Duplicate content - how to control 3rd parties

Manufacturer site + retailers + exporters

[millie]

I work with a manufacturer and they include a catalogue of all their products on their web site. The site is actively marketed.

Retailers then stock the products and add them to their online stores, often using the same product information and tags as displayed on the manufacturer site.

In addition, some retailers have online stores only selling products by this manufacturer so there are no other products to create some variation. These retailers use a database of products provided by the manufacturer.

Now, there is an overseas retailer who has copied the full manufacturer site, apparently with the blessing of the manufacturer. Their site is a sort of snap shot of the manufacturer site, and has been put on a separate domain on a separate server. The sites are identical except they have put their company information into a header in the site template.

So I have two questions:

1) How do manufacturers avoid the problem of duplicate content when their products are sold by lots of retailers using the same copy and tags? (I am mainly concerned with avoiding negative impact to the marketing of the manufacturer site, the retailers can look after themselves.)

2) What do I do about this almost exact duplicate site? Can it harm my work? The distributor sees it as a marketing advantage and is an important customer of the manufacturer so I need to tread carefully.

Please help ...

[millie]

Hello, can anybody help with this?

[Webwork]

Ummmmm, threaten to cut off the supply of manufactured goods to the wholesaler/distributor/retailer if they don't abide the manufacturer's rules, whatever rules you may make that will work? Cutting of a supply has been known to work.

Provide a separate database of product IDs and descriptions for the downstream's online use?

Go with it? They are, after all, helping move product and lot's of manufacturers are in the same position and seem to get along okay.

[prairie]

Be very careful about doing anything that might create bad faith with people who can badmouth you online in return.

There shouldn't be any concern if the duplicate content is hosted by legitimate parties that appropriately further your product's cause.

If you want to rank first, build PR and good inbound anchor text.

Maybe you could request that re-sellers link back to the manufacturers site. This could work so long as you're not selling direct.