyclo at 3:04 pm (utc) on Mar. 4, 2007]
[edit reason] fixed link [/edit]
When your text becomes so widely used on multiple sites you will find chasing them will take all your time. This is now a big problem people don't seem to be grasping. The general feel is that this happens because your pages are under a demotion or penalty. To me this is a bigger underlying problem than being under a penalty.
The other two, newer with fewer links an neglible PageRank, were listed as a search result. For the third you had to click again to see the page omitted because of being similiar. The one you had to click to see was MINE.
This is a growing problem that Google must address in some way - it is too easy to nick a sites content, stick on Adsence and then take the traffic from the original site.
Oh wait a minute Google earn more money from the plaigerists sites so I guess it's not such a big issue after all.
I have a 8 month website with all brand new content, were ranking high for 3 month, but now all r supplemental results. There is no similar site or content is available but still. Google gone mad i believe. Google must visit to Dr. Dang.
This not something i had considered. You may be on to something there.
I also did not think about it that way -- I think your theory is valid.
Another quick note -- I have a lot of original content on my site, and I believed, up until Google began penalizing me for being a dupe, that others on the web were free to copy it (I inlcude a notation at the bottom of the page asking for a cite reference & link back). [I do not solicit anyone to copy, but if you happen to come to my site for research and want to use part of it, I think that this is part of what the Internet is for.]
Now, I am beginning to rethink this. Since the pages of my site need to be updated to keep up with the news of the individual issues, my original content is now sometimes considered a dupe (I think).
Should I stop adding new content? -- No, then the site would go stale very fast and it would be worthless to continue
Should I go after everyone that copies content from me? No, then I would be going against my whole idea of what the WWW is for -- sharing information.
These are very trying times for webmasters who are not working at big websites with money behind them.
Optimus, thank you for the info on Copyscape. That is a good place to start. I have considered filing a DCMA complaint with Google, though it seems like a lot of needless work to create an official letter and mail it in. There should be an easier way to formally submit copyright violations to Google. I have used the "Dissatisfied? Help us improve" link at the bottom of the search results several times and it has never led to any noticeable changes.
Google's algorithm should be able to find out which site had the content first, as some of you mentioned. Getting ranked in the omitted results just adds insult to injury.
Good point, however I have found from personal experience that some are more helpful than others. I've seen where they ask for a copy of the DMCA before they will take action.
You can always try with a detailed message first, but certainly if you send in the DMCA request cc the host too.
I have considered filing a DCMA complaint with Google, though it seems like a lot of needless work to create an official letter and mail it in. There should be an easier way to formally submit copyright violations to Google.
I have a client who has a competitor that has consistently copied my client's articles (even officially copyrighted) and press releases, etc and falsified the names and urls in those articles for over 2 years now. The competitor had also set up several freebie websites that copied my client's website which we easily had removed. However, we wasted a lot of time getting those sites taken down and proving ownership of articles and press releases posted elsewhere or having them taken down.
My client recently sent in a DMCA to Google including correspondence with this crook and proof of years of dealing with this crook (about 100 pages full of proof). The competitors articles and press releases are now disappearing off the net and even the competitor's main website (which the compeitor had carefully not copied any data onto) has dropped in PR and now has only 2 pages in Google's index.
So DMCA works, if enough proof is included.
As I was applying for Java jobs at the time, no joy ...
Others have copied my logo and my videos.
Needless to say waste of time .. to chase this up. No answer from India.
Eventually it went away after a year.
My gf says copying is the sincerest form of flattery... or flatulence whatever side you are on that fence..
Stolen content is at least a quality signal.. ;)
Folks who take action instead of waiting around for someone else to fix their problem prosper out of proportion to those who depend on others...
And taking action to protect yourself protects the Web as a whole, so it should not violate anyone's sense of "sharing" -- The whole idea of the hyperlink is to share without copying.
Jim
[edited by: jdMorgan at 6:39 pm (utc) on Feb. 28, 2007]
Another thing helps is have pre-made DMCA complaints generated to where you just fill in the blanks to speed up the process. Usually go after them at the host level first and proceed from there.
[edited by: arubicus at 7:13 pm (utc) on Feb. 28, 2007]
That one tickled me because it's so true it makes you laugh. I will test out your theory this week because of Soapy's posts.
After filing at least 300 DMCA's (spammers love my content because it is unbroken) all related to Adsense I would say it is best to deal strictly with hosts. Google simply screws up to much to risk DMCA's with them. Once you file with Google they have leverage over both sites and they might not like the activities of either site.
This primarily applies to large chunks of stolen content because I rarely go after the scrapers. To time consuming. You can block the scraper feeds off your site if the offender is repeating to much of your content across many pages.
Another thing you can do for quicker response when contacting anyone through email is to use an email address that contains the word legal, legal department, etc. but be nice and helpful yet stern in your requests.
the whole point of this is to avoid the time and hassle of full dmca action....
Fortunately, many webmasters have complied and most add links back to my website. If this is the case, shouldn't my website rank first? I remember Matt Cutts saying that if mulitple pages have similar content, the site with incoming links from the similar pages should rank highest. That is certainly not the case in my situation, as my site is ranked last out of a dozen or sites and only shows up when the "Show omitted results" link is clicked.
Google could clearly use some improvement in this area. I find it discouraging that there is no one at Google to contact about the problem.
I've had sites go so far as to even copy our mission statements and even our own copyright statement at the bottom of the page, obviously a bot scraper, but it was funny to find.
Your best bet is to re-write all your content completely as quick as possible, and never believe that competitors cannot harm your site, if they duplicate it to nothing then the claim is a farce.
Your best bet is to re-write all your content completely as quick as possible, and never believe that competitors cannot harm your site, if they duplicate it to nothing then the claim is a farce.
Yes, but that shouldn't be necessary. The point is that, while copied content is a nuisance, Google should not be penalizing the sites with the original text. It amazes me that with Google's advanced algorithms, sites with the original content get forced to the bottom of the search results.
The site I run that has been copied ranks ahead of the duplicates in Yahoo!, MSN, Ask, and every other search engine I have checked. Google is the only one that has hammered me down to the bottom. Preventing spam is one thing, but it seems that Google has over-extended their algorithms so that sites that deserve to rank highly get filtered out. I can only hope that Google will see this as a serious issue.
So once in a while I send the webmasters a pre made warning email which works most of the time And wait for Google to find a solution since what ever they do now is not working.
I don't think its a content ripped off problem that has caused the penalty. Its more likely you were penalised for some other reason, and now even scrapers appears above you.
Yes this is something that seems to be often repeated. However i wonder if you meant what you just said. You are saying its now widespread for original content pages to be more heavily penalized than pure scrapers. And if this was true are you saying thats not an issue?
I don't think its a content ripped off problem that has caused the penalty. Its more likely you were penalised for some other reason, and now even scrapers appears above you.
Added:
The site of mine on which there's a page that's below the copies is *not* penalized, it's in the top ten for all the targeted search phrases.
There's no penalty (in my case), but isn't it possible that for those plagiarized pages, for that exact phrase (which is not one of the coveted search phrases), the thieves are getting a boost for the "freshness" of their pages, since their stolen copy is more recent?
There is actually a PATENT online about scoring based on freshness - so this isn't something that's being made up out of thin air.
[edited by: Marcia at 11:30 am (utc) on Mar. 2, 2007]
