How to deal with DMCA takedown notices
-
How do you deal with DMCA takedown notices related to product descriptions? With Google it is simple enough for any person to submit a DMCA takedown notice irrespective if the owner holds right to the content.
One such example is this http://www.chillingeffects.org/notice.cgi?sID=1012391. Although Google dealt in that particular case properly (and did not remove content), we find that nowadays more and more competitors use the DMCA takedowns as an easy way to de-index competitive content.
Since the person registering the DMCA takedown does not require to provide any proof of copyright, de-indexing happens quite quickly.
Try this URL: http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/removals/copyright/domains/mydomain.com/ (replace your domain) to see if you have been affected.
I would like your opinion if you have been affected by takedowns on product descriptions - in my mind if product descriptions are informative and relate to the characteristics of the product then takedowns should be denied.
-
luckily I have never had that problem, also it seems that you will be alerted in you webmaster account if someone requests a takedown.
Still an interesting "black hat" technique to remove competitors out of the serps that might not have webmaster accounts
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Site Structure: How do I deal with a great user experience that's not the best for Google's spiders?
We have ~3,000 photos that have all been tagged. We have a wonderful AJAXy interface for users where they can toggle all of these tags to find the exact set of photos they're looking for very quickly. We've also optimized a site structure for Google's benefit that gives each category a page. Each category page links to applicable album pages. Each album page links to individual photo pages. All pages have a good chunk of unique text. Now, for Google, the domain.com/photos index page should be a directory of sorts that links to each category page. Alternatively, the user would probably prefer the AJAXy interface. What is the best way to execute this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | tatermarketing0 -
Has anyone else noticed a big change in SERPS in the past week or two
We've had a massive change in our position, we were pretty stable on certain keywords for quite some time, however in the past week we were bouncing around and then thrown completely off with some of our keywords dropping to page 4 and some to page 2. I've noticed a lot of changes on the google uk serps, and not sure if it is just a penguin refresh or if its a new one that hasn't been announced. anyone else notice?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bassbuds1 -
Is anyone noticing if penguin 2.0 as been launched
I read a paper that penguin 2.0 is already running As anyone more information about that or any tool to seen how rankings has been affected
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | maestrosonrisas0 -
Dealing with Spammy Affiliate Site Copies
We have a longstanding site that sells media files with a large number of digital products. We offer a referral program with rewards for those that tell others about us. In the last year, we have seen some sites popping up primarily in China that appear to be spammy looking advertisement based copies of our own site with product pages that link back to our actual products using a referral link/code. (no-follow links.) These sites started popping out more when we noticed that some of their pages were outranking our own actual product pages. Any thoughts on this? Our affiliate policy states that the affiliate program is meant to help and not harm our site. In one sense this is traffic to our site which is supposed to be a good thing, but if these pages are ranking above our own, that is not what we are wanting. I would bet these pages might get clicked on and due to the spammy nature of these sites, the user bounces and never actually gets to our website. How would you handle something like this? Thanks!! Craig
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TheCraig0 -
DMCA Complaint to Google - HELP
I have several sites copying my content, which I found out via Copyscape.com. Unfortunately, this is giving me duplicate content. I filed a DMCA complaint through Google and the infringing pages were approved but the pages still remain. Can someone please help me understand this better? I thought Google was supposed to remove these pages? Am I supposed to content the site owner to get the content removed or are their pages simply de-indexed?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | tutugirl0 -
Some things I have noticed SEO which showed a positive
Hi, Just a few small things I have noticed which has made a difference in ranking, thought I would share, small things but every little helps. Looks like more content on a page the better the ranking, in a test I have done this is what I found: page with 0 content - Google page 11 page with 250 content - Google page 5 page with 500 content - Google page 2 page with 1000 content - Google page 1, position 3 Looks like Google might count the words on a page (like you can do in Microsoft word) and then apply a score against it. Tweets and likes (78) showed a jump from page 1, position 8, to page 1, position 1 (this was the only form of link building and no changes made apart from adding the share plugin). Kind of makes me think if your starting a new site or page then add 750 - 1000 words of good content (tutorial or whatever) with a social sharing tool and let this run will give you a better chance of ranking when you start to introduce products and services.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | activitysuper0 -
Charity project for local women's shelter - need help: will Google notice if you alter the document title with Javascript after the page loads?
I am doing some pro-bono work with a local shelter for female victims of domestic abuse. I am trying to help visitors to the site cover their tracks by employing a document.title change when the page loads using JavaScript. This shelter receives a lot of traffic from Google. I worry that the Google bots will see this javascript change and somehow penalize this site or modify the title in the SERPs. Has anyone had any experience with this kind of javascript maneuver? All help would be greatly appreciated!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jkonowitch0 -
How to deal with category browsing and duplicate content
On an ecommerce site there are typically a lot of pages that may appear to be duplications due to category browse results where the only difference may be the sorting by price or number of products per page. How best to deal with this? Add nofollow to the sorting links? Set canonical values that ignore these variables? Set cononical values that match the category home page? Is this even a possible problem with Panda or spiders in general?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | IanTheScot0