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Help, Google Gave Me The Ax - Because Of Content Thieves!

by Writingman1421
36 replies
I got the Ax from Google. My 100% unique site(s) have been scraped again and again by douchebags and apparently my sites are now seen as "duplicate" because there are so many out there. Google even de-indexed MY SITE while leaving the scrapers untouched. I'm outraged and just depressed.

These sites have been de-indexed and basically thrown down the crapper -- sites that were making me about 10k a month -- all because of content scrapers taking my content.

I'm shocked at this because I had thousands of links pointing to these sites and pages; excellent backlink diversity; and I always thought unique content (so long as it's first) ruled all -- I guess I was wrong. Rant off.... On to the question that I needed answered...

What can I do to prevent content thieves from grabbing my content and screwing me over like this? Is there some sort of software or monitoring service that can help me? Cause this is just too much.

I have to go in and change dozens and dozens of articles in the hopes that google will take me back and I can reclaim my top spots.

To think that I have to change the content of these static html sites every few months just to keep these scammers at bay makes my brain hurt -- there has to be a better way to protect myself and my business.

Please any advice or information you can provide is much appreciate.

Thanks So Much

-Sean

P.S. I knew i got Google slapped in December and I had accepted the fact. It's part of the business and I made peace with it. I thought it was my own fault for being overly aggressive with my link building campaigns -- on 3 and 4 year old sites, I didn't think they'd be a problem.

Anyways, I was fine with my mistake and I moved on and started to rebuild. Now I learn that the real issue is THIEVES and they have caused my site to be de-indexed -- cause now it just looks like duplicate content MFA website -- and my anger shot up "Hulk" levels and I was ready to start throwing things around like rapid animal.

PPS. Sorry for the ranting and raving.... Just a little pissed off that a few thieves brought me down after many years of hard work. Any help about protecting my self from content thieves would be much appreciated.
#content #gave #google #thieves
  • Profile picture of the author davejug1
    There's a Javascript code to disable copy/paste and right clicking though I can't find it at the moment.

    I did find a tool though. I've not tested it so I can't vouch for it's integrity.

    HTML Protection Tool - Encrypt HTML Source Code and Disable Right Click

    Edit:

    Ah found it:

    http://javascriptsource.com/page-det...selection.html

    Just be aware it can be disabled but it will stop auto-scrapers in their tracks
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    • Profile picture of the author ItsChrissy
      Sorry to hear your troubles Writingman, hopefully the script Davejug gave you will help in the future.

      There is also a free Wordpress plugin equivalent of the script too which disables right click and cut and paste.

      Chrissy
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      • Profile picture of the author Joni D
        Originally Posted by ItsChrissy View Post

        Sorry to hear your troubles Writingman, hopefully the script Davejug gave you will help in the future.

        There is also a free Wordpress plugin equivalent of the script too which disables right click and cut and paste.

        Chrissy
        ItsChrissy do you know the name of the plugin for disabling rt click,cut & paste?
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    • Profile picture of the author gabibeowulf
      A javascript will not help .. I don't know what you're thinking :confused:

      Guys who do scraping do not go from page to page, view source, copy the content only from a gibberish html code, and then spend another 10 minutes to login in their sites and format and paste the text..

      Scraping is automated by bots that can do whatever a browser can do (a stupider version of Googlebot if you will). These bots don't need javascript "permission" to view the source code, they will just grab it and filter.

      Even encrypting your HTML code will not help. As long as a browser can read your page, so can an automated software created by someone stealing content.

      I never thought scraper sites could actually hurt the source site though.. That's a very interesting (sad) story .. I really thought Google was smarter than that and all the latest updates, besides killing sites left and right, at least would've credited the right author .. Go figure..

      Here's something that might work:
      - set up google alerts for portion of your text in quotes. this way, the moment your content gets published somewhere else on the web, without your permission, you'll know instantly.
      - take appropriate measures: ask them to take the content down (or credit you with rel=author link), C&D letters, send a complaint to their hosting, report the links to google (I believe you can do that in webmaster tools)

      Gabriel

      Originally Posted by davejug1 View Post

      There's a Javascript code to disable copy/paste and right clicking though I can't find it at the moment.

      I did find a tool though. I've not tested it so I can't vouch for it's integrity.

      HTML Protection Tool - Encrypt HTML Source Code and Disable Right Click

      Edit:

      Ah found it:

      The JavaScript Source: Page-Details : Disable Text Selection

      Just be aware it can be disabled but it will stop auto-scrapers in their tracks
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    • Profile picture of the author CDarklock
      Originally Posted by davejug1 View Post

      it will stop auto-scrapers in their tracks
      Um... no. Auto-scrapers don't load the page into a browser at all. They simply read the source of the page. Furthermore, most of them don't load images. They aren't interested in the image, because they can't see it anyway.

      Sometimes the sheer ignorance of the advice here buggers the imagination.
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      • Profile picture of the author saxatwork
        Originally Posted by CDarklock View Post

        Um... no. Auto-scrapers don't load the page into a browser at all. They simply read the source of the page. Furthermore, most of them don't load images. They aren't interested in the image, because they can't see it anyway.
        Ok, here's a thought - how practical is it to write a software that converts characters into an image and display it on a browser? Apart from the fact that Google bot won't like it, of course... but there should be a way for that too...
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  • Profile picture of the author loyalsupporter
    I'd assume most would scrape the content rather than copying it.

    Still this doesn't sound too reasonable reason for de-indexing. I'd personally take a closer look at the website as a whole and try to find other potential reasons as well.
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    • Profile picture of the author Rick W
      Hey man i feel for you

      The scrapers have all sorts of ways to scrape your blog, a common way is through the rss feed.

      There are lots of ways you can try and stop it but I dont know if it can really be stopped, If they want it bad enough these guys will find a way to get it. Its real bad what has happened and it needs to change. I know Copyscape premium offers a good monitoring service
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      • Profile picture of the author davejug1
        Originally Posted by Rick W View Post

        I know Copyscape premium offers a good monitoring service
        Aye that it does, they are pretty sharpish about it too, they don't actually help though other than advising you to send an C&D
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      • Profile picture of the author LilBlackDress
        Originally Posted by Rick W View Post

        Hey man i feel for you

        The scrapers have all sorts of ways to scrape your blog, a common way is through the rss feed.

        There are lots of ways you can try and stop it but I dont know if it can really be stopped, If they want it bad enough these guys will find a way to get it. Its real bad what has happened and it needs to change. I know Copyscape premium offers a good monitoring service
        Would using partial feed instead of the whole article in the feed help prevent this?
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  • Profile picture of the author Entrecon
    I am not up on all of my content tactics, but isn't there also a meta tag or something that you are supposed to add to your content that indicates it is the original true source?
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  • Profile picture of the author Writingman1421
    I've checked into copyscape and while they do notify you, they don't actually do anything. As for going after these content scrappers and thieves and telling each one individually to stop -- that's like trying to stop a river with your bare hands. I'll spend all my time telling them to stop and they'll just keep coming.

    I guess I'm looking for somesort of code that blocks the scrappers from scanning and stealing my content like they have been. Does that even exist?

    -Sean
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    • Profile picture of the author davejug1
      Originally Posted by Writingman1421 View Post

      I've checked into copyscape and while they do notify you, they don't actually do anything. As for going after these content scrappers and thieves and telling each one individually to stop -- that's like trying to stop a river with your bare hands. I'll spend all my time telling them to stop and they'll just keep coming.

      I guess I'm looking for somesort of code that blocks the scrappers from scanning and stealing my content like they have been. Does that even exist?

      -Sean
      You're welcome
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  • Profile picture of the author danr62
    Do you know how the scrapers are getting your content? If they are using your RSS feed you can find plugins that will insert a link to your post in your feed. Thus, whenever someone scrapes your site with RSS they end up linking to you. There may also be a script that will insert links when they use copy and paste, but I'm not as sure about that one.
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  • Profile picture of the author paul_1
    It's difficult to imagine why the scrapers are not penalized and the original source is getting the trouble...
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    • Profile picture of the author Steve Faber
      Originally Posted by paul_1 View Post

      It's difficult to imagine why the scrapers are not penalized and the original source is getting the trouble...
      That, it may be, but the fact remains it happens all the time. I had a blog a few years back that was scraped and regularly outranked by the scraper sites for some keywords, even though my blog ranked at the top for some very competitive ones.

      They also ran some script that would backdate their scraped posts to predate the original. I'd see the date on a copy of my post, out ranking my original one, and want to punch someone. My posts got indexed very rapidly, because the blog was a PR5 (home page), but somehow the PR0 scraped pages would outrank me anyway.

      It did suck....
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  • Profile picture of the author davejug1
    Originally Posted by gabibeowulf View Post

    A javascript will not help .. I don't know what you're thinking :confused:
    You'll have to forgive my ignorance, I'm obviously not as experienced with blackhat tools

    A practical alternative then might be source code encryption?
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  • Profile picture of the author gabibeowulf
    As long as a browser can read the code, even encrypted, there's not much you can do about it. Besides, Google makes it easy. Some could very well scrape the "text only" cache that google offers and bypass all that. So if you're thinking there's something you can do about protecting the content .. it has nothing to do with the content on your site, but rather what you're going to do to protect it once it's stolen...

    That's my theory, at least ..

    Gabriel
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  • Profile picture of the author Randall Magwood
    I'm sorry about your situation Writingman. Were you putting your content on Ezinearticles? Or did you just put your content on your website, and gave people the permission to put your content on their website?
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  • Profile picture of the author goosefrabah
    A trick I use on one of my sites, a user generated image site actually. To keep my bandwidth costs down, I make a trap for such bots. Essentially you make a page, /bot-catcher/ or something and link it to a 1x1 image. The scraper will go to this page, then my code will add their ip address to a database and block them from my website. It may be a little over board but I have gotten thousands of them trapped, of course I check to make sure it is not any of the search engine bots before blocking them.

    I am sure there are much more elegant ways of doing this, however it did cut down a lot of the people trying to scrape my site.
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  • Profile picture of the author rarnold
    What did Google actually say, that is was duplicate content. I have a feeling it is some other reason, like you were hacked and something was placed on your site to make it harmful to visit due to malware, viruses, or something else.

    The internet is racked with duplicate content, and is encuraged with sites like ezine articles to place content on your website. Recheck the email from Google or contact them for clarification.
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  • Profile picture of the author SteveBagasao
    I'm sorry to hear this happened to you. I'm in agreement with @rarnold in thinking that there is something else going on. Lot's of major news websites have syndicated (duplicate) content and they don't get de-indexed.

    Google does not de-index sites for duplicate content, per Matt Cutts. Sites with duplicate content may not rank as well, but they don't get de-indexed.

    Furthermore, if your original content was indexed first, Google should have attributed authorship to you and anyone else who publishes your content would then be considered duplicate.

    I would try and contact Google and see if you can find out what's really going on here.

    Good luck!
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  • Profile picture of the author AmandaT
    I doubt it was the content thieves... you should look into other reasons you could be de-indexed.

    You posted your content first, all of the scraped content will be seen as syndicated content. There is no "duplicate content" penalty.
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    • Profile picture of the author damoncloudflare
      Originally Posted by AmandaT View Post

      I doubt it was the content thieves... you should look into other reasons you could be de-indexed.

      You posted your content first, all of the scraped content will be seen as syndicated content. There is no "duplicate content" penalty.
      True. I'm not sure why people think this. The duplicate content issue has been explained by a Google employee.
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      • Profile picture of the author bobcarlsjr
        agree.. definitely not duplicate content.............

        what about news site? those popular news get copied THOUSAND of times all over hundred of thousands or website..

        has to be more to it.. most probably your 'seo'............... backlinks, etc.........
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      • Profile picture of the author saxatwork
        Originally Posted by Joni D View Post

        ItsChrissy do you know the name of the plugin for disabling rt click,cut & paste?
        There is one called WP-CopyProtect. You'll get it here -
        WordPress › WP-CopyProtect [Protect your blog posts] « WordPress Plugins

        Does the basic stuff but it's good. Disables right click and also manual text selection. I have used it in one of my blogs, and it's nice.

        Originally Posted by goosefrabah View Post

        A trick I use on one of my sites, a user generated image site actually. To keep my bandwidth costs down, I make a trap for such bots. Essentially you make a page, /bot-catcher/ or something and link it to a 1x1 image. The scraper will go to this page, then my code will add their ip address to a database and block them from my website. It may be a little over board but I have gotten thousands of them trapped, of course I check to make sure it is not any of the search engine bots before blocking them.

        I am sure there are much more elegant ways of doing this, however it did cut down a lot of the people trying to scrape my site.
        That's brilliant. But - how do you identify a scraper program from a regular visitor? What I can think of is the number of hits from a particular IP address within a specified interval of time, is it?
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  • Profile picture of the author RichardDean
    Sorry to hear that. Screw Google You still have Yahoo , Bing , MSN and don't forget dogpile many many more.

    Noobs lesson here: Don't put all your eggs in one basket you can't collect when the bottom falls out.

    Sell them on flippa and show rankings from other search sites

    good luck

    Richard
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  • Profile picture of the author everydayreviews
    made me mad just reading this. I hope google realizes their mistake
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  • Profile picture of the author jaiganeshv
    Setting fat pings using pubshiubbub might work.. try Get Indexed Faster! SEO Tips with Richard Baxter - Whiteboard Friday | SEOmoz

    The plugin is WordPress › PubSubHubbub « WordPress Plugins
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  • Profile picture of the author adamfdotnet
    What about using something like Cloudflare (Home | CloudFlare | The web performance & security company). Their whole idea is to cut out bots and bad agents to sites. drops your bandwidth costs but doesn't impact your good traffic...

    -Adam
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    • Profile picture of the author damoncloudflare
      Originally Posted by adamfdotnet View Post

      What about using something like Cloudflare (Home | CloudFlare | The web performance & security company). Their whole idea is to cut out bots and bad agents to sites. drops your bandwidth costs but doesn't impact your good traffic...

      -Adam
      We can help by stopping known abusive bots (you can also block bad bots in your threat control panel that we don't catch). We're actually looking to see if we can develop a solution for helping producers stopping scrapers even more.
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  • Profile picture of the author Paul Gram
    Why would you think it's from other sites using your content? There are thousands of sites that syndicate their content and still rank high with no issues at all.

    My guess is that you probably got a manual review and they didn't like something on your site. It probably had nothing at all to do with other people using your content.
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  • Profile picture of the author GeorgR.
    Here is the harsh truth:

    Many people use software like Senuke etc.

    You can enter a keyword in Senuke, and it would download an Article FROM EZINE into the software, ready for you to distribute to any number of sites you want, with your link. Basically "hijacking" the ezine article as a means to spread your link.

    While (from a seo point of view) this would not be smart to do, i can see many people doing exactly this.

    Who is at fault? People who use Senuke? People who sell senuke? Ezine?

    Here is the deal: If its REALLY the case that YOUR SITE would get penalized from such things...it's my opinion it's Google's fault. Personally, i would like to see proof that it really hurt your site and not the scrapers, it's a little hard to believe.
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  • Profile picture of the author sbucciarel
    Banned
    I seriously doubt that Google gave you the ax because someone used your content. The Internet has many syndicated articles all over that don't get the ax.
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  • Profile picture of the author Michael Oksa
    Maybe it was the "thousands of links pointing to these sites and pages" that finally caught up with you?

    I don't know that for sure, but if you were trying to game Google's system, and you got called out on it, then it's nobody's fault but your own.

    Again, I am NOT saying this is the case, but it seems like a possibility.

    Also, wouldn't it be hypocritical to bash someone for artificially inflating their PR and position while artificially inflating your own?

    To be clear, I am not accusing you of anything, but rather pointing out a general problem I see when some people are in the same situation.

    All the best,
    Michael
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  • Profile picture of the author pbarnhart
    Javascript, images, etc do not work. Javascript and images are links followed by your browsers and incorporated into your page. Scrapers, even script-kiddie attempts using wget simply ignore them.

    Period!

    I have set up a lot of corporate sites (in the past, I've worked on major airlines, tech companies like AMD and Motorola, etc). You can do this if you understand a bit of how the technology works. Here is what I implement for my clients:

    1. gabibeowulf's soultion is an excellent step - I do the same thing. What else can you do?

    2. Use the canonical tag.

    3. Follow the steps here: Easy PHP Blackhole Trap with WHOIS Lookup for Bad Bots

    4. Or go even further and use: 5G Blacklist 2012 | Perishable Press

    5. Google is currently accepting scraper reports for their own anti-scraper tool: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/...U0E6MQ&ndplr=1

    Report scrapers to Google, and Bing re DMCA:

    Complain to the actual hosting service - find out who is hosting using: Web Hosting Search Tool | WhoIsHostingThis.com

    Find the scraper site, and complain directly to the advertisers you find. Call them or fax them, tell them they are supporting content thieves.

    Finally, consider using Creative Commons to license your content for non-commercial use requiring a link back to you. You can continue to file complaints against scrapers who include ads on their site, but if others 'borrow' your content they need to link back to you and they cannot use a canonical tag. This makes even more specific violations you can address to the site owner, hosting provider, etc. And you may end up with additional backlinks.

    PS - Run, don't walk to the absolute best resource and podcast on the web http://www.plagiarismtoday.com/ Everyone on this forum should make this site a habit!
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