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| − | [Some brief into about what happened to us with ispey.com, linking to the blog post that tells that story]
| + | {{ArticleTemplate2 |
| | + | | Writer = KristinaWeis |
| | + | | Name = Kristina Weis |
| | + | | Header = What%20to%20Do%20If%20Your%20Content%20is%20Stolen |
| | + | | Subhead = Dealing With Content Thieves |
| | + | | Bitly = http://bit.ly/StolenContent |
| | + | | Date = November 11, 2010 |
| | + | | AuthorWebsite = AboutUs.org |
| | + | }} |
| | + | ==Dealing With Content Thieves== |
| | + | ---- |
| | + | You've spent months or years building your website and its content, and you're proud of it. One day you find that some thrown-together website has copied your content and tried to pass it off as its own work. |
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| − | You've spent months or years building your website and its content, and one day you find that some thrown together website has scraped your site, copied your content and tried to pass it off as its own.
| + | This is incredibly frustrating. Worse, this duplicate content forces search engines to decide which website is the original and should rank higher. It's possible that the copied content on the other website may show up above yours in search results. |
| | | | |
| − | It's incredibly frustrating. And unfortunately, I have to say there isn't much you can do about it.
| + | Here at AboutUs.org, [http://blog.aboutus.org/2010/11/11/take-our-content-but-credit-us-for-it/ our content was recently lifted] and republished on another website without any attribution. I want to share what we've learned, so you can deal with any site that steals your content. |
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| − | ==This hasn't happened to my site. Can I prevent it from happening?==
| + | <big>''[http://www.aboutus.com/what-to-do-before-after-your-blog-content-is-scraped-stolen-copied/ ...read more]'' |
| − | The '''[[How to Use Robots.txt|robots.txt]]''' file on your website gives you the ability to request that certain bots or spiders do not crawl your site. So it would be possible to tell search engines spiders it's okay to crawl your site, and ask all other bots not to. The problem here is that [[How to Use Robots.txt|robots.txt]] is a sort of gentleman's agreement that respectful websites and bots abide by, but the types of websites that would send bots to scrape content are very unlikely to respect your robots.txt. (Also, disallowing all bots besides search engines bots you name can be risky for [[SEO]] because search engines sometimes change the name of their bots and then you would effectively remove your website's pages from that search engine's results when that happened.)
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| | | | |
| − | ==How can I know?==
| + | ''Note: This article has been updated and moved to [http://www.aboutus.com/what-to-do-before-after-your-blog-content-is-scraped-stolen-copied/ www.AboutUs.com/what-to-do-before-after-your-blog-content-is-scraped-stolen-copied/].'' |
| − | One of the best things you can do is keep track of people and websites talking about you. You can set up a [http://google.com/alerts Google Alert] for your business name, website name, and maybe the title of important pieces of content on your site. This way you will get an email when something that meets your criteria pops up on the web. There are also [[Track Your Social Presence|other tools]] you can use to actively track what people are saying about you.
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| − | Beyond keeping an eye out for foul play, it's a great way to help manage your online reputation and engage with your customers.
| + | {{LearnBottomBio |
| − | | + | | Writer = KristinaWeis |
| − | ==So your content has been copied. What can you do?== | + | | Name = Kristina Weis |
| − | | + | | Image = Image:KristinaBluesFest.png |
| − | * '''Contact the site and ask nicely, but firmly'''
| + | | AuthorWebsite = AboutUs.org |
| − | : Try looking for contact information on the website itself. If that doesn't work, check the site's [[whois]] record on a site like {{LinkPair|DomainTools.com}}.
| + | | ShortBio = Kristina is a community manager for [[AboutUs.org]] who talks with a lot of website owners who are trying to promote their business online. <small>Have a question? [[Kristina Weis#Contact_Kristina|Contact me]].</small><br />{{Twitter|KristinaWeis}} |
| − | : If you can't get in touch with them, or if they don't respond appropriately, move on to plan B and go above their head. | + | }} |
| − | | |
| − | * '''Talk to the people that control their website'''
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| − | : Contact their [[registrar]] or hosting company to let them know about the offending site.
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| − | | |
| − | * '''Report it to Google'''
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| − | **If you are confident that you have a legal copyright case you can [http://www.google.com/support/websearch/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=58 report copyright infringement to Google] that violates [http://www.google.com/dmca.html DMCA]. Be warned: This can take a long time, and if you lose you will be responsible for attorney fees.
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| − | ** If a site is violating a law other than copyright, you can [http://www.google.com/support/websearch/bin/request.py?hl=en&contact_type=legal_removals submit a legal removal request]. This applies "if you have a court order establishing that a site is in violation of the law, or if you have identified a clear case of a legal violation for which Google has a removal responsibility".
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| − | ** You can also try [https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/spamreport?hl=en&pli=1 reporting spam to Google]. In the case of someone copying your content without attribution, there is a check box option for "duplicate site or pages" that may apply. Note: Not all spam reports are read, and Google is generally looking for and focusing their action on larger offenders so that they will have the biggest impact on improving search.
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| − | * '''Shine a light on them'''
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| − | ** Let the interwebs know what happened to you, and about the site that scraped your content. Say something that publicly visible like on Twitter or your blog.
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| − | ** Make sure the site's online reputation reflects their bad behavior. Give them a red rating and descriptive comment on {{LinkPair|MyWOT.com}}, and try other consumer sounding board sites like [[ComplaintsBoard.com]], [[RipoffReport.com]], [[SiteJabber.com]], etc.
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| − | <YouTube>5CosWAVLCZg</YouTube> | |
You've spent months or years building your website and its content, and you're proud of it. One day you find that some thrown-together website has copied your content and tried to pass it off as its own work.
This is incredibly frustrating. Worse, this duplicate content forces search engines to decide which website is the original and should rank higher. It's possible that the copied content on the other website may show up above yours in search results.
