What To DO WIth Sites Which Copy YOur Content

Well, my site was hammered last year june and alrthough results are not as bad as last year but they are still not good. I have been performing different tests to see if i can rank again for newer terms and things look alright but that's another story.

I have been checking my pages and quoting text from them in to the google and seeing 100s of sites copying my content, in most cases my site is deep down the serps burried under sites which have copied my content and in some cases my site doesn't even show up, i had added alot of fresh and unique content ever since i got penalty last year but all the content gets copied and i never rank, it seems like all the money i have spent on unique content and all the efforts i have put are gone down the drain, there are some sites which have copied my design too, not exactly same but like 90%.

What would you guys do in such situation? would it help submitting a reconsideration request with all the proofs of sites copying my content and then showing them how my site ranks way deeper? BTW i have more quality links than all of those sites copying my content.

Without knowing what your site is, I can only give you a general answer. That answer is...

That's the way of the internet I'm afraid. The most authoriative site displaying that content will outrank all other sites for searches relating to that content, even yours, even if you were the first to display that content.

We can go into great discussions about the morals of it all, and if they have or haven't quoted and provided a link back to the source (you!) and reporting them to their host etc but to be honest you are wasting your time and energy since you could be more productive.

This is what I would do.

Keep adding unique content, make sure there are anchor text links in that content to other parts of my website (use the whole url as the link including the http://www....).

You should rank for the fresh stuff until it is copied. Any stuff copied will give you anchor text links to inner pages of your site (that is the very best type of link you can get).

In time, you will gain thousands of backlinks and you will become the authoriative site.

I know it's not pleasant for you right now but when you have that authoriative site in the future you can rule the world! OK, not rule the world but you will have the power to do to other sites, what these sites are doing to you.

A couple of years ago I had a site that was in your position right now, I did exactly as advised above and now I can kick butt in almost any subject on that site, I'm thrilled to bits that it happened to me now but the time I wasn't happy. I hope to see you in the same position in a couple of years.

It's worth checking to see if there are some regular theives out ranking you for your content that are not providing you with a link back to your site and reporting them to their host. But don't waste too much time on it, it will just eat you up.

Good luck!

Janie x

Thanks for your reply, that sounds like a good idea and yea i can't really report all those which copy my content for two main reasons: firstly there are in hundreds in some cases and secondly the content i publish is about video game cheats and cheats are not copyrightable so any one copies without fear.

Please check your PM for the url.

Check this out:

http://www.blogherald.com/2007/11/26/the-6-steps-to-stop-content-theft/

http://forums.seochat.com/showpost.php?p=512111

Nice stuff there, however, most of that shall take alot of time but still worth going for. Do you think once reported to search engines i might be able to get my ranks back?

There is no harm in trying out.

I think this kind of stuff happens more often then we hear about. I'm surprised there is no sticky for this.

I am not well versed with this area but maybe one of you more savvy people can create a general guide and some steps one can take to protect their content and how to prevent other sites from doing it.

Heck, this happens all the time on a huge scale. I've had it happen to me and I'm guilty of it (sorry, but at least I will admit it).

The question is.... time! Do you use your time to stop it happening or do you use your time turning it to your advantage. And that is a question you should ask yourself no matter what your problem is, not just to someone stealing your content.

Whatever you decide I wish you the best of luck!

Janie x

Couple of blogs do have links to my actual pages but still they rank way better, my pages show up in the end of serps.

Like I said above, right now I can fully understand why you aren't happy BUT as a long term strategy (assuming you want to look at the long term) it is one of the best things that can happen to you.

Keep building unique content, keep adding plenty of links in your unique content to other pages on your website and hopefully, 90% of the time of the content is copied the links to pages on your site will remain.

Long term, your site WILL become the authoriative site. When you get to that stage you will be able to rank highly almost immediately for any new page you put on your site. That is what every webmaster aims for!

If you want short term results, then you really ought to look at reporting those that are stealing your content and reporting them.

Whatever you decide, I wish you lots of luck!

Janie x

do u ve any idea what u r saying. His site will never become authoritative like this. However his competitors will do become

In my opinion, a lot of what people call the "sandbox" is really duplicate content filtering of young blogs because they are heavily scraped by parasitic websites and their RSS feeds are being republished.

A lot of my content has been duplicated over the years but I still rank higher in the SERPs so I have not worried too much about it.
But I am interested in getting backlinks... So what you are saying is to bury a link with good anchor text on the page. I had Canonocial issues in the past ( 3-4 years ago) when I had links on my site pointing to the www version of my site and also the index page.
Is this a problem still?
What I mean is if I have a internal link on a page pointing to baseball.htm and another link pointing to www.domain.com/baseball.htm will Google have an issue with this?

Also a lot of scrappers seem to just grab the text without the formatting so a link buried in the body of the text is lost.