Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
and i am finding more and more sites that seem to be copying my meta description tag, placing on their site, and creating a link?
but when i try to go to that page, my site is not listed...
it weird that it is showing word for word my content description tag, but doesnt seem to be any page links?
if that doesnt make sense, it doesnt to me either.
I suggest you do some searches for scrapers or scraper sites or scraped content, etc etc.
The big twist to this now is Google seems more prone than before to rank scraper pages with stolen meta tags and a few snippets higher than the original itself. Its almost if any original as a degree of optimization that is penalized and stealing only snippets eliminates it. Since I’m seeing a few new Asian sites grap at this it makes me think they’ve found a hole in the algo to exploit.
If it was onpage content, fine its yours, but the meta description is there to describe the page.
If I run my own search engine across the internet, find your site, and determine its most likely your site is a dentistry site in New York, is makes perfect sense for me to then display your site in my search engine results for dentistry new york, and use your meta description to describe your site
Google does it.
Why is it suddenly "scraping" if a website other than google does it and places the description on permanenet page, rather than only displaying it in a search result?
Whatever label you want to give this practice of using sentences that someone else composed without their permission, it is very devious.
It became clear last year, in discussions about the Supplemental Index, that Google use "title plus meta description" as a kind of top level, quick check indexing tool. So if a site puts a meta description from someone else's supplemental url onto one of their own non-supplemental urls, then all kinds of chaos becomes possible. This might include a rankings hijack or getting the original page filtered out as a dupe.
our site used to come up firs when you would type our domain, but by splitting it into three words..
our company name is comprised of three words...
i.e. OneTwoThree.com
so if you typed One Two Three, we would show up first no problem...
Not anymore...
Also, the last time my site was crawled by Google was July 28....
I used to get crawled about every 10-15 days...
I dont like what is recenetly happening, and i think i might have either got ...(whats the term these days?) Blacklisted, or SandBoxed?
I had seen this happen frequently with various client pages that were frequently scraped, but... in Google, at least... they'd always recover in a few days. MSN was not nearly so clever at figuring things out. It's happening much less often in Google now.
How long has your page not been showing up?
Not much changed in the SERPs... i did see my Adwords Ad as #1, which is normal, but my site was no where to be found.
Now, if i do a phrase search, i.e. "one two three" we show up number 1. But i can tell the result looks like an old cache, becuase the title is an old title tag i used a month or two ago...
Next tidbit...
if i search broad, but the proper name i.e. onetwothree, we show up number 1, with a supplemental result, that is new.... i know becuase i see the content in the supp result, and it has only been there for a week or two...
So it seems that my index page is not being updated?
here is a snippet form my index.php page, and i have used this before, so i dont think its a problem:
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html;charset=ISO-8859-1" />
<meta name="keywords" content="my keywords">
<meta name="description" content="my description">
<meta name="Robots" content="index,follow">
<meta name="GOOGLEBOT" content="NOODP">
should i modify any of this?
I looked in my google webmaster tools and my site is still verified. Should i consider submitting a new sitemap?
Is there anyway to find out if my site has been flagged for duplicate content?
did i just put 2 and 2 together...
my parked domains that were not redirecting, were those possibly looked at and compared to my site, then i just got slammed for duplicate content?
can this clear up?
It became clear last year, in discussions about the Supplemental Index, that Google use "title plus meta description" as a kind of top level, quick check indexing tool.
My advice is for people to look at the code and meta tags some of these very new fresh scrapers are using. I've beat off hundreds of scrapers but this is the first time I'm seeing displacement by them. I think the reasoning has to do with comments by Gehrlekrona, Tedster, and Jim Beetle.
Also, the last time my site was crawled by Google was July 28....
Are you going by your server logs here, or by Google's cache date? I ask because the cache date for many urls seems weirdly stuck in July or August right now even though much more recent spidering is clear in server logs.
it shows all my sites i submitted, and it says my mentioned site was last crawled july 28..
i have a bad feeling about this..
Should i go through and change out my description tags and titles?
[edited by: tedster at 3:32 am (utc) on Oct. 17, 2007]
This is what i think happened. I had 4 other domains that were duplicates of my site. No, i did not have proper 301 redirects set up and now i think my site got dinged by google for duplicate content.
I have my proper 301s set now. So maybe that will eventually clear up.
Considering one of those domains is ranking higher than my main site...
Now, with these scraper sites...unfortunatley this is all new to me and is just now happening.
It sucks, but i think i am paying for it...i work in real estate which is a big market, and there are lot of sites that seem to have my exact title and description some where on their site...
I will go through my site, change everything out, hopefully Google will come back to my site soon, and see the changes and give me back some life.
Those sites are using your exact title as the anchor for the link to your site, followed by your description? You should be STOKED. Your are getting free, one way links from sites using an anchor that is the most valuable to your site!
You are kidding yourself, that this could do anything but HELP you.
The only way any of these sites could possibly rank above you for this anchor, is if you have mucked up your own sites so badly, that even with the benefit you gain from these incoming links on your most desired anchor, your own rankings have tanked.
It sounds to me, like you are filtered dow the results for your own site problems, nothing at all to do with these links.
Yes, site scraping is bad Mk? But its not relevant that is is bad in this case, as it is not your problem.
There is no link to my site. Its just taking the content from my site and using it to drive links to THEIR site...not mine.
It is not a one way link.
And i have been doing SEO for over 2 years, so i know what im doing, not a pro by any means, but not a beginner... i dont use "black hat" techniques, or overloading of keywords...etc...etc...
My site is legit and is structured properly.
Something happened with my duplicate sites, and i think i got dinged....
Ive been through situations like this before, and since my site is not spammy, i thin it will clear up eventually....
when? who knows.....
i had a previous employers site on page 4 , the got them to #1 rank...then one day, poof...down to page 2...
its the Google Cycle...
Should i go through and change out my description tags and titles?
Wasted effort. They can scrap them faster than you can change them.
Stand by my statements, this can only hurt you, if you are filtered down for something of your own doing.
This sort of scraping is not rewarded by google with higher rankings for the search terms, than the source, unless the source is being filtered in results already.
remove reason for the filter
