Web Site Copying

Both sites get a penalty?

[johnnydequino]

If there are two sites, site A and B. If B copies everything entirely, will A get a penalty?

I have read conflicting information about this, but I was told that if Site A has been indexed first (Which is the case here), Site B would get the penalty.

Also, what are the best ways to prevent copying?

(grrr) jd

[vitaplease]

My hunch is that Google is more careful about penalties and duplicate webcontent on a webpage level.

"&filter=0" - [webmasterworld.com...] could take care of that.

If there are two sites, site A and B. If B copies everything entirely, will A get a penalty?

A complete site is a different story of course. I would say, given Google's crawling frequency, site B should vanish from the Serps soonest, leaving site A untarnished.

[Jenstar]

I have seen an established (1.5+ years) well-indexed Site A penalized when Site B stole content from that site. Site A only came up for those results when clicking on the link to show "results similar to the ones shown".

When a cease & desist was sent and the content was removed from Site B, a month or so later Site A returned to a non-penalized status in the serps.

Site B was brand new, and had just been registered a month or so prior to this, so I am not sure how Google is doing their duplicate content filter, but it does not appear to be checking "whose content was here first" and domain name register dates don't seem to play a factor in it.

[vitaplease]

Interesting Jenstar,

so Google still is strugling with that.

Was that example a complete website copy though?

[Jenstar]

No, not a complete copy. This was back in June/July, so a fairly recent example. I believe it was right when we were seeing a flurry of people posting because their sites had been caught by this duplicate content filter, and nearly all of the problems were due to copyright infringers stealing content for their own site - the original site would be penalized while the newer site would not. My guess was that Google saw the newer site as being the "fresher" one, not considering the fact that in these kinds of cases that fresher can also mean stolen.

[wanderingmind]

Here is a second-hand example of what happens when content is copied.

A friend of mine runs a set of websites.

Site A, the older site, was registered before site B.

Later, site B was created, and some pages of site A were copied with minor modifications to site B. Still 70 % of the content on the copied page on site B was the same as the one on the page site A.

Result? For the same searches, site A's page disappeared from SERPs even though it was the older site, the second was a copy etc. Site B's page started appearing instead. Page on site A available now only if you display 'similar results'.

Conclusion: Google banned the page on site A even though it was the original.

(Both the sites were on the same IP. I do not know if that is a factor.)

[johnnydequino]

This is great. From what I have found this far, a site copied my entire 70 pages plus of original content. Something that took 3 months to create.

This guy copied it in 10 minutes - word for word.

Yesterday the site got deepcrawled, but now the pages are removed from the index except for the homepage.

My SERPS are uneffected. I hope everything gets banished from this site.

It's amazing there is zero protection for a webmaster when your site gets copied. You better believe I am learning some javascript over the weekend to make it tougher.

Thank god google realizes this and does not penalize the site that gets copied. (I hope)

jd

[gstewart]

You better believe I am learning some javascript over the weekend to make it tougher

johnnydequino, what sort of approach would most successfully do that?

[johnnydequino]

<<You better believe I am learning some javascript over the weekend to make it tougher>>

I have learned there is no way to stop someone from copying; but you can make it tougher. Stuff such as disabiling right clicking on a page, adding copyrights, adding certain text comments in the HTML will help. I am brushing up on this fast.

jd

[claus]

The only 100% bullet proof method that will stop a site from being copied is to keep that site off the web and never publish it.

If the Google algo somehow penalizes the original site, then there is something wrong with it and it should be corrected, as this is against Googles own published policy:

There is almost nothing a competitor can do to harm your ranking or have your site removed from our index. Your rank and your inclusion are dependent on factors under your control as a webmaster, including content choices and site design.
Google Facts & Fiction [google.com]

/claus

[mquarles]

In law school they taught us to read things carefully, as each word makes a difference. In this case, the word "almost" in the Google Facts & Fiction speaks volumes.

Mike

[rogerd]

It seems like there has been anecdotal evidence that PR entered into the equation - if your PR3 site got copied by a PR7 site, you might vanish in favor of the higher PR domain. Fortunately, I've not had to deal with that problem.

[Jenstar]

No, my example was a PR5 site as the one that was penalized when the new PR0 site copied the content.

[johnnydequino]

I may have a problem then. This is what is happening. A PR8 site stole my entire content, 70 pages worth. This PR8 site bought a domain name, and put all the 70 pages there again.

Now, he has his PR8 site linking to this new domain. Now there are TWO copies of my site out there.

Worse, according to the 'whois' domain profile, the website is trying to sell this domain for $250.

How can I get these guys to stop? According to Brett - there is nothing I can do except report them to google. What about my rights?

I have sent them letters to take my content down by this weekend, something tells me I have a serious issue here.

jd

[BlueSky]

Stuff such as disabiling right clicking on a page, adding copyrights, adding certain text comments in the HTML will help. I am brushing up on this fast.

These are pretty easy to get around. Think a little more cynical.

[Jenstar]

johnnydequino, head over to the Content, Writing & Copyright [webmasterworld.com] forum. There are numerous discussions on what to do in cases like this.

Here is one of the most recent ones:
[webmasterworld.com...]

[BlueSky]

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