HELP! How do I stop scraper sites - is there any recourse?
-
Our site has lots of unique content and photos and it is constantly being scraped and posted on other websites. Most of these are no-name sites that pop up and exist for adwords revenue.
Aside from the fact that we don't want our content being copied, this is an SEO nightmare because they often link back to us from pages that are stuffed with keywords and have very low domain authority (it's a form of negative SEO).
My question is:
Does anyone have experience with fighting this phenonmenon?
What have you done that is effective?
Does anyone have experience with a service such as http://www.dmca.com/ProtectionPro.aspx ? Does it work/is it worth it?
Any input is appreciated!
-
Nice link Mark. News to me, really. But the fact that Schema.org and HTML5 both have author identification methods shows that it may be used by other search engines and/or services. And the followup article to your link there is "Google Authorship May Be Dead, But Author Rank Is Not." http://searchengineland.com/google-authorship-dead-author-rank-202254
But darn, man! All that time wasted getting authorship to work back then. Google's authorship verification process was indeed grueling.
-
I agree with everything besides for the authorship markup bit. Authorship markup is not being tracked by Google anymore - see http://searchengineland.com/goodbye-google-authorship-201975.
That said, the larger point about being the first content to go up is a good one. If we can all figure out where the original is from, assume that Google can too.
-
Kevin has a really good point here. You need to input markup that tells Google that the content is yours. I find that adding self-referential canonical tags can help with this. Just be careful to input them correctly.
-
Two schools on that one. They may not be hurting your business now, so you can forget about them. That's only until you can't. If they continue rip off your work, they may take from you in the future--ad revenue, traffic stats, e-commerce, news reports, whatever you're doing--that's all money. If I had time to fill out the form, I'd do it.
-
First thing to do is insert authorship markup and check that google recognizes you as an author of the site you're posting to. There is something to say for original content, and Google knows. If your content goes up first and is indexed first by Google, chance are you're going to rank better than the scrapper sites.
If these sites really bother you, you can submit a Copyright Removal form here https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/dmca-notice, but a legal order to remove the content would be better (acted upon faster). Filing copyright infringement reports for eBay listings was very effective for me, but my experience with Google is limited. Let us know if you do file and how the process goes.
Generally speaking, it's actually pretty good that site are linking to your posts. If you are extremely uncomfortable with any particular site's backlink(s), you can use the GWT Disavow tool https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2648487/?hl=en&authuser=1
Good luck, and let us know what you do.
-
Yes agreed but if you are seeing that scrapers sites outrank your sites in SERPs in that case you should fill the form.
Thanks
-
Thanks for the reassuring response, Alick.
Based on what you're saying (and that post from Niel Patel) it's a waste of time to even fill out Google form (these sites are not outranking us). Agree?
-
Hi ,
First let Google know about this by using this form @ https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1Pw1KVOVRyr4a7ezj_6SHghnX1Y6bp1SOVmy60QjkF0Y/viewform
Second I would like to tell you that its myth that scrapers will hurt your Site. Scrapers don’t help or hurt you. Do you think that a little blog in Asia with no original writing and no visitors confuses Google? No. It just isn’t relevant.
To know more on this please visit below URL
https://blog.kissmetrics.com/myths-about-duplicate-content/
Thanks
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Multilingual Site and 301 redirection
Hey there awesome people of Moz I have this site that has many languages in it. The main language is English and my developer did the following www.example.com ( is the main site ) which redirects with a 301 to www.example.com/en if your geo location is supported by our languages then you will automatically be redirected to whatever language you have in your country but does the first language with is english have to 301 redirect to www.example.com/en ? I thought that the right way is to just leave /en at the root file. Thanks in advance
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Angelos_Savvaidis0 -
Mobile Site Annotations
Our company has a complex mobile situation, and I'm trying to figure out the best way to implement bidirectional annotations and a mobile sitemap. Our mobile presence consists of three different "types" of mobile pages: Most of our mobile pages are mobile-specific "m." pages where the URL is completely controlled via dynamic parameter paths, rather than static mobile URLs (because of the mobile template we're using). For example: http://m.example.com/?original_path=/directory/subdirectory. We have created vanity 301 redirects for the majority of these pages, that look like http://m.example.com/product that simply redirect to the previous URL. Six one-off mobile pages that do have a static mobile URL, but are separate from the m. site above. These URLs look like http://www.example.com/product.mobile.html Two responsively designed pages with a single URL for both mobile and desktop. My questions are as follows: Mobile sitemap: Should I include all three types of mobile pages in my mobile sitemap? Should I include all the individual dynamic parameter m. URLs like http://m.example.com/?original_path=/directory/subdirectory in the sitemap, or is that against Google's recommendations? Bidirectional Annotations: We are unable to add the rel="canonical" tag to the m. URLs mentioned in section #1 above because we cannot add dynamic tags to the header of the mobile template. We can, however, add them to the .mobile.html pages. For the rel="alternate" tags on the desktop versions, though, is it correct to use the dynamic parameter URLs like http://m.example.com/?original_path=/directory/subdirectory as the mobile version target for the rel="alternate" tag? My initial thought is no, since they're dynamic parameter URLs. Is there even any benefit to doing this if we can't add the bidirectional rel="canonical" on those same m. dynamic URLs? I'd be immensely grateful for any advice! Thank you so much!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Critical_Mass0 -
How come this site does so well?
Hi Guys, It's bugging the crap out of me why this site does so well http://www.stagedinburgh.com/ when I look at it's link profile its so weak and terrible plus many links comes from the sites they own. Somehow the site out ranks many sites for search terms like edinburgh stag party, edinburgh stag do, edinburgh stag weekends. Am I missing something? They seem to only have links from 13 domains and they aint great. What am I missing?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PottyScotty0 -
Similar sites on same IP address
Hello, A client has a small number (3) of large price comparison sites which have been launched on separate subdomains - BUT all on the same hosting IP address. The roll out of the sites was not ideal from an SEO perspective - as basically cloned versions of the sites were initially launched and indexed - and are only now being customised i.e. unique content added to each of the category and sub category pages. The first site initially got some traffic - and so did the 2nd in the early days - but then they both bombed (especially number 2). So we think there has probably been some kind of slap / sandboxing. We are starting to see some very early signs of recovery now some months after. My questions is - would it be a wise move to migrate each of the sites to a separate IP address as we start to evolve and optimise each site. Or are they ok to be left on the same hosting / IP address? The sites in question are : shop.deliaonline.com shop.ivillage.co.uk rewards.bestforfilm.com Thanks in advance for your help. Richard
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RichBestSEO0 -
A Site in Flash to Optimize
Hello, I have to understand if this site www.spacemilanmodels.com.pt can be optimize since the entire website is in flash wich is not good for optimizacion. What do you guys suggest? Recommendations? Is it possible only with link-building? Tks for the help!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PedroM0 -
My site is duplicated on the internet, please help.
I've been told that my site: "- your site is duplicated on the internet. Both www.joeyvalyphotography.com and joeyvalyphotography.com are valid internet addresses. This is a problem for SEO." I am wondering, what's the cause of this, and how it can fixed. Thanks In advanced, Joey
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | gaji0 -
My site links have gone from a mega site links to several small links under my SERP results in Google. Any ideas why?
A site I have currently had the mega site links on the SERP results. Recently they have updated the mega links to the smaller 4 inline links under my SERP result. Any idea what happened or how do I correct this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | POSSIBLE0 -
There seems to be something obvious stopping our product pages from being listed in organic results - help!
Hello All Firstly new to SEO MOZ but what a fantastic resource, good work! I help run a platform at ethical community (dot) com (have phrased it like that so google doesn't pick up this thread hope thats ok). We seem to have something glaringly obvious with the SEO ability of our product pages. We now have over 7000 products on the site and would like to think we have done a pretty good job in terms of optimisning them, lots of nice keywords, relevant page titles, good internal links, and even recently have reduced the loading speeds a fair amount. We have a sitemap set up feeding in URLS to Google and some of them are now nearly a year old. The problem, when doing an EXACT google search on a product title the product pages dont show up for the majority of the 7000 products. HOWEVER.... we get fantastic ranking in google products, and get sales through other areas of the site, which seems even more odd. For example, if you type in "segway" you'll see us ranking on the first page of google in google products, but the product page itself is nowhere to be seen. For example "DARK CHOCOLATE STRANDS 70G CAKE DECORATION" gets no results on google (aside from google products) when we have this page at OURDOMAIN/eco-shop/food/dark-chocolate-strands-70g-cake-decoration-5592 Can anyone help identify if there is a major bottleneck here our gut feeling is there is one major factor that is causing this.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ethicalcommunity0