Site been plagiarised - duplicate content
-
Hi,
I look after two websites, one sells commercial mortgages the other sells residential mortgages.
We recently redesigned both sites, and one was moved to a new domain name as we rebranded it from being a trading style of the other brand to being a brand in its own right.
I have recently discovered that one of my most important pages on the residential mortgages site is not in Google's index. I did a bit of poking around with Copyscape and found another broker has copied our page almost word-for-word.
I then used copyscape to find all the other instances of plagiarism on the other broker's site and there are a few! It now looks like they have copied pages from our commercial mortgages site as well.
I think the reason our page has been removed from the index is that we relaunced both these sites with new navigation and consequently new urls. Can anyone back me up on this theory?
I am 100% sure that our page is the original version because we write everything in-house and I check it with copyscape before it gets published, Also the fact that this other broker has copied from several different sites corroborates this view.
Our legal team has written two letters (not sent yet) - one to the broker and the other to the broker's web designer. These letters ask the recipient to remove the copied content within 14 days. If they do remove our content from our site, how do I get Google to reindex our pages, given that Google thinks OUR pages are the copied ones and not the other way around? Does anyone have any experience with this? Or, will it just happen automatically? I have no experience of this scenario!
In the past, where I've found duplicate content like this, I've just rewritten the page, and chalked it up to experience but I don't really want to in this case because, frankly, the copy on these pages is really good! And, I don't think it's fair that someone else could potentially be getting customers that were persuaded by OUR copy.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Amelia
-
Hi David,
I hope you had a good weekend?
Thank you for all your help! I reported them to Google using the link you posted and already the other site's URLs that had copied us have been removed and our pages have been put back in the index.
I have to say I am absolutely astounded that Google responded so quickly!
Yes, that is us on Google + and my personal Google + is here: https://plus.google.com/u/0/+AmeliaVargo/posts/.
Thank you again for your help thus far, and for your kind offer of more help should we need it!
Have a great day,
Amelia
-
Glad I could help. I really hope you get this all sorted out. Good news is, you found the problem and are working to fix it, which is much better than most people would have been able to do. Have high hopes!
"the two pages they've copied are really important sales pages (remortgage and first time buyer) so for us, it's a massive shame. "
There is still a way to promote those pages, just not using Google organic to do so. Modify some of the content, create a press release, promote that page using social networks, and drive interest to that page and your site the old fashioned way. PPC is always an option as well. Remember, there are many ways to get traffic, don't lose hope or the vision.
On a side note, is this your company?
https://plus.google.com/u/0/+TurnkeymortgagesCoUk/postsI can add you to my circles, so if you have any more issues or need additional help just let me know.
-
I just wanted to post up a message to everyone who has helped me with this problem.
First of all, please accept my sincere thanks. I REALLY appreciate everyone's contribution.
Now, I just wanted to tell you all what, as a company, we've decided to do.
- We've written letters to: The company that copied us, their web designer and their host, asking them to remove the copied content within 14 days of the letters.
- We've 'reported' them to Google, via one of the links that David posted (https://support.google.com/legal/troubleshooter/1114905?hl=en)
- We've reported them for scraping, using the link that Paddy posted
Hopefully, this problem will go away, but I hate to think how much business we may have lost as a result - the two pages they've copied are really important sales pages (remortgage and first time buyer) so for us, it's a massive shame.
Best wishes, and I hope you all have a great weekend!
Amelia
-
Thank you David.
-
Once their version is removed/rewritten, resubmit your site to Google in every way that you can.
1. Fetch as Google
2. Change sitemap created dates to current day
3. Change crawl frequency in sitemap to daily
4. Check for proper 301 redirects from old pages, when you moved/modified the site to separate branding.
5. Submit the URL in question to Google, and letting them know that someone has copied your site's content. They should be able to see that your was created first.Here are a few links to help:
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/dmca-notice <<< start there
https://support.google.com/legal/troubleshooter/1114905?hl=en
http://blog.kissmetrics.com/find-remove-stolen-content/
http://www.orclage.com/report-remove-stolen-duplicate-content-google/
-
Thank you Paddy! Much appreciated, and thank you for helping me again!
-
Ahh, good one.
-
Don't forget about this:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1Pw1KVOVRyr4a7ezj_6SHghnX1Y6bp1SOVmy60QjkF0Y/viewform
-
Thank you, you've helped me no end.
Have a great weekend
-
It really depends on the web host whether they will follow it or not. Some that are soley based in the UK might not. If they have US based servers or the site is hosted in the US more than likely they will. It is worth a shot though, I try to rattle as many cages as possible. Here is a little info on filing them in the UK https://www.teneric.co.uk/marketing/copyright-infringement.html
-
Hi Lesley,
Yes, I redirected everything using 301 redirects - page to page. I also used the change of address tool in webmaster tools for the site that changed domains.
I don't know if using DMCA will be appropriate - isn't that a US-only thing or can site owners in the UK use it too? If I can, I will use it.
Thank you for responding - I really do appreciate your help.
Best wishes,
Amelia
-
After they drop out of the searches google will index your site as a the canonical site with that content on it. So that part happens manually. Also, when you relaunched, did you redirect everything from the old site? That helps preserve link juice and at the same time gives search engines a pointer that the address of a page has changed to this new address.
One thing I would suggest is having a DMCA take down notice draft and sent to the host as well. If the other people you send letters to tell you to go pound sand, normally the host does not.
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
-
Duplicate content in external domains
Hi,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | teconsite
I have been asking about this case before, but now my question is different.
We have a new school that offers courses and programs . Its website is quite new (just a five months old) It is very common between these schools to publish the courses and programs in training portals to promote those courses and to increase the visibility of them. As the website is really new, I found when I was doing the technical audit, that when I googled a text snipped from the site, the new school website was being omitted, and instead, the course portals are being shown. Of course, I know that the best recommendation would be to create a different content for that purpose, but I would like to explore if there is more options. Most of those portals doesn't allow to place a link to the website in the content and not to mention canonical. Of course most of them are older than the new website and their authority is higher. so,... with this situation, I think the only solution is to create a different content for the website and for the portals.
I was thinking that maybe, If we create the content first in the new website, send it to the index, and wait for google to index it, and then send the content to the portals, maybe we would have more opportunites to not be ommited by Google in search results. What do you think? Thank you!0 -
Sites in multiple countries using same content question
Hey Moz, I am looking to target international audiences. But I may have duplicate content. For example, I have article 123 on each domain listed below. Will each content rank separately (in US and UK and Canada) because of the domain? The idea is to rank well in several different countries. But should I never have an article duplicated? Should we start from ground up creating articles per country? Some articles may apply to both! I guess this whole duplicate content thing is quite confusing to me. I understand that I can submit to GWT and do geographic location and add rel=alternate tag but will that allow all of them to rank separately? www.example.com www.example.co.uk www.example.ca Please help and thanks so much! Cole
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ColeLusby0 -
Duplicate Page Content Errors on Moz Crawl Report
Hi All, I seem to be losing a 'firefighting' battle with regards to various errors being reported on the Moz crawl report relating to; Duplicate Page Content Missing Page Title Missing Meta Duplicate Page Title While I acknowledge that some of the errors are valid (and we are working through them), I find some of them difficult to understand... Here is an example of a 'duplicate page content' error being reported; http://www.bolsovercruiseclub.com (which is obviously our homepage) Is reported to have 'duplicate page content' compared with the following pages; http://www.bolsovercruiseclub.com/guides/gratuities http://www.bolsovercruiseclub.com/cruise-deals/cruise-line-deals/holland-america-2014-offers/?order_by=brochure_lead_difference http://www.bolsovercruiseclub.com/about-us/meet-the-team/craig All 3 of those pages are completely different hence my confusion... This is just a solitary example, there are many more! I would be most interested to hear what people's opinions are... Many thanks Andy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TomKing0 -
Opinion on Duplicate Content Scenario
So there are 2 pest control companies owned by the same person - Sovereign and Southern. (The two companies serve different markets) They have two different website URLs, but the website code is actually all the same....the code is hosted in one place....it just uses an if/else structure with dynamic php which determines whether the user sees the Sovereign site or the Southern site....know what I am saying? Here are the two sites: www.sovereignpestcontrol.com and www.southernpestcontrol.com. This is a duplicate content SEO nightmare, right?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MeridianGroup0 -
Sites with dynamic content - GWT redirects and deletions
We have a site that has extremely dynamic content. Every day they publish around 15 news flashes, each of which is setup as a distinct page with around 500 words. File structure is bluewidget.com/news/long-news-article-name. No timestamp in URL. After a year, that's a lot of news flashes. The database was getting inefficient (it's managed by a ColdFusion CMS) so we started automatically physically deleting news flashes from the database, which sped things up. The problem is that Google Webmaster Tools is detecting the freshly deleted pages and reporting large numbers of 404 pages. There are so many 404s that it's hard to see the non-news 404s, and I understand it would be a negative quality indicator to Google having that many missing pages. We were toying with setting up redirects, but the volume of redirects would be so large that it would slow the site down again to load a large htaccess file for each page. Because there isn't a datestamp in the URL we couldn't create a mask in the htaccess file automatically redirecting all bluewidget.com/news/yymm* to bluewidget.com/news These long tail pages do send traffic, but for speed we only want to keep the last month of news flashes at the most. What would you do to avoid Google thinking its a poorly maintained site?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ozgeekmum0 -
Original Site content was used for submission to article directories
I had a communication problem with my writer and she used original unspun content and posted it to Unique Article Wizard. So all UAW does is take each paragraph and mix them up. So I searched a sentence on my site where the content came from and got back a bunch of returns for that sentence. My site wasn't the first result returned. I"m wondering how bad that is going to be for me. The links from UAW are going back to an anchor layer that then links back to this site. Can anyone tell me if I need to rewrite the content on the original site? That is the only way I can think to make that not an issue. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mtking.us_gmail.com0 -
Login Page = Duplicate content?
I am having a problem with duplicate content with my log in page QuickLearn Online Anytime - Log-in
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | QuickLearnTraining
http://www.quicklearn.com/maven/login.aspx
QuickLearn Online Anytime - Log-in
http://www.quicklearn.com/maven/login.aspx?ReturnUrl=/maven/purchase.aspx?id=BAM-SP
QuickLearn Online Anytime - Log-in
http://www.quicklearn.com/maven/login.aspx?ReturnUrl=/maven/purchase.aspx?id=BRE-SP
QuickLearn Online Anytime - Log-in
http://www.quicklearn.com/maven/login.aspx?ReturnUrl=/maven/purchase.aspx?id=BTAF
QuickLearn Online Anytime - Log-in
http://www.quicklearn.com/maven/login.aspx?ReturnUrl=/maven/purchase.aspx?id=BTDF What is the best way to handle it? Add a couple sentences to each page to make it unique? Use a rel canonical, or a no index no follow or something completely different? Your help is greatly appreciated!0 -
Duplicate Content On A Subdomain
Hi, We have a client who is currently close to completing a site specifically aimed at the UK market (they're doing this in-house so we've had no say in how it will work). The site will almost be a duplicate (in terms of content, targeted keywords etc.) of a section of the main site (that sits on the root domain) - the main site is targeted toward the US. The only difference will be certain spellings and currency type. If this new UK site were to sit on a sub domain of the main site, which is a .com, will this cause duplicate content issues? I know that there wouldn't be an issue if the new site were to be on a separate .co.uk domain (according to Matt Cutts), but it looks like the client wants it to be on a sub domain. Any help/advice would be greatly appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jasarrow0