My original content now gets no traffic - copycat has top ranking

[chinamv]

hi guys,

i want ask a very serious problem about duplicated content analyze in google.

i am running a smaller website( 200-300pages, .info domain ),but have original articles,i write them my self. it have rank and keywords postion for past 2 years.

some copycat competitor websites copied many of my articles once i publish new articles ASAP, and have better postion than mine, usually they are in first 1-3 postions, my web is after 4th or more.(same article content,they changed some tittles sometimes),it still ok, at least my postion is still in first page.

But early this year(google's index method changed,i guess) i lost all of my popular keywords postion, even no more in next few serp! my websites index pages drop down to 112(before it is 300), and keeping this today!

This is a real disaster i ever seen, my traffic from google is almost come to 0, i think it may restore in a few months but it doesn't.

now, i publish my new article but never indexed, some copycat competiors duplicated them or change tittle,remove the image logo, then google indexed theirs.NOT mine.

did you guys expienced this before? i searched much as i can, it sound be" duplicated content" or "sandbox" but have no idea. i can not belive this is from a very advanced and no.1 search enginne in the world.

the copycat competiors website is :
.com domain
older than mine
pagerank is higher
alayws copy many articles from others websites
have good article updates frequency(most copied from others websites).
feed google news.
better postion than original article source website.(or make source website no indexs in google)

[AnkitMaheshwari]

Do you have backlinks coming to your site or these article pages?

[chinamv]

of course NO backlink placed, they removed image logo too,

the copycat want very visitor think: they are the original source.

[AnkitMaheshwari]

I meant that did you have any link building done for the site, or do you have natural links coming to your pages (NOT from the sites that are copying your content)

[chinamv]

yes, sure! i published new articles on my website.

linked from homepage of my website.

[tangor]

What's your geo location? US? UK? China? India? You need to stop the theft of your work before you worry about your google index.

[chinamv]

yes, in china, many websites creat content copy from others website, most of them would not place a backlink to source website, and when you add a unique logo to image, they would remove logos too.

google thought my website(source website) is copycatting website compare to REAL COPYCATTING WEBSITE!

i think google core rank method need improvement! it is necessary to improve!

[tangor]

I wish I had an easy, effective answer. I do not know the copyright laws in China, and what little I have learned is confusing. What you must do is stop the copyright theft of your content, your pages. You will have to learn how to do that with your local laws. You may need an attorney (barrister) to get that done.

Google can only go by the page indexing... and whoever gets there first looks like the originator. From what you've said this other site is indexed more frequently than yours so you come in second instead of first. Stop the copy/infringement!

[Taree]

When since has Google classed the first document indexed as the original? News to me.

[tangor]

If one does not make the effort to protect their original copyright, what difference would it make? Protect the copyright and the ownership is assured (mostly).

[chinamv]

hi friends! thanks for all your opitions for this, actually it is really hard to stop them through law , spend much money,times, and too much copycattings websites!

i just want my website back indexed and postion normal and my concern

[fishfinger]

Doing a search for 'DMCA China' showed a few places to start, not least [ncac.gov.cn....]

If the content is stolen and you can prove it then that's where you start. Get them to take the content off their site and your pages will start ranking again.

[AnkitMaheshwari]

You should be doing link building for your site and especially for the newly created pages. This way you can increase the chances that your pages get indexed first and consider original.

[BradleyT]

Maybe you could add the article to the site and the sitemap XML file but not link to it yet. Once you've seen Googlebot visit the page via the sitemap then you add it to your homepage?

Of course that won't work if the other site is scraping your sitemap but it might be worth a try.

[edited by: BradleyT at 6:07 pm (utc) on June 3, 2009]