Entire site code copied - potential SEO issues?
-
Hi folks,
We have noticed that our site has been directly duplicated by another site. They have copied the entire code, including the JS, CSS and most of the HTML and have simply switched their own text and images onto the template. (We discovered it because they even copied over our analytics tracking and were appearing in our reports - duh!)
Does anyone know if there are potential SEO issues in copying the code like that, or do duplicate content issues only apply to indexable HTML content?
Thanks! Matthew
(I didn't want to out them by sharing their URL because it could have been an external contractor that built the site and they probably had no idea.)
-
I agree with Moosa that it's likely not a problem. That said, I think it can be a problem when the "chrome" of closely related sites start linking together aggressively. One tactics spammers use in link networks is using the same content templates again and again, and I wouldn't be surprised if Google used this in their detection algorithms.
On the other hand, Google has also said they look at site structure and design elements when determining if sites on separate subdomains (but the same root domain) should be considered part of the same site for ranking/link purposes.
Regardless, in your case I think you should have little to worry about.
-
That's a very good point Moosa, thanks for that.
-
I personally don’t think there is such penalty on duplicate code as it is available on duplicate content...this is mainly because there are billions of people using Wordpress and as it is a CMS so the basic code will be same only JS and CSS is changed from website to website...
Infect, I have seen many people using the same JS and CSS on more than two websites just by changing the design of the website....I personally believe there is no problem from the SEO stand point.. But obviously ethically copying the code of the website is not good!
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
-
SEO implications of off-site secure Donation page
Hi Mozzers, I have a non-profit client that defends wildlife and public lands in the western US. The huge website is currently not responsive so we are working on that. In the meantime, we will be making the Action pages (such as Donations, Sign Petition, Get Newsletter) pages responsive. This will be housed under a new domain. My question is, what are SEO best practices for doing this? Does it negatively impact SEO to have a visitor "booted" from a site to a second secure site? Does Google know that the Donation site is in fact fulfillment and is linked to the original site? Also, what about domain implications? Is it best to have the name of the non-profit in the domain or sub, like this: https://saveanimals.secure.com/donate? Thanks everyone!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CalamityJane770 -
Intro to programming/coding for seo
Hello, I am currently a SEO and am looking for an Intro to programming/coding course to help me implement various technical SEO tasks for my clients and the business-as the programming dept will not help me, as they do not see the value of SEO. Could someone pls recommend an online course that would introduce me to basic concepts and also specifically, the information that would help me to enhance our SEO? I would also like to better understand APIs. Thanks so much in advance for your help! Lauren
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lfrazer1 -
Seo for international sites
Hello, I have a question for the group, our main US site- http://www.datacard.com is utilized to move content to other regional sites like http://www.datacard.co.uk/ and http://www.datacard.fr/ and http://www.datacard.com.br/. Anyhow, we essentially have some regional content on those sites, but for ease of maintaining and updating the content we have a company translate this for us and then undergo an in country review for local people in our company to review the content. That being said the meta descriptions, titles, code, everything gets translated to that language. I know there are issue for SEO for these purposes as we get much better rankings with http://www.datacard.com. The regional sites are newer so this could be part of it. We don't have an agency helping us with SEo and i get a lot of questions on what can be done internally for this for regional sites with our current structure. Any tips you have? It would be greatly appreciated! Laura
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lauramrobinson320 -
Panda 4.0 Update Affected Site - What should be a the minimum Code to Text Ratio we should aim for ?
Hi All, My eCommerce site got hit badly with the Panda 4.0 update so we have been doing some site auditing and analysis identifying issues which need addressing. We have thin/duplicate issues which I am quite sure was part of the reason we were affected by this even though we use rel=next and rel=prev along with having a separate view all page although we don't concanical tag to this page as I dont' think users would benefit from seeing to many items on one page. This led me to look at our Code to Content Ratio. We have now managed to increase it from 9% to approx 18-22% on popular pages by getting rid of unnecessary code etc. My question is , is there an ideal percentage the code to content ratio should be ?.. and what should I be aiming for ? Also any other Panda 4.0 advice would also be appreciated thanks Sarah
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SarahCollins0 -
Moving career site to new URL from main site. Will it hurt SEO for main page?
For one of our clients we are building a career site and putting it under a different URL and hosting service (mainly due to security concerns of hosting it under the same host and domain). almost 100% of the incoming traffic to their current career section (which it is in a sub-folder) receives traffic for branded keywords (brand + job/career/employment), that is, there are no job position specific keywords. The client is now worried that after moving the site, the inbound traffic to the main site will be severely affected as well as the SERP results. My questions are, will the non-career related SERPs be affected? I don't see how will they be but I could be wrong If no, how could we reassure her that the SEO to the main site wont be affected? are there any case studies of a similar case (splitting part of the website under a new URL and hosting service?) Thank you for your help. PS: this is my first post so please forgive me if this has been asked before. I could not find a good response.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rflores0 -
It appears that Googlebot Mobile will look for mobile redirects from the desktop site, but still use the SEO from the desktop site.
Is the above statement correct? I've read that its better to have different SEO titles & descriptions for mobile sites as users search differently on mobile devices. I've also read it's good to link build, keep text content on mobile sites etc to get the mobile site to rank. If I choose to not have titles & descriptions on my mobile site will Google just rank our desktop version & then redirect a user on a mobile device to our mobile site or should I be adding in titles & descriptions into the mobile site? Thanks so much for any help!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DCochrane0 -
.htaccess code ?
What is the code to redirect www.xyz.com/abc where abc is a folder to www.xyz.com/abc.html
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoug_20050 -
SEO Correlation Between Code and Search Engine Rankings
I posted this on my blog and wanted to get everyones opinion on this (http://palatnikfactor.com/2011/06/07/seo-correlation-between-code-and-search-engine-rankings/) I’m always looking to see what top ranking websites may be doing to get the rankings they do. One of the tasks of any SEO I guess is to really analyze competitors, right? I want to really stress that what I am writing here is completely opinion based and have not (due to time) validated this correlation enough but would like to get the discussion started. Nevertheless, I did enough research to see that there may be a correlation between code validation and top ranking websites, at least for certain queries where the number of real big players/brands is limited or non-existent. So, what do I mean? http://validator.w3.org/ validates code on websites. This tool shows you errors and warnings that may be making it harder for search engines to crawl your website. Looking at top competitors for certain niches, I was surprised to find that top sites had very few errors compared to 2+ page rankings. That’s not to say that all the sites on the first page had fewer errors (cleaner code) than websites in the 2<sup>nd</sup> page plus. However, again, top ranking websites for keywords that I was looking at had cleaner code which may have a correlation in regards to organic rankings. What’s your take? Does this have any effect in regards to SEO?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PaulDylan0