I got threatened by a competitor in my niche

So this guy wrote me an email telling me he will report me at Google for stealing his content.

In fact I wrote content and compete on a few same keywords as him. I used his content to get an idea on how to write my content.

The content is far from the same, the subjects are pretty much similar, but with completely different words.

For now I'm going to check all the content to see what's similar and change as much as possible, just to be sure. But for now it just looks like an angry competitor watching his market getting taken away.

Does anyone have any experience with threatening like this? And what are the risks? How much plagiate can you have?

Ignore them and take it as a badge of honour, you must be doing something right

I have had death threats! That is when you know you are really hammering their business

As long as you haven't stolen his content, you shouldn't give a F.

He's probably just angry just like you've said.

Get back to grinding. Immediately

Just don't communicate with him/her. Google isn't the internet police as much as they would like to think so.

If it was direct like for like copy he would have tried your host or gone down a legal route.

Other than that just ignore it.

you got em sweatin out here

ignore..

If you didn't plagiarise at all then I wouldn't be worried. Keep in mind that one can accidentally plagiarise if they are looking at a competitor's articles while writing their own.

Geweldig man said:

So this guy wrote me an email telling me he will report me at Google for stealing his content.

In fact I wrote content and compete on a few same keywords as him. I used his content to get an idea on how to write my content.

The content is far from the same, the subjects are pretty much similar, but with completely different words.

For now I'm going to check all the content to see what's similar and change as much as possible, just to be sure. But for now it just looks like an angry competitor watching his market getting taken away.

Does anyone have any experience with threatening like this? And what are the risks? How much plagiate can you have?

Click to expand...

Google won't take any action if the contents are not thesame, ignore him

Making you fool, it may be a copyright but nothing will happen.

bro just ignore him

run your content thru a plagiarism checker. If it comes back clean, don't worry. And even if he does report it to Google, you'll have the opportunity to respond or appeal

Keyboard lions

If you have not copied the content, then it's perfectly fine. Taking ideas is no offence. He is annoyed because you are his competitor.

Either ignore him or hit him back by targeting his content. It's called Offensive defense strategy.

Geweldig man said:

So this guy wrote me an email telling me he will report me at Google for stealing his content.

Click to expand...

Google is run by machines, not people. He can report you all day long and Google won't take any action at all. I can literally copy my competitor's articles word by word, outrank them and as long as users are engaged with the content, Google won't care (I have done this before). While Google has algorithms to measure attribution (who is the original author), these algorithms can be overridden IF the combination of your page's relevancy and authority scores are higher than your competitor's.

The same thing holds true for PBN-s and negative SEO. I laugh every time someone tells me he will report me to Google. Unless your niche is payday loans, algorithms check everything, not humans. And even in payday loans or similar YMYL markets, humans check to make sure sites are not scamming people or spreading "deadly" misinformation, not how unique your content is.

So bottom line, reports are useless in Google, especially coming from webmasters. They use them to fine tune their algorithms, not to punish individual webmasters. Punishing is done with algorithms - think Panda, Penguin or any other animal update.

Now, this was Google. Whether you can get in legal trouble for stealing content, that's another matter and you should consult with your lawyer. But what I can tell you is that uniqueness is completely overrated. I don't even check Copyscape anymore for plagiarism, it's completely worthless. What I CARE about is that the page engages users and completes its objective (lead generation, affiliate sales, display ads revenue, etc...). If that can be done with copy-pasting, I do it.

You might say it's immoral, I say it's business. However, more often than not, you won't be 100% copy-pasting as that doesn't really complete the objective. But 30% plagiarism? 50%? That's completely acceptable if my users find the content to be worth it. I just have to be better than my competitors in stealing market share (traffic from Google). It's true that you have to be unique to stand out from the crowd, but having a unique value proposition does not mean having 0% plagiarism.

So don't worry - keep doing what you are doing, because nothing will happen!

Check through the program to plagiarize your text. If all is well, then do not worry about copyrights. If this threatens your health or life, then save all the materials, for this he can answer in court. In the meantime, just ignore him.

copy paste his email to a spam list, let him stay busy.

Tell him to go ahead because if as you said it’s different, you have absolutely nothing to worry about!

Google RankBrain: [Incoming complaint]
Google RankBrain: [Processing complaint]
Google RankBrain: [Summarizing complaint]
Google RankBrain: [Outputting summary]
Google RankBrain: Site A -> complaint. States: Site B is copying Site A.
Google RankBrain: Processing data...
...
...
Google RankBrain: Complaint links to Site B...
... Updating link equity...
...
Google RankBrain: Changing Site B to position 2. Changing Site A to position 3.
Google RankBrain: Processing complete.

SEO said:

Google RankBrain: [Incoming complaint]
Google RankBrain: [Processing complaint]
Google RankBrain: [Summarizing complaint]
Google RankBrain: [Outputting summary]
Google RankBrain: Site A -> complaint. States: Site B is copying Site A.
Google RankBrain: Processing data...
...
...
Google RankBrain: Complaint links to Site B...
... Updating link equity...
...
Google RankBrain: Changing Site B to position 2. Changing Site A to position 3.
Google RankBrain: Processing complete.

Click to expand...

That's not even remotely close to how RankBrain or reports work, unless you are trying to be funny.

Just an terror ignore this and focus on what you are doing. Nothing will happen.