We have a problem on our site. Somebody uploaded a LOT of unique content on our website about 2 years ago. It's pretty much the ins and outs of a lot of stuff about our industry that users may find informative. However, this content was within a frame and not being indexed within the search engines properly. We are in the process of a website redesign and were going to remove this content out of the frame. However, I just noticed that blogger stole this content from us. They referenced our website with a link but they did not ask for permission to post this. I also noticed that this is an old site 2002, but it is unrelated to our industry. Our content actually comes underneath their page in the google results within a frame. My first instinct was to email them and ask them to remove this content because it might be seen as duplicate content now that we are re-designing our site and posting it again. However, this is also a "free" link from a very old site, but the fact that it is duplicate content may negate this. What should I do?
Hey Chris, If I were in your situation, I would fix your frames issue first. Get your site crawlable to search engines, and then worry about the other stuff later. The next steps depend on your situation. Are any of the pages that are displayed in the frame in google's index? Is the link from the bloggers site actually passing value to your site? (Its a standard HTML link, there is not a no-follow attribute, the external link shows up in your webmaster tools account)
Hey Chris, thanks for the response. Our site is very old(1999) but I haven't been a part of it's initial development. Our site ranks very well in google in general, but I've always had an issue with that page in a frame. The content in that frame does come up right underneath the theif's page when searching for that exact text in google. The link pointing to our site that the theif posted does not have the nofollow attribute on the article itself(the site is a blog), but it has that on the main page. This site is old, but it seems content spammy because he is just posting random articles from all different sorts of topics. It's not a blog related to one topic in general.
When you say your site ranks under the blogger blog do you mean for your company name or a particular keyword term? Let me know and I'll see if I can't help you drop the blogger site below you....
Hey Chris, I'm really intrigued by this question you've posed. I'll try to share some thoughts, and I hope you keep us updated on what eventually happens. If the search engine has already indexed the content inside the frame, it may have read it before the thief blogger stole it. You may simply rank below the blog because your information is within a frame and find that by moving the content out of the frame, you will leapfrog them. I agree that the first thing you should do is get rid of the frames and post the content where it is indexable. Also, add some new content if possible. Doing so will help your SERPs and might convince a spider that since you have provided so much information on a topically relevant, older site, that the dup content issue isn't really an issue at all. You said that you rank well currently, so you may just be spinning your wheels here worrying about it at all.
Chris if I were you I would convert the frame to a crawlable page (as many of us have suggested already) and then 301 redirect the framed page to the new crawlable page. After you do that you should be good to go. (also listen to mauik about adding more content, and make sure your internal navigation is optimized)
hey chris execute a site: www. yourdomain. com command and check what google has indexed, this really should be monitored over time, if you have not already done it register for google webmaster tools this will help with finding duplicate meta tags. if you site is indexed with the pages copied onto the bloggers site, then the blogger is the one who will get into problems with the duplicate content. if the pages are not indexed then fix the problem with the crawlability and get the page indexed... I would also suggest changing about 30% so that you minimise any duoplicate content filter, then write a knol on the information which you had copied. googles duplicate content works on the oldest source of the document, so if your information was not crawled then the blogger will have the oldest source.
He stated he ranks in the SERPs behind the blogger site so he would be indexed....one cannot be found in the SERP without indexing having occurred If that were the case he would not have written why the other site is above his.....the blogger site is not in any trouble and not being filtered for dupe content. Duplicate content is not much of an issue, there are over 100 parts to the algorithm and any area that is weak can be over come easily with a few high PR anchor text links procurred however one would like. See above. If duplicate content were an issue... then all the affiliate sites using amazon for content would not rank well in Google.....and I can tell you from experience owning over 20 amazon affiliate sites.....that is not the case This would also hold true for most e-commerce sites or most other dynamically generated sites that pull an xml feed for products.... Hope it helps dispell any myths....
Thank you all for your responses. So I take it that no one recommends asking the blogger to remove this content? One question... in the new redesign if the name of the page the frame is in gets renamed will that affect anything SEO wise? Will it look like new content being posted to the search engines? One other thing I should mention is that this that while this blogger did steal our content, he/she left some paragraphs out so it may indeed look like THEIR page may be unique content to the search engines. It's just a dilemma because it's sort of frustrating to see someone steal another person's work just to "throw content" on their blog. While their blog is old(2002) as a whole it is irrelevant to us so I'm not sure if it's even worth it letting them leave it on their page.
I FAIL to see why there is ANY issue with frames. Google and other engines seem to have NO problem indexing my FRAMED site. I have over 4000 FRAMED pages and Google indexes ALL of them except those with the "noindex" tag. Other search engines even index my "noindex" FRAMES. So, WHERE is the issue with FRAMES?
Actually there is none...many moons ago Google could not index content in frames...just as they could not index content in flash, or images. However that has all changed. The problem is people do not stay abreast of current changes in IT and therefore distribute misinformation. This should have been seen easily by others, as the OP clearly stated he ranks right behind the blogger blog, so his framed content had to be indexed, and returning results in the SERPs.....
1. Get over it if it's not copyrighted Google rewards what it believes is the best site, and they have no real way of telling who is the contents original author. 2. Waste a lot of money on an attorney and send cease and desist letters. 3. Make a deal with whomever is posting the content to link back to your site and then use that link back in the most effective way. The web is full of plagiarism, because the average "Internet Marketer" knows nothing about marketing and thinks they can get rich stealing the work of others.
Duplicate content is a very big issue. Google is usually very generous on how it decides if something is duplicate content. Usually it takes something close to a exact duplicate to cause you google search position problems. Yahoo seems to handle it better. I have had this to happen to me twice in the past year. This time I even had a link to my site in my site html. Still did not help. The duplicate content has a link to my site,and google search position way higher then mine. You will need to send google a written DMCA notice of violation to get google to remove duplicate site links from the google index. google "google DMCA" for more info. -
duplicate content IS an issue. The sites you mention rank well DESPITE the dupe content, not BECAUSE of it. If you're starting from scratch, and want to rank high for any useful keyword, *you will find it a MUCH harder uphill battle if you use duplicate content* Explanation is here
go to google and find the page in search results, by search for a string "" when you find it click "cached" and look at googles cache of the page Then click in internet explorer "view - source" and look at the source code - search in that source code for the article. If the artice is within the source code then you will have no problem as the content of the frame has been spidered and so long as your page was cached before the ones with duplicate content google will see your page as the original
The problem with frames arises because it is assumed that one is optimizing for the main page which is not a frame. That means it is going to be much harder for you to rank for the page where there is no content. The frame inside my page shows up in the results but it does not "rank" for any keywords as the HTML on that page is not optimized whatsoever. If you can make the stuff in this page "rank" in the search engines that's great and then you have no problem. However, I would not really see the need of putting all that great optimized stuff in a frame because you are doing the main page it is on a dis justice.
Thanks for your input but I don't think you quite read my post. It is original work and no one gave them permission to post it however they did reference us with a link. I heard a while back that Google was developing technology that will eventually tell what site posted the content on the web first. This was about a year ago I heard this, not sure what the progress on this is yet. I agree with your last statement.
If you are referring to the site in your siglink and the sites that have duplicate content taken from your site.... They outrank you because their sites are real websites with many pages of valuable content. You have a simple three page site of which two are not content based pages..... Also... all links you post on your pages are within the html coding of the page.....where else would they be????
99% of the e-commerce sites that rank well in Google organic SERPs have no content......most cannot be SEOd properly due to rigid cart admins. The algorithm works based on over 100 points to be scored, so a weakness in content for example, is easily over come with high value anchor text links pointing to your pages..... So the iframe issue is mute to be honest. Plus you have yet to state whether you are discussing a domain name ranking, or a keyword ranking, so its hard to offer you any direct advice.