People are stealing my content. How can I protect it?

[billsfan2012]

After 5 years struggling with IM, quitting my day job a year ago after working there for 7 years and busting my ass to MAKE IT and support myself, I was finally able to get to the point where I'm at today with one of the top ranking sites in my niche and earning just enough to get by with IM and keep moving, but I will reiterate, it wasn't until a LOT of hard work, blood, sweat, and tears until I was finally able to attain my goal.

Now why am I telling you this...

Because it's a great feeling, but I've also learned you have to watch your back (big time) after earning YOUR OWN success...

I've come to realize several competitors are blatantly ripping off my work.

By that I mean they are stealing my hand written articles word for word, the result of my time and effort, and copy/paste it on their own site, writing all the same articles that I'm writing and a couple are even using the same WP theme.

But one guy has taken it way too far and his site is beginning to rank ahead of mine with MY content.

Look, I understand there's competition in my niche and I have no problem if someone outranks me but I can't sit here and watch someone outrank me with my own work.

I've kindly asked this person to stop copying my articles, but I highly doubt they will listen, so what are my options here? Is he even allowed to do this without my consent? Can I add something to my website that prevents people from using my work without my consent? And if they ignore that, what can I do? Who do I report them to?

Thanks guys and sorry about my sloppy writing I'm just really irritated at the moment (put yourselves in my shoes)

 

[MrFluffy]

Pretty sure they will get penalized soon enough for using duplicate content.

 

[billsfan2012]

Pretty sure they will get penalized soon enough for using duplicate content.

Would they? Or would I? This person isn't the only site grabbing my articles and using pieces of it or all of it. Can Big G really tell who the originator is? And do they even care at that point? I would rather just take this particular person down for stealing content without my authorization.

 

[AquaticGamer]

They might be able to tell the time when you post the content or who's content gets indexed first in their system.

 

[billsfan2012]

I've been doing some research. Sounds like it might fall under DMCA copyright infringement. I will do some more research before finalizing this and making sure I've made the content on my own site is copyrighted before I proceed. But essentially the process asking the person to comply first and if they don't file DMCA complaint with their web host identifying each and every link with stolen content (yikes that's literally the guy's entire site, could take me a while, but it'll be fun and after all how long did it really take the bastard to copy and paste).

 

[laur.laurix]

The funny thing is that if ur competitor stole ur article just after u published it and he put it on his website and indexed it in G first, G will see him as the original poster and u will be the one that copied it. From this point there will be 2 scenarios: ur competitor will outrank u with ur content, uuuhhh the joy it happened to me also, u will get a penalty for duplicate content. The only way to check that the above situation happened is to check G cache date and time for the articles in question on ur site and ur comp site( only check first time the articles were indexed).

A way to avoid this issue is to submit everything u publish to WMT right after u publish it. Good luck.

Would they? Or would I? This person isn't the only site grabbing my articles and using pieces of it or all of it. Can Big G really tell who the originator is? And do they even care at that point? I would rather just take this particular person down for stealing content without my authorization.

 

[roadhamster]

Fire a dmca-complaint to their hosting company, do a request to google: I think you can do it from your Google Webmaster tools account.
Did you state clearly on your website that the articles are copyrighted by you? If so, if you have the money you can hire a lawyer.

 

[Franklin Hattchet]

Can't you just use a plugin that stops people from doing it? I do on my niche sites. They could still sit there any type it out but stops them from copy and pasting it making it harder for them.

I use "prevent content copy image save" that's what the plugin is called. Best thing is you can have a little message that pops up. Mine says "eat some dicks and try again tomorrow."

 

[cottonwolf]

If you've got an rss feed, link it with ifttt and let it spit it on social media, such as fb, twitter and goolge minus. You can use minor social media accounts, don't need to use your branded one. That will give you crawlers fast.

 

[SEO Link King]

There is no totally dolt evidence approach to ensure your content, however you can make it more troublesome for content cheats to take your work and to rebuff them when they do.


Google Alerts, plagiarism checker online apparatuses can be utilized to find whether your article has been stolen or not.


While Google Alerts and plagiarism checkers can let you know that somebody has utilized your substance without your authorization, there are different things like WordPress SEO by Yoast, Tynt, Google Authorship you can do to ensure your content.

 

[praetserge]

DMCA is your answer. Also report the websites which steal your content to google.

 

[Zwielicht]

Would they? Or would I? This person isn't the only site grabbing my articles and using pieces of it or all of it. Can Big G really tell who the originator is? And do they even care at that point? I would rather just take this particular person down for stealing content without my authorization.

If they copied your content verbatim (including your tags, author, and categories), then they'll be hit by a pure spam penalty eventually. There is no duplicate content penalty, so don't worry about that.

This is not entirely correct.

Press release sites recently got devalued to the point that most are considered a spam source. Links from them will not help rank.

Any quality site can have duplicate content and rank without difficulty. The "duplicate content" penalty everyone fears does not exist. If it did, there would be only one copy of everything on the Internet. The real threat of duplicate content is when the same content appears on the same site in more than one place, like /tags/author/categories in WordPress.

When people get hit with a "duplicate content penalty" for having a lot of duplicate content, it is really a low quality site penalty. If all your site has on it is duplicate content, it is a low quality site.

A high quality site with some duplicate content on it will have no problem.

If you still do not believe me, search for this: "When you visit our dental office, your smile is our top priority. Our entire team is dedicated to providing you with the personalized, quality dental care that you deserve."

I suggest filing a DMCA report against them and adding in a few extra security measures to prevent them from scraping your content.
http://www.jeffbullas.com/2013/04/11/7-tips-and-tools-to-stop-content-thieves-in-their-tracks/

 

[billsfan2012]

Thanks for the helpful info in this thread. Ultimately it seems like DMCA is the way to go. I might have only one shot at filing this complaint for all I know so I'm going to make sure I've got my own bases covered and review the copyright language on my own website before submitting anything.

 

[Ambitious12]

Let them steal
Google will take the revenge

 

[billsfan2012]

Let them steal
Google will take the revenge

I'd be all for it normally, which is why I've completely let it go with the smaller websites and Web 2.0's that have been doing it over the past few months. Heck, I won't lie, I even felt a bit of flattery but as others pointed out, it gets a little tricky once they actually start outranking you with their own content. At present, Google indexes my website relatively quickly. But it also indexes the infringing website quickly. It's so close that at some point my website might be the one that gets slapped for ripping off content.

EDIT: Btw I filed the DMCA complaint with their web host. Will update this thread with the outcome. I'm sure some of you may have interest in this matter because it happens all the time, especially if your site is doing well.

 

[TZ2011]

Can't you just use a plugin that stops people from doing it? I do on my niche sites. They could still sit there any type it out but stops them from copy and pasting it making it harder for them.

I use "prevent content copy image save" that's what the plugin is called. Best thing is you can have a little message that pops up. Mine says "eat some dicks and try again tomorrow."

When javascript is disabled, your protection does not work. There is a plugin for quick enable/disable js, too.

 

[upstarter]

And that is why I turned the rss feed on my site off.

 

[KocerRoxy]

1. Make sure you have WMT on your site.2
2. Every time you post something, have WMT open and the keep the link to the post ( and home page, if your content also appears there ) on hand.
3. The second you have published something, fetch it with google bot from WMT and index ( only the one page, not all linked pages ).
4. Wait for the content to get indexed, if done correctly it should not take more than 3-5 minutes ( indexed, not ranked )
5. Wait for the competitor to use your content.
6. Go here: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/spamreportform?hl=en and report the fucker.

-- In my experience using the spam report can take up to a few months to take hold but when it does... it's nasty.

P.S.: reporting them multiple times is also a bonus, especially if you report different pages.

 

[THUNDERELVI]

Can't you just use a plugin that stops people from doing it? I do on my niche sites. They could still sit there any type it out but stops them from copy and pasting it making it harder for them.

I use "prevent content copy image save" that's what the plugin is called. Best thing is you can have a little message that pops up. Mine says "eat some dicks and try again tomorrow."

The content is always available on the source code. Opening the source code of a web page is just 1 click away within the browser settings. Not to mention website rippers, but 99% of the time when copy pasting or right clicking is disabled on the website, opening the source code and copy pasting from there works perfectly, so there really is no way to effectively prevent this 100%.

 

[ivyleague]

Send a DMCA to their hosting co if the sites are not offshore.