I've just had someone to attempt to mirror my site

[wchan07]

I was searching google and found a mirror of my site using a ".net" extension. Someone bought mysite.com as mysite.net. Then in their name server they actually entered the IP address of my old web host (i changed host last month). So now google sees mysite.com on 1 ip and mysite.net on my old IP. Is this bad

I have called up my old webhost and resolved the issue with my old ip.

Now i am worried that this person will try to enter my current ip. What will google do, as well as all the other search engines, if they see

www.mysite.com

and

www.mysite.net

under the same IP address?

this is unusual and makes me nervous. I am hoping they are smart enough to know that it is a blatant hack. Has anyone had any experience with Jerks trying to mirror your site and sabotage you. What can happen? Any advice on how to deal with this?

[Badger37]

Earlier today I posted a similar item - still being validated by the mods, so you won't see it yet.

My situation is where someone has registered the same domain sticking 'the' in front of it. They've then lifted the whole site changing the phone number and address. Nice!

I'm also hoping Google can work this out but at the moment their duplicate site is still in the serps.

I've submitted an 'abuse' report which I'm hoping Google will act on.

[Bewenched]

You need to file a DMCA complaint.

[Badger37]

< Admin Note - I've decided to combine
Badger's thread with this one. - Tedster >

In the last week I've just noticed that one of my sites (for a small business in the UK) has been completely copied - all words, images layout etc. a complete duplicate!

Whoever has done this has also registered the same domain name adding 'the' at the start - so again this looks quite legit.

The only changes I can find are to the phone number and address and also some PPC ads on the home page (not Adwords).

The address in the US seems to be half fake and the phone number (after checking it wasn't a premium number) isn't recognised when it's called - the number starts with 0623 if that means anything to anyone.

The owner of the business was as shocked as me when I informed them. I asked if they know of any enemies they may have - none that they know of.

So far I've completed the 'spam' report in Google (last Tuesday) explaining the situation and requesting Google remove the site from their index.

I've also submitted an abuse report to the hosting company - but I'm not sure how 'upright' this company is either.

This is the first time I've come across this type of thing - any advice would be most welcome.

Do people think that my report to Google will have any effect?

Thanks in advance.

[edited by: tedster at 6:56 pm (utc) on Mar. 8, 2008]

[tedster]

There's a good thread in the Hot Topics area [webmasterworld.com], which is always pinned to the top of this forum's index page. It's full of steps you can take in situations like this. What you describe is a copyright violation and you have stronger tools than a spam report - you can file a DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act) complaint:

Scraped/Stolen Content [webmasterworld.com] - what to do first

[Fish_Texas]

Your problem is a little different than mine, but yes they will look into it.
My site was copied to a proxy server Jan 21, by a US company stealing my traffic for pop under ads.

My traffic stopped dead that day because I guess Google detected a duplicate site.
I notified them through webmaster tools, and ALSO submitted a reinclusion request.

Give them as much info as possible as to what happened. Include hosting company, new domain...etc.

After they investigate and they find it's not your fault, your site will slowly be reincluded. This won't happen overnight... It'll take time to reindex, evaluate and rank your pages. My site pages are just now being reindexed and I'm finding a few in the serps but not on page 1 as they were. My guess is they'll work up to page 1 again in due time.

I never received any word from Google, but a few weeks after notifing them, the copy site was nowhere to be found. They did take action.
When my pages started to be reindexed, they used the URL with my IP number and not my dot com name.

I know how you feel and it is frustrating to say the least, but hang in...it'll work out.
I believe Google is working to solve the problem of stolen or copied sites...let's hope it's soon.

Anyway, it could take several months to repair the damage.
Good luck
Fish Texas

[edited by: tedster at 6:52 pm (utc) on Mar. 8, 2008]

[edited by: Fish_Texas at 6:58 pm (utc) on Mar. 8, 2008]

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 8:23 pm (utc) on Mar. 8, 2008]

[Badger37]

Thanks for all the replies, very useful.

[c41lum]

I have also had my site copied and used to distribute spy ware and viruses. They are based in the Ukraine. sent emails out to there hosts but no reply. They are using a fake mail box in the sates.