Copyright violation with backlink

[serenoo]

A website copied a whole page of my website. Such website put a backlink to me at the end of the page. I noticed that if I search on Google for a string my website come first. What is the best choice?
1) Force that website to remove the duplicate content
2) Do nothing, because I have a link to me

[goodroi]

Option C - Write original content that has links to your site and ask them to swap it out.

[serenoo]

Oh no, I am full of work, I cannot write again with other words that for them. Cause they are dishonest, they could remove the link in the future. I do not want to have relationship or write content for such people.

[Planet13]

Filing a DMCA request with google is pretty efficient, if you decide to go that route. Takes about a week for that page to be removed from the SERPs.

[Robert Charlton]

2) Do nothing, because I have a link to me

You'd also have to evaluate the scraper site to see if their link to you would be worth anything. Chances are that it's not.

If the link isn't likely to help you, then I'd make efforts to get the article taken down.

(PS: And if the link were worth something, I concur that you should write a version just for them).

[zerillos]

@ goodroi
As brilliant as it sounds, I'll have to disagree. You would just encourage them to steal some more. Afterall, stealing results in fresh original content just for me...

[seoskunk]

You'd also have to evaluate the scraper site to see if their link to you would be worth anything. Chances are that it's not.

If the link isn't likely to help you, then I'd make efforts to get the article taken down.

I agree, just have the article taken down. The site scrapes content I see no benefit in association.

[aristotle]

My advice is to forget about it. One of my articles has been scraped at least 50 times and many others at least 10 times. A small percentage gave a link back, but most didn't. But the rankings of my original pages haven't been hurt at all. In fact, I think that Google's algorithm may regard this as a positive signal, since it shows that other people think your article is worth copying. Anyway, I would rather spend my time working on new articles than to worry about scrapers. So I suggest that you just forget about it.

[serenoo]

Aristotle, my problem is that my website is not at the top positions and I do not know why. My content is excellent (the fact that many pages are copied proof it). I do not use black hat techniques, so I am investigating and I noticed that many pages of mine are copied. If I type a string I come first and the copies after, but I do not know if all that duplicate content can hurt me. You say no. Are you really really sure?

[lucy24]

Now I am curious about two things.

What does the offending site's backlink say? I assume not "We stole this entire article verbatim from <a href = blahblah>this other site</a> without the author's permission."

Have you contacted them directly? Do you get dead silence, or some type of excuses or runaround?

[aristotle]

Aristotle, my problem is that my website is not at the top positions and I do not know why. My content is excellent (the fact that many pages are copied proof it). I do not use black hat techniques, so I am investigating and I noticed that many pages of mine are copied. If I type a string I come first and the copies after, but I do not know if all that duplicate content can hurt me. You say no. Are you really really sure?

Well obviously I can't be absolutely sure about somethimg like this. But if none of the scrapers are ranking above you, then there are probably better ways to spend your time than worrying about them. I've seen other threads here where people talked about filing reports, or contacting the site owner or even the hosting company. I've never done anything like that, but would imagine that it could be quite time-consuming if you're dealing with a lot of scrapers. It could be a never-ending battle, and in my opinion most likely nothing would be gained.

[martinibuster]

It's a battle that should be fought. Constant copying may result in the steady loss of your rankings and income. It has been the case in the past that my rankings dropped as more sites copied the content and that my rankings returned after I had them take it down. However Google seems to have made some inroads with this problem. The copying doesn't seem to be having the negative effect that it once did. Nevertheless, I think it's a good practice just in case.

[Planet13]

Well, I don't know what to say except that a page of mine jumped up several spaces about a week after google processed some DMCA requests against some copiers.

So maybe in the complicated world of google, sometimes it helps to file a DMCA?

[serenoo]

lucy24 thank you for your questions because you made me remember that 4 months ago a page of mine lost her first position and I discovered that an important online magazine copied it, and it is incredible to know that such magazine was in my same city (100.000 inhabitants). Now we are friends and it help me sometimes.
The copied link say: published on (http://www.example.com/my-page/).
I still did not contact them because there is not contact page and there is no info about provider on whois database. I can say to you what another website said: Oh sorry .... bla bla and then asked to me if I could collaborate for him. But he removed the page, just yesterday discovered he copied another page of mine and he removed that one too immediatly.
So I think that removing copied pages could improve the ranking. It could be a big pain, but my website is not big, about 50 pages, so I can do it.
Aristotle you could be right, but if I remove all the copies I can solve the situation between: copies are hurting me or copies cannot do anything to me. It could be a step beyond the solution of my ranking problem.

If I undestood well you are suggesting me to use DMCA instead of contacting the websites? For time purposes or for Google ranking puroposes?

[cbpayne]

I have had this happen to me a number of times. I build back links to the page to increase the link juice that they pass to me!

[martinibuster]

A DMCA is a somewhat violent approach that can create an enemy. Online enemies can be a pain to your income if they choose to.

To avoid creating an enemy I prefer to contact websites directly and settle it in the friendliest manner possible. If that fails, and the site owner is in a country outside of the U.S. and otherwise untouchable should they choose to attack my site and my income, I have in the past contacted others who were copied on that site, with a link to DMCA procedures, and let them do it. Otherwise I file the DMCA myself. But that's rare.

[Robert Charlton]

I build back links to the page to increase the link juice that they pass to me!

IMO, this is an extremely dangerous approach. By building links to the scraper, you're making it more likely that the scraper could outrank you for your own content.

Also, why not just build those backlinks to your own page? If the reason is that you wouldn't want the kinds of links you'd be building linking directly to you, then, chances are in the long run that the links wouldn't be helpful.

To all this, btw, I should add that, on rare occasions, I've had sites of naive good will copying my content and linking to me, thinking they were doing me a favor. In such cases, where there was attribution and it was obvious they weren't trying to be sneaky, I contacted them directly and asked that the material be taken down. Their sites were such that a backlink from them would not have been worth the effort of supplying unique content in exchange for the link.

[tedster]

I'd like to second what Robert said. In my experience it's never worth trying to extract value from scraper backlinks - and that includes fixing any errors in the URL that are resulting in a 404 error. From what I see, doing anything at all to legitimize that theoretical backlink lowers your own site's trust and authority.

[martinibuster]

I've had sites of naive good will copying my content and linking to me

This is not rare for me. It's quite common. They are linking to the content because they truly believe that it's fair use and not a copyright violation if they link back to the source material.