Stolen Content - rankings tanked

[ttmschine]

Anyone had any experience with this?

I noticed my site dropped from page 1 to like page 23 and I've sat there scratching my head why that might be. Turns out some scum bags have taken my home page content word for word and stuck it on their site - now they rank higher than me for my words.

Its a website called marketing quotes - one of thsoe that tries to get leads and sell them.

 

[tazarbm]

sorry to hear it, honestly

Not sure if you can solve anything with this, but you could report that douchebag to google and ask them to take his/her site down. You would probably have to prove that your site is the original, though

 

[TheVigilante]

Seems like a lot of content is being stolen during the pandemic but do as Tazar suggests and hope they take action

 

[ttmschine]

sorry to hear it, honestly

Not sure if you can solve anything with this, but you could report that douchebag to google and ask them to take his/her site down. You would probably have to prove that your site is the original, though

Yeah I've reported them to Google and emailed the company telling them if they don't take it down I'll be seeing a solicitor, they are a UK company so I can sue them easily enough since we're in same country.

I've been using that content since 2013, it's in the wayback machine so I think it's easy enough to prove they stole it from me.

 

[slarkpol]

what about brute-forcing their website ?

 

[tazarbm]

Yeah I've reported them to Google and emailed the company telling them if they don't take it down I'll be seeing a solicitor, they are a UK company so I can sue them easily enough since we're in same country.

I've been using that content since 2013, it's in the wayback machine so I think it's easy enough to prove they stole it from me.

awesome! Do it, please!

what about brute-forcing their website ?

hell, yeah!

 

[ttmschine]

what about brute-forcing their website ?

If only I knew how to be a really naughty black hatter I might be tempted.

 

[ttmschine]

They are using cloudflare to hide their hosts, but you can file a DCMA report to cloudflare and they forward it to the hosts and the website owner, so I've done that as well. LoL - hopefully they'll take the feckers site down.

 

[Leader777]

It is unfortunately sad when you see people losing their creativity but instead they go to the easy way (to copy). However, to see a company doing that it's disappointing. They probably hired some SEO guy to do it.

 

[ttmschine]

I suppose I should be flattered that they liked my copy so much they decided to steal it. Not flattered that it's cost me Christ knows how many thousands.

Now hopefully it's their turn.

 

[nakamura]

Anyone had any experience with this?

I noticed my site dropped from page 1 to like page 23 and I've sat there scratching my head why that might be. Turns out some scum bags have taken my home page content word for word and stuck it on their site - now they rank higher than me for my words.

Its a website called marketing quotes - one of thsoe that tries to get leads and sell them.

Something similar happened to me. Take them down. Message their host and domain provider. Tell them exactly what happened.

 

[digistar]

Just report it to google for them to de-list that website.

 

[side-hustle]

Hope you get this resolved.

What I am struggling to understand is, if you have had that content since 2013 why have Google penalised you by dropping you to page 23 when it would be in their database that you used the content first?

Madness

 

[ttmschine]

Hope you get this resolved.

What I am struggling to understand is, if you have had that content since 2013 why have Google penalised you by dropping you to page 23 when it would be in their database that you used the content first?

Madness

That's what I don't get either and is why it only occured to me today as a last thought that maybe someone stole my content.

I guess the issue is their website is big, lots of (probably stolen) content and maybe they do a lot of marketing. But if I highlight a load of text from my home page and do a Google search, they come 1st, I'm second, and my inner pages barely show at all even for long text string searches.

So I think Google have whacked my home page, all my inner pages have lost their "juice" and these feckers have cost me a fortune.

I hope Google crucify them.

So far have reported to Google, reported to cloudflare (DMCA) which will go to their hosts and themselves, have emailed them threatening legal action, and also signed up for DMCA badge thing for future problems.

 

[ttmschine]

Some of the members on here are awesome - I won't say their name in case they don't want identifying - but you know who you are, and thank you!

Awesome stuff!

 

[side-hustle]

screenshot their website with date and time showing copied content just as a reference point should it need to go further.

keep us all in the loop, good luck

 

[blackbeans]

This happens quite a bit.

There are lots of content scrapers out there.

If you can prove that you're the first to publish your content and nobody else, you should contact their hosting company to take down their website.

You have the law on your side.

This does happen, but it's fairly rare.

Usually, scraped content is intended for link building.

So, do yourself a big favor and make a DMCA filing with their host.

That should be your first step.

Your next step is to be more proactive to make sure that nobody sinks your rankings by simply scraping your website.

This is fairly rare as I have mentioned because Google does have mechanisms in place that prevent late-come websites that simply scrape their competition to rank higher than the websites they stole their content from.

 

[zerolimit]

I've done this back in 2017 but my website didn't get any traffic at all, how the hell they rank higher than you?

 

[Rachmaninoff]

I've done this back in 2017 but my website didn't get any traffic at all, how the hell they rank higher than you?

There are many factors that might come into play. It's either they have a better onpage, offfpage, silo structure, updated content, etc.

 

[ttmschine]

There are many factors that might come into play. It's either they have a better onpage, offfpage, silo structure, updated content, etc.

Their site has a few thousand pages and is probably well siloed.

Anyway so far - after submitting dmca to google my site has totally vanished, it's still showing as indexed just isn't even on page 20+ any more, hopefully it's recalculating it's position.

Or something. Fingers crossed.