Webmaster forum - Content theft and Google duplicate content penalty

Author

Content theft and Google duplicate content penalty

THX-1138

2007-03-29, 7:19 pm

While maintaining a website belonging to a recently acquired client I
discovered, thanks to Copyscape, that a competitor has "stolen" and
copied 10 lines from my client's home page.

As ridiculous and blatant as this theft may seem (no other words come to
mind to describe it), my clients is not willing to go after these poorly
minded guys or threaten any legal actions and I thought they would be
"punished" anyway by Google's duplicate content penalty.

Surprise. No, it's the other way round or so it seems:
I take the first sentence I put it on Google search between invertted
commas. One hit: *Their site* www.theirsite.com/
Only if a click on "repeat the search with the omitted results
included", I get three hits:
Again www.theirsite.com/
plus www.theirsite.com/default.asp (which is the same page)
and finally www.oursite.com/index.html

I'm sure they were the ones who copied and not viceversa (The wayback
machine says so), I'm also sure my clients pages were already indexed on
Google 2 years ago when their site did not even exist.

So, why is it that? This thing annoies me a little.

Massimo

Mark Goodge

2007-03-29, 7:19 pm

On Thu, 29 Mar 2007 13:31:51 +0200, THX-1138 put finger to keyboard
and typed:

>While maintaining a website belonging to a recently acquired client I
>discovered, thanks to Copyscape, that a competitor has "stolen" and
>copied 10 lines from my client's home page.
>
>As ridiculous and blatant as this theft may seem (no other words come to
>mind to describe it), my clients is not willing to go after these poorly
>minded guys or threaten any legal actions and I thought they would be
>"punished" anyway by Google's duplicate content penalty.
>
>Surprise. No, it's the other way round or so it seems:
>I take the first sentence I put it on Google search between invertted
>commas. One hit: *Their site* www.theirsite.com/
>Only if a click on "repeat the search with the omitted results
>included", I get three hits:
>Again www.theirsite.com/
>plus www.theirsite.com/default.asp (which is the same page)
>and finally www.oursite.com/index.html
>
>I'm sure they were the ones who copied and not viceversa (The wayback
>machine says so), I'm also sure my clients pages were already indexed on
>Google 2 years ago when their site did not even exist.
>
>So, why is it that? This thing annoies me a little.

What search term are you using? It may be that the ten lines they've
copied are being better optimised on their site than yours.

Mark
--
Visit: http://names.orangehedgehog.com - British surname distribution profiles
"Lose yourself in the music, the moment, you own it, you better never let it go"

Massimo Fabbri

2007-03-29, 7:19 pm

Mark Goodge wrote:
> On Thu, 29 Mar 2007 13:31:51 +0200, THX-1138 put finger to keyboard
> and typed:
>
>
> What search term are you using? It may be that the ten lines they've
> copied are being better optimised on their site than yours.

I just used the first of those 10 lines putting it between "..." to
mean exact match. Do there should not be any optimization issue here.
Or, am I wrong?

Massimo

Mark Goodge

2007-03-29, 7:19 pm

On Thu, 29 Mar 2007 21:25:04 +0200, Massimo Fabbri put finger to
keyboard and typed:

>Mark Goodge wrote:
>
>I just used the first of those 10 lines putting it between "..." to
>mean exact match. Do there should not be any optimization issue here.
>Or, am I wrong?

It depends on what else is on the page.

What's the exact wording of the line you're using to check?

Mark
--
Visit: http://www.MineOfUseless.info - everything you never needed to know!
"Yes, I know the truth, how 'bout you?"

THX-1138

2007-03-29, 7:19 pm

Mark Goodge wrote:
> On Thu, 29 Mar 2007 21:25:04 +0200, Massimo Fabbri put finger to
> keyboard and typed:
>
>
> It depends on what else is on the page.

Possibly

> What's the exact wording of the line you're using to check?

It's not in English so you probably would not understand the meaning,
but I tried with other excerpts of those lines and I always got the same
result. Also, I prefer not to disclose the text on Usenet as I don't
want my competitors to know I'm going after them, for the momet.

Massimo
>
> Mark

Mark Goodge

2007-03-29, 7:19 pm

On Thu, 29 Mar 2007 22:08:13 +0200, THX-1138 put finger to keyboard
and typed:

>Mark Goodge wrote:
>
>It's not in English so you probably would not understand the meaning,

I don't need to understand it.

>but I tried with other excerpts of those lines and I always got the same
>result. Also, I prefer not to disclose the text on Usenet as I don't
>want my competitors to know I'm going after them, for the momet.

The difficulty here is that we can't help you unless we know the URLs
of the sites in question.

Mark
--
Visit: http://www.MineOfUseless.info - everything you never needed to know!
"A pocket full of mumbles, such are promises"

THX-1138

2007-03-29, 7:19 pm

Mark Goodge wrote:
> On Thu, 29 Mar 2007 22:08:13 +0200, THX-1138 put finger to keyboard
> and typed:
>
>
> I don't need to understand it.
>
>
> The difficulty here is that we can't help you unless we know the URLs
> of the sites in question.
>
> Mark

OK, then:

www.delfo.info (the site I'm managing)
www.infored.to.it (the other site)

After all, we have nothing to hide.

Through copyscape.com, I also discovered they copied bits and pieces of
their home page from other sites, not just the one I'm managing.

I discovered this as I'm preparing a revision of the web site content,
not including page design and home page text though ;-)

Massimo

Mark Goodge

2007-03-29, 7:19 pm

On Thu, 29 Mar 2007 22:36:13 +0200, THX-1138 put finger to keyboard
and typed:

>Mark Goodge wrote:
>
>OK, then:
>
>www.delfo.info (the site I'm managing)
>www.infored.to.it (the other site)
>
>After all, we have nothing to hide.
>
>Through copyscape.com, I also discovered they copied bits and pieces of
>their home page from other sites, not just the one I'm managing.

There are two main reasons that I can see why they do better than you:

1. They're benefitting from Google's bias towards ccTLDs for pages
that aren't in written English. You've got a .info domain, they've got
one in .it. Since the content is in Italian, Google rates their page
higher than yours for identical keywords.

2. They also have a better keyword density for the copied text. Check
some of the lines on the two sites at http://www.keyworddensity.com
and you'll see what I mean - their scores tend to be higher for most
of the lines.

You can probably fix the second one, you can't do much about the
first. But the second is probably the killer anyway, given that you've
got better pagerank overall.

Mark
--
Blog: http://mark.goodge.co.uk Photos: http://www.goodge.co.uk
"Take me or leave me, don't have to believe me"