Mind Blowing Copied Content Scenario

[SirLouen]

Today I was doing a little audit of a keyword for one of my blogs (DA:47 PA:36) and found this issue:

For some reason, there is an online newspaper (DA:66 PA 46) is literally copying all my news

Here there is the meta properties for time:

As you can see my article was published the 15th May and modified 16th May
I manually indexed this article with Google Search Console after I published it the 15th May
The newspaper copied the content the 20th May and indexed the 20th may

What's happening now?
If I do an exact match query with a paragraph it appears ONLY the newspaper article and in the bottom this message:

If I press "repeat the search with the omitted results included", then it appears the two articles: mine and the newspaper

So essentially, the newspaper is eclipsing my site.

I thought that by first indexing my site, all successive copied alternatives would be overwritten by mine in Google Search results, but this is not true. Also, thought that the meta properties could also be a good indication of "who was first" (a little senseless because they can be tampered)

But there are no other reasons in my mind to find why Google is doing this shady thing. Essentially a mind-blowing scenario.

Thoughts?

 

[pauliakas]

is this happened with all your articles?
The newspaper site scraped all you articles ?

 

[SirLouen]

@pauliakas

It's a little bit more complex. They are not scrapping, they are manually copying them. But they are not doing this with bad intentions. This has been a dynamic before I joined the SEO administration of this blog. For some reason, some of the authors in my blog are also authors in the newspaper, and they think their articles should get the maximum diffusion possible (ego issues mainly). I cannot stop and help with this dynamic, because it's hardly implemented in both organizations.

But what I'm trying to do, is create something that makes Google override the newspaper and put the blog in the centre as the original article generator.

 

[terrycody]

If you have Ahref tool, put that URL in the tool to check how many keywords this particular URL is ranking with, and compare with the copied News site URL, maybe it is only a bug, means your article is still the priority for Google. If it turns out that URL is ranking rather than yours, this is a concern though.

Edit: oh saw your new comment, maybe its somewhat Google regard the newspaper as the main source, but I wouldn't worry too much since not all your articles will be copied, I think there is no harm.

 

[bartosimpsonio]

First report the DMCA violation to Google. Then expose the bastards.

In technical terms there is nothing you can do. It's gotta be real world action.

 

[SirLouen]

but I wouldn't worry too much since not all your articles will be copied

Not all articles will be copied but most, at least 4 out of 5 will be copied for sure. My blog is an organization that generates news from events that are shared by the interest readers of the newspaper. Therefore the copy probability is very high. Obviously the newspaper generates likes 30 times more articles than my blog do (they have plenty of writers and editors), but it's an issue.

The best part is that the newspaper in fact cites the source with a ******** link. We have like dozens of ******** links (this is mainly why we have a pretty decent DA: 47), because at least other sources that copy, link back.

But is a little bit shitty that this situation happens, and it's not only happening with this article. I've checked other and exactly the same happens.

Ahrefs:

My blog original article


Newspaper copied content

 

[JimHalpert]

If you have Ahref tool, put that URL in the tool to check how many keywords this particular URL is ranking with, and compare with the copied News site URL, maybe it is only a bug, means your article is still the priority for Google. If it turns out that URL is ranking rather than yours, this is a concern though.

Edit: oh saw your new comment, maybe its somewhat Google regard the newspaper as the main source, but I wouldn't worry too much since not all your articles will be copied, I think there is no harm.

But isn't this an issue? Visitors would then visit the newspaper site instead of his actual site? He loses alot of potential leads.

 

[HeXeR]

They're copying your articles word by word, like copy paste? Or are they adding at least minor changes?

 

[pauliakas]

Yes I know what are you talking about, I had worked with journalist at local newspaper They want they article to be listed everywhere!

@pauliakas

It's a little bit more complex. They are not scrapping, they are manually copying them. But they are not doing this with bad intentions. This has been a dynamic before I joined the SEO administration of this blog. For some reason, some of the authors in my blog are also authors in the newspaper, and they think their articles should get the maximum diffusion possible (ego issues mainly). I cannot stop and help with this dynamic, because it's hardly implemented in both organizations.

But what I'm trying to do, is create something that makes Google override the newspaper and put the blog in the centre as the original article generator.

 

[Automation Guru]

If they also copy your links in your articles then benefits you

 

[HeXeR]

Not if they're outranking him?

Edit: Maybe long term but short them he's going to bleed.

 

[SirLouen]

Not if they're outranking him?

Edit: Maybe long term but short them he's going to bleed.

Copy paste, including links, word by word.
This is not a technical copy paste from my site, but from the source text, since the one that publishes the article in my blog, is copying the same article days after in the newspaper.

They want the article to be listed everywhere!

Yes, that is the dilemma: they want it listed everywhere. In fact, some article have been listed in not one but two other newspaper where they have access.

But what is mindblowing for me is that Google doesn't take into consideration so many factors like the first-come first-served as it used to be.
Maybe they have noticed that some blogs have been syndicating other's articles via RSS or scraper so (maybe) now they prefer to figure out who might probably be the original source or at least the most likely source to be indexed by reputation or other factors that I don't know.

In this scenario seems to be pretty straight forward: the newspaper with high reputation (>60 DA), vs a blog that despite is not low in reputation, has lost a lot of traction in the last years because no one was working on it.

Maybe I may find some key strategy to recover from this awkward situation.

First report the DMCA violation to Google. Then expose the bastards.

I forgot to say, that these journalists are just writing for free for a cause, most is about trying to get max diffusion of their articles (and ego). So I only have the technical asset to manage here.

If this was commercial purposes, I would have tried to report in first place. But I have to manage this from a peaceful position.

 

[Nut-Nights]

Hope, It's not me.

 

[terrycody]

Your case is very special if I read it right, that means, all your contents are News like, and the copyright are all belong to their respective writers/journalists, and the most weird part is, they both a member of your website and a big News website.

The good things are: 1, they will always post article first on your website, then copy-paste the whole news to another big website, since they are the reporter, they want to expose the news of course. 2, they will leave a source link which will boost your websites authority.

If this is the case, I would say your situation is very special, you either let those writers stop posting news on that website (not realistic), or completely relax, and don't think about it, working on other websites. Because you rely on those writers, you can't produce News yourself, thus they have rights to post news elsewhere.

DMCA is not fit into this case, because they own the rights.

 

[Panther28]

Contact them, say this is unnaceptable unless they quote you blog as the source, then you'll get loads of links.

 

[mindmaster]

Contact them, say this is unnaceptable unless they quote you blog as the source, then you'll get loads of links.

He is getting quoted as source. He just said that.

 

[SirLouen]

Contact them, say this is unnaceptable unless they quote you blog as the source, then you'll get loads of links.

He is getting quoted as source. He just said that.

Exactly. I'm getting a ton of links.

Nevertheless, I wanted to showcase this scenario, because there is a lot of misconceptions about duplicate content. I'm always trying to research how this works and I found this scenario very interesting.

(And if I can do something to (at least) partially solve it, 2 for 1

 

[JimHalpert]

Exactly. I'm getting a ton of links.

Nevertheless, I wanted to showcase this scenario, because there is a lot of misconceptions about duplicate content. I'm always trying to research how this works and I found this scenario very interesting.

(And if I can do something to (at least) partially solve it, 2 for 1

1. But wouldn't the backlinks go to the other website (instead of yours?) What's the point of them writing that you are the source?

2. How would Google even know you are the source?

3. If I read an interesting piece and it said "originally appeared in Medium", I could care less about creating a link to the Medium page (more effort). I am just going to copy the link of the page I am on and share it with my friends.

What am I missing here?

 

[SirLouen]

1. But wouldn't the backlinks go to the other website (instead of yours?) What's the point of them writing that you are the source?

2. How would Google even know you are the source?

3. If I read an interesting piece and it said "originally appeared in Medium", I could care less about creating a link to the Medium page (more effort). I am just going to copy the link of the page I am on and share it with my friends.

1. Depends, there are backlinks to my site (internal links also) and to other sites. The problem is that I cannot manipulate it, because it's the writer who decides the links. I only can track down the links in my blog
2. Technically, Google receives my site first, therefore if Google knows that the particular text have never been before, theoretically the "original source" should be in a first come first served basis. But this seems not to be the case, contrarily to most things I've read up to now (a common misconception)
3. Sure, this is not the point here. I don't really mind who reads and shares the article. I mind that the copied site, it's getting with (technically) my content, more visits that we do through Google.

From a black hat perspective, this could even lead to some ideas (huge aggregators, for example). This is not something new, but some thought this has stopped working. I think it never stopped working, it's just a matter of reputation (most of the time aggregators don't have much reputation).

 

[JimHalpert]

3. Sure, this is not the point here. I don't really mind who reads and shares the article. I mind that the copied site, it's getting with (technically) my content, more visits that we do through Google.

Hey thanks for the reply. Think I didn't indicate 3, properly. The point of "
3. If I read an interesting piece and it said "originally appeared in Medium", I could care less about creating a link to the Medium page (more effort). I am just going to copy the link of the page I am on and share it with my friends."

Is that it is a real issue for you. Because as a reader, I could care less about whether I share your link or the one on say Medium. I just share whatever is most convenient for me. And hence all the traffic may end up going to the site that ripped your content.

Please let us know how u managed to resolve this?