DMCA notices less effective against forums

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

When a page is copied to a forum post, perhaps the original post in any thread, the content scraper maintains benefits even if the url with offending content is removed from serps via DMCA.

The benefit maintained comes from pages 2 onwards of any resulting discussion about the original post and I've seen on at least two occasions where serp ranking was maintained when the offending page was removed, the ranking url just switched from being page one of a thread to page two or three... the thread remains as does the ranking.

In light of the above should a search engine remove the entire thread from its database if a DMCA is successfully filed against the first or opening post?

[indyank]

In your example, I believe that the scraping forum is ranking because of its other strengths i.e several strong related content pages on the same topic. One page being replaced by another related page is something that many would normally see when they noindex a ranking page.

Removal from the google database (on the basis of your DMCA) has only the same effect as no indexing the page. There isn't any penalty applied on the scraping site or their page.

Even if the other related content pages might consist of content scraped from somewhere else, google might not acknowledge it unless the respective content owners issue DMCA notices.

There is another major sickening side effect of their new scraping algos. When a major portion of the content on any of your page is copied elsewhere, the page's ranking is affected irrespective of whether the scraper ranks ahead or below you.

But forums in general seem to be less affected by these new scraping rules. Why?

This is most often because their scraped content might be just a small portion of their long thread i.e. voluntary Contributions by other users make the scraped portion to be a small percentage of the overall content on that thread. So they don't get affected by the algorithm. However, since a major portion of your page's content is copied to their forum page and probably to other places, it gets hurt by the algorithm.

Several people feel that thin pages are causing their sites to be trapped by the recent google algos. In reality, thin pages aren't a problem as long as the content isn't shallow. But, when a major portion of the content on that thin page is copied to other places, say forums, it gets affected. This side effect is also true for a relatively lengthier page (500+ words).

When the percentage of the number of such pages (i.e. pages where a major portion of the content is copied to other places) on a site is high, the site gets trapped by panda. I am assuming that their scraping rules are now part of their quality rules - Panda.