Our content has been stolen
-
We've a new intern who spent a good few hours writing this article http://appointedd.com/blog/nominees-for-the-british-hairdresser-of-the-year-2013-announced/ - quite a good we one feel.
Our main competitor has taken almost the entire thing word for word and put in up on their blog http://www.inaa.com/apiblog/?p=821
While this is a foolish move on their part, we're still quite offended over the incident as this was the intern's forst article and she'll be looking to add it to her portfolio.
I was wondering what the best practice is in this situation? Is simply writing to them enough if they've demonstrated they're underhanded? Should we call them out on it? I'm simply unsure as I want to protect no only the business but the intern also.
thanks!
-
As someone who worked as a professional journalist for almost fifteen years, I can attest to what an enormously widespread problem this is. I've heard of cases where individuals have had remarkable success simply by sending a cease and desist order to the offending company. I.e. the scare tactics work. There are some really great suggestions above, too, on how to accomplish this. Hope it works out!
-
Looks like you are in the UK ...
1. Copyright/ DMCA Takedown Process
Copyright laws differ country to country, but in the USA the minute she wrote the article (not posted it ... actually wrote it and gave her ideas a tangible form) she owned the copyrights.
Showing proof of that -- and the timeframe -- should not be too hard. (email, draft doc. etc.)
In the US, we have something called a DMCA takedown letter. You write a letter to the infringing site's ISP documenting the proof, and the content gets taken down.
( In the UK, is there the equivalent to the US DMCA take down procedure)?
This is how we do it in the US:
2. Social Media Peer Pressure:
If you are active in social media ... don't underestimate the impact of peer pressure. We wrote about this recently ... might be a good approach , it certainly is used to good effect here.
You publicly out them and have your social community apply some peer pressure to the infringer. Here is an example:
http://info.icopyright.com/internet-piracy/fighting-online-content-theft-peer-pressure-can-work
Hope these links help.
-
Thanks for all the feedback guys - really appreciated!
-
you might want to remove (or break) that url to you competitor stolen article as this forum is crawled too...
-
Get some back links to that post as quickly as you can, even if it is bookmarking or social sharing.
As a rule you want to always get the content indexed on your site first prior to it released via syndication or worse (in this situation) scrapped by another site.
-
I would ask them to remove it. If they won't, fill this out once indexed: Report alleged copyright infringement: Web Search.
Any other tips for Philip?
.
-
Yeah, blog is going through a restructure today and new sitemap submitted tomorrow. Went up on G+ yesterday when it was posted I believe.
Thanks though.
-
The article is not even indexed yet on either site.
Get it indexed on your blog first, share it on Google+ might help this happen.
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
-
Hosted content vs Dedicated website (for large piece of content)
There is one question that keep bugging us and for which we are looking for a logical answer – to put it short, in which context(s) is it preferable to publish original content on a company website vs on a dedicated external platform with its own URL? To give a little more details: we an education company that provides languages course abroad and that functions like a specialised travel agency. Each trip is very specific – it depends on people's language level, objectives, budget, etc. – so we provide tailor-made advice for each of our students. Our site is not an e-commerce site, and a typical call-to-action is a request for a 1-to-1 interview with one of our agents, or a quote request for a language trip project. The top conversion for us is an enrolment for a language course abroad. We have a corporate websites structure where we have 1 website per locale where we operate, which means 14 websites in 7 different languages. We produce smaller pieces of content for these websites in a dedicated section – the rest of the website being mostly a presentation of our products, services and destinations – but here we intend to create a very large Quiz which will be based on multiple audio files. The content will be translated into multiple languages (likely 10 different languages) and will require some rather heavy development. We intend to add sections for scoreboards, stats, a log-in section (probably Facebook), etc. This sounds to us like something we should host on a specific URL, but then how can we make the most of the SEO benefits that we will (hopefully) get with such content? We plan to have an about section where we explain a little bit who we are, where we will probably link back to our corporate websites, but of course we want our project to live for itself and to be as far from commercial as possible – while still making the most of the SEO benefits. How can we do this in the most subtle / logical way? Would it be better to host our Quiz on our corporate domains? Thanks in advance for your advice. Maëlle
Branding | | ESL_Education0 -
Best practices to rank a new website that does not produce much content.
Hi What would be the best practice for ranking a new site .. lets say a business site that does not have a blog to produce regular content in it. Building backlinks are not just the options when these days people are all focused in content marketing. And specially, when you are competing against big competitors. Big competitors are of course getting their contents published on bigger sites since they are already established. No one will talk about you when you are new in the market. And you still need to bring up your site to people and SEO is the only option for that. What would you suggest ? Thanks
Branding | | MindlessWizard0 -
Do you think its ethical to use your personal google authorship for outsourced content?
I routinely outsource nicely written content but never use my google authorship for those articles. Should I be adding my google authorship to those articles? Or would that be unethical and violate googles TOS?
Branding | | TShak0 -
Guest blogging & duplicate content
This feels like a question I should know the answer to and I'm a tad embarrassed to ask, but the part of my brain that gets tripped up by somewhat simple things sometimes, is begging to ask just to confirm my understanding. I want to make sure I have it right it prior to giving advice. When one guest blogs I assume that it is critical to create content that is original and unique to that one instance of the guest blog. That means, do not also put that post on your own blog and do not submit it to any other blogs for inclusion. This is both for duplicate content issues and also to respect and not put in jeopardy for duplicated content, the blog owner you are guesting for. Is this correct? Are there any scenarios in which there might be a deviation of this "rule"? Like some use of canonicals or anything else?
Branding | | gfiedel0 -
Duplicate Content and Boiler Plates in Press Releases - Does it Matter?
Hi All, We are in process of syndicating a few press releases on company news over the next few months. These aren't fluff PRs, they are actual news and can provide some value for linking opportunities (woohoo). Anyway, we are a public company, so there are some relatively strict guidelines as to what content we publish. A great place to place some flexible links is in the boilerplate of a release. However, we can't change that content around too much on each PR. So, question is, are there any negative implications on pushing out that kind of duplicate content on the web. Clearly, it's not our intention to spam whatsoever. But, I can see how the same type of content going out on the web multiple times in coming months good send off a negative signal. Takes/thoughts?
Branding | | Pedram_SEO0 -
Webmaster tool's "Content Keywords" advice needed
I am looking in my webmaster tools and under the "Optimization Tab" >> "Content Keywords" and I find my website's list of what I assume words Google notices mentioned frequently. I want to know how I can better manage this and get more relevant key words to show up. Because the website I am referring to is a college lifestyle magazine we have various topics that range and I could see confuse Google.The top word is college which is great but some of the others seem a little random and could definitely be more relevant. Any tips on how to improve this? webmaster-tool.png
Branding | | CEOLaser0 -
Content Marketing for E-Commerce Sites
Let's have a real discussion about content marketing for B2B and B2C e-commerce sites. As an SEO/inbound marketer (these days, I'm not sure what to call myself other than my first name), it's part of my job to keep a pulse on what's going on in the online marketing community. My daily routine starts with checking several sites for news/discussion (Moz, Inbound.org, SearchEngineLand, etc). Anyone actively involved in the community knows the word "content" appears in more articles than any other word (ok, maybe there a few others). Want to increase brand awareness? Generate content. Want to drive more traffic to your site? Generate content. Want to build quality links? Generate content. Want to discover the Higgs particle before the physicists? Generate content (and distribute to the right audience, so not to the chemists - ok maybe to the chemists, they're a related audience). Content, content, content, we're told! Yes I did see the Rand's WBF from a couple months back about content-less marketing, but frankly his suggestions fall under the traditional model of advertising and word-of-mouth. We're online marketers baby, we're expanding and changing the traditional model - with content! Enough of content marketing about content marketing. Let's see some content marketing for the small B2C, mom n' pop client who sells gardening tools. Let's see the amazing infographic you made for your local pizzeria client that drove traffic to their site. Let's see the Q+A discussion thread you identified and contributed to as means to display 'market leadership' in your niche of home air purifiers. Look, I love the idea of content marketing to increase brand awareness and drive traffic. Displaying market leadership by answering questions and offering something beneficial to your target audience should be the way to grow business (along with having a good product/service, I guess). But it's much easier said than done. And to be clear, I never expected otherwise. The motivation for this post was to start a discussion about real-world, applied content marketing, not content marketing about content marketing. Let the conversation begin.
Branding | | b40040400 -
Unique Content around GEO targets
Is there a way to produce SEO, google friendly Unique Content to ad to long tail pages, that will provide user value? Emample: 1800medigap.com we want to rank for keywords that are geo specific: Medicare Supplemant Insurance Balitmore Maryland Denver Colorado Medigap Insurance ......
Branding | | jdcline0