Site is Replicating Content

[Nicky92]

Hi,

So, there's a site that is fully copy-pasting/pulling exact content from the website I am working on. And my site ends up getting indexing issues while this site ends up ranking 1st. Sometimes, it outranks my article, despite copying entirely from mine.

<snip>

Has anyone else experienced the same? What can I do in such a situation?

[edited by: not2easy at 11:58 am (utc) on Mar 12, 2022]
[edit reason] Please see TOS [webmasterworld.com] [/edit]

[not2easy]

Hello Nicky92 and welcome to WebmasterWorld [webmasterworld.com]

It is possible that the offending site is copying your content - or it is possible that they are showing your site on theirs using iframes. If you were to visit their site showing your content you should be able to see whether the page source shows iframes or whether they have copied and repurposed your content.

Another way to quickly determine whether they show your content in frames is to edit your content in some minor detail, maybe use one word different and then see if their site shows your change automatically.

When you are sure of how this is being done you can usually fix it in a short time.

[Dimitri]

Peace first, then ...

Has anyone else experienced the same?

Nearly everybody ... as soon as you rank for something, someone else will scrap your content, and somehow rank higher ... Welcome to The Internet.

What can I do in such a situation?

The normal procedure, would be to contact the owner of the site, and requires that he removes your content, ... since his business model is based on stealing the content of others, there is very few chance that he minds your request.

So, the next step should be to contact the host of this site, and report the copyright infringement, if the host is a western company, this is possible that, if you provide enough evidences of the infringement they do "something".

Next, you can report the site to the registrar where the domain name is registered, or at the registiry level too.

You should also be able to report the site to Search engine, which might de-list it , eventually ...

This is the theory, in real life, most of this are rarely working ...

A counter measure is to try to prevent the scraping to occur, by identifying and blockin IP-IP Range from where the scapper is operating , knowing that he can use plenty of different IP, from different countries ...

Like some on this forum, I am trying to block all IP ranges which are belonging to Data centers, as well as blocking countries from where there is no reason someone wants to visit my sites. Also, I keep an idea on suspect activities.

[NickMNS]

Both of the above answers are great. I would just like to add a few points.

@Dimitri suggestion of contacting the website owner etc... is good and can work, but not always and even if a host kicks the offending site off, they will likely just start again somewhere else. So you can't rely on that as a solution. Blocking IP's is also good practice, but it is a game of whack-a-mole, as IP change.

@not2easy's suggestion is good, but I disagree with the last statement:

When you are sure of how this is being done you can usually fix it in a short time.

You don't need to know how this is done. You should block other website's from being able to frame your content now. Because if it isn't the case here it will occur at some point in the future. This is one of the few things that you can proactively block.

Here is a guide on how to stop framing:
[cheatsheetseries.owasp.org...]

[aristotle]

Well in my experience google's algo nearly always knows that my sites are the original publishers of the content.

Many of my articles have been scraped and published elsewhere numerous times over the years, but as far as I know, the only instances of any of these copies ever ranking above my originals was when a couple of my sites were under a penguin penalty for about two years from 2012 to 2014. Except for those cases, my originals have always ranked higher than any of the copies.

This would suggest that one reason, and in my opinion probably the most common reason, some site owners may have this problem is because their sites are under an algorithmic penalty.