Stolen Privacy Policy page copy from our site

[NVentouris]

Hi all,

I am working on the best electronics e-commerce site of Greece and I have a situation I have never been before.
During backling analysis I found out that many other e-shops (almost 40) have stolen our privacy policy copy and they link with their domain as anchor back to our home page.
I am thinking that if you place a link "example.com" points to "somethingdifferent.com" is like you are trying to trigger the users right ?
On the other hand I have 40 backlings ...
Should I call them to remove them or not ?

[aristotle]

they link with their domain as anchor back to our home page.

Why would they do that? It seems especially odd that all of them would do it.

[RedBar]

(almost 40) have stolen our privacy policy

Why on earth don't they simply copy it and host the page themselves? That seems crazy.

[not2easy]

On the other hand I have 40 backlings

That kind of a backlink would not be of benefit to your site. Your Privacy Policy page is noindexed, isn't it?

[goodroi]

Some people only know how to change text but not html code which can result in only the anchor text being changed and the url staying the same. I've encountered this many times.

I wouldn't worry about it. Privacy policy pages are usually given much less significance by Google. Many of the top ranking electronic ecommerce sites for Google.gr have over 1 million backlinks. 40 links from privacy policy pages is unlikely to have a significant impact to a site with over 1 million backlinks.

[NVentouris]

goodroi Thank you ! You got it right !

[Shai]

If you page is noindexed, it may still pass link value unless you have it as nofollow also. In which case, I would be very much tempted to leave the links as they are. They will slightly muddy the brand signals of your competitors and should still provide some link juice. If however your site is quite strong as it is, I would just NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW the page and forget about it to be on the safe side. You could always disavow the links in stages and see if they have already provided some kind of ranking support and that way, you can always remove them from the disavow if that is indeed the case.

[engine]

You might want to consider adding some "sleeper" information in future iterations of your text. Make it specific to your site. Make a Google alert, and add the unique text in the alert. That way you can get alerted when the first person takes your text. It might be that one person took it, and then made it available to others and told them it was free. Alternatively, it's one person representing all the sites.
You could find out more by connecting some dots: Whois might bring up common information about the owner, or you may have to do a reverse lookup.
However, as goodroi says, I wouldn't worry too much about it.

[dipper]

this is why DMCA exists - easy to file one with Google, and/or with their hosting providers IF you are that worried. Having said that, 40 related websites linking to you has to be considered a real bonus .. are you really worried that much that they copied the content of only that page?

.. a bit like poker, you don't want to teach your opponent to be better!