Hi all, Our company website currently receives a good level of traffic, with original content throughout and is very search engine friendly. I recently noticed a drop in position on Google for two core product pages, with an inevitable drop in traffic. After a little research I found that the original content on these pages had been duplicated on a directory called Solusource. I can only put the drop in performance of our pages down to this duplication as Solusource only contains duplicate text from these two products (the other pages on our site have remained unaffected). Now, down to my question... I was under the impression that if a website was to duplicate another website's content then they would be penalised, leaving the original website's ranking unaffected. Is this correct or are both parties affected? It seems bizarre that a website whose content is well established should be penalised by a new (albeit highly ranking) site that has simply ripped their content. I am reluctant to rewrite the content on our website and will probably request that the duplication is removed from the Solusource website, but wanted to clarify this for my own sanity! Thanks for your help. Mike
Often, Google cannot tell which is the original and which the plagiarism. Here are the steps I recommend. 0. Copyright your website contents (it costs about $40 for the whole site). 1. Write to the offending website and request the removal of content. 2. If this doesn't happen or you don't hear back within 48 hours, call them. 3. If nothing happens, contact their hosting provider, explain the situation and the steps you have taken. Often the host will quickly remove the duplicate content because it violates their terms of service. 4. If nothing happens, report them to Google. Here is a useful page: http://www.google.com/dmca.html I hope this helps!
Thanks for the advice. I'm amazed that Google can't determine the original source of the content, seeing as it was written and indexed over 12 months ago (with the offending site posting the duplicate content just recently) I have now been in contact with the website in question and sent them some revised text that they can use on their pages - they were very apologetic and willing to sort it out. I have also re-written the copy on the two pages of our site that were affected just to ensure we regain our positions, I guess the only positive to come out of it is that I now have a little more fresh content on our site! Out of interest, how do we go about officially copyrighting the site content? Is it not enough to include a copyright statement in the site's footer? Thanks again, Mike
Hey Mike, Yeah... it is really surprising sometimes that Google isn't better at this. Part of the problem MIGHT be as to whether or not your pages with the content on them were previously indexed. If they were, I would think that this probably came about as a result of Google's recent (apparent) preference for regularly updated, fresh and real-time information... in addition to the real-time search algorithim the older QDF (query deserves freshness) algorithim places a greater emphasis on new materials about particularly popular queries. Therefore, if these topics became hot recently, Google might temporarily give preference to the more "fresh" information before it realises this is duplicate content. In the short term this could mean big gains for your competitor and major losses for you. However, regardless of whether these two solutions seem to accurately describe your situation, I definitely would follow the advice of the others on this board and copyright your material. At least this way you can threaten legal action (even if you have no intention of following through with it). Obviously you are in the right here if you created the content, but it is always better to have the legal backing because "I told you so" -type arguments won't get you very far I'm afraid! Hope this helps and good luck with it!
It is enough only theoretically, but in practice DMCA will probably only help you, or help you better, if your copyright is registered. I suggest that you register it with the US copyright office whether or not you are in the US. The link you want is here: http://www.copyright.gov/eco/ Best, Philip
Just a quick update... As mentioned, all traffic to the pages in question on our site had dried up. Since then the Google pagerank for each page had disappeared (originally PR4). We weren't even appearing in results for the product name anymore (unique to us!). Anyway, Google must have now sorted itself out and re-indexed the duplicate website's content as we have now regained our pagerank and original positions in Google for all search terms. Traffic is back and I can rest easy Excellent outcome! Thanks all. Mike