Official site duplicated by a local company

[experienced]

one of the very new local company download our client official website through internet or might be the guy had taken the copy from the office only and run the same on a different domain. we caught them few days ago and found that they have not even changed our official name from that duplicate copy. Only 1 or 2 page can be found with their name and phone numbers. I complaint to host and send the webmaster an email. That site is currently down (had PR 3). but i checked our client official site as well which is a PR 3 site but now both the site showing 0 page rank. how come google can penalise our site for this.

We informed the case google as well the same day. Should we ask google to request to look into this matter. Client official site got 0 PR now. Can anybody suggest something. The guy who did all this worked for the client company and left 6 month ago. client calling him but he is not responding and address is also not valid.. Client company is a 5 year old company and indexed since 2004 in google so google can easily find out the those cyber crimi**ls and can release our site from the penalty.

[maximillianos]

This is unfortunately more of a legal issue. Google's algorithm should be able to determine the original source. But they don't do investigations for stolen content.

You can try filing DMCA violation with G. If the the thief does not respond, G will remove them from the index as long as you file the report properly.

[experienced]

I do not want them to investigate but i simply want to inform them that my site is the original one and it should not suffer due to this issue. Google algo can determine the original source so i believe that my site should not suffer as PR gone for most of the pages including home page traffic is all down....

where i can file DMCA to google for this issue.. thanks a lot for the help..

[bill]

[google.com...]

[Quadrille]

You should also consult a copyright lawyer. Don't worry about the guy who (you allege) did it; even if you can prove it, it is unlikely to do anyone any good. Go for the owner of the site-that's-breeching-copyright - if you can prove your case, it's a civil matter worth pursuing.

[enigma1]

Go for the owner of the site-that's-breeching-copyright - if you can prove your case, it's a civil matter worth pursuing.

I don't see how this could solve it. In case of a freelancer, if he was asked to create the original design/site without a proper agreement in place, now as the content author, he holds the copyright, he could pass it wherever he likes. For instance, look at all these web services for sites with some title "I need to clone this site". What do they really mean? You would have to prove all kinds of things in front of a judge assuming you pinpoint the root of the problem.

Google and the rest of the popular search engines have some ways to see in terms of content eg: "what site published it first". But when you go after layouts, scripts and the like is impossible to know. Then you have all these software licenses to deal with. Each has its own rule-set.

[Quadrille]

The OP alleges that the 'other' site has copied their site, and that it *may be* that the thief took a copy directly, or it may have been downloaded from the web.

He further noted "they have not even changed our official name from that duplicate copy".

On the facts, this is straight theft of content, and is a simple copyright matter - though not necessarily simple to prove (especially as the site is down, unless he downloaded copies of the perp site at the time).

It does not matter if the 'ex-employee did it, or the site owner di it himself; it's the publication that is the issue

I saw no mention (or even a hint) that a freelancer was involved; we don't even know (for sure) that the ex-employee was involved at all. Granted, if he was a freelancer, the waters may get much murkier.