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Company Steals My Sites Content

by TechGuy1
14 replies
  • SEO
    • |
Hello,
I am enraged at the moment and just need to vent. Im not sure if it should be in another forum so feel free to move it.... So I run a web development compnay (http://wwww.techguywebsolutions.com) Weve been around for around 4 years. We had really good rankings for good keywords like Joomla web design, affordable web design, etc. Anyway, I noticed my site was quickly moving down. I know there is alot of the penguin updates aftermath , etc but I never engaged in spam for seo or anything like that.

So yesterday I decided to highlight some text on pages that seemed to disappear from google and my site does not come up but this other site TraitDesign.com does. I thought it was odd and figured they were jerks that just copied some text from me. Then I browse their site and noticed that they had stolen EVERY bit of content from my site. The menu struture, the pages, images that I created, etc. All that is different is their template. They even have 3 images in their slider with pictures of websites that my company built. That is just straight up illegal.

I couldnt fathom that someone would be so low as to do this. So back to Google, it seems all the pages they copied, mne got dropped. Whay google would do this is beyond me. They can tell that my pages were up 3 years before theirs. I have lost business because of this

If you have some time, take a look at what they did...browse a few pages
my site - techguywebsolutions.com
their site - traitdesign.com

All pages are the same and get this....they copied my TETIMONIALS page and just replaced my name with theirs. These are personal messages from my clients...

Im not sure what to do here. Do I call a lawyer? I worked hard on all my content and it makes me feel ill that someone would just take it ALL like that....

thanks
Brad
________________
#company #content #sites #steels
  • Profile picture of the author domainarama
    Send them a DMCA Takedown notice. The following IS NOT an affiliate link, it's just good information: hxxp://anne-pottinger(.)com/category/general-internet-marketing/
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    • Profile picture of the author paulgl
      If you are going to give your competitor a backlink,
      you'd better make sure yours is there too. You have
      coded your own backlink wrong. Too many wwww's.

      I still question giving a competitor a backlink.

      I don't think either of you have content that is the
      kind worth stealing in the true sense of the word.

      I can't say about any changes, but that puzzle piece banner
      is probably just a variation of a stock image available to anyone.
      I have seen that same hand and puzzle pieces.

      Now it does have a pic of sportshouting.com. Did your company
      personally work on that site and for them?

      Paul
      Signature

      If you were disappointed in your results today, lower your standards tomorrow.

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  • Profile picture of the author Josh MacDonald
    I feel for you. I looked at their page: About TraitDesign

    They don't look too innocent. Contact a lawyer if you're into lawsuits.
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    • Profile picture of the author Loopydupe
      Originally Posted by Josh MacDonald View Post

      I feel for you. I looked at their page: About TraitDesign

      They don't look too innocent. Contact a lawyer if you're into lawsuits.
      well try to resolve it without any lawyers bec lawsuits are expensive!
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  • Profile picture of the author Karan Rawat
    Sorry to hear this, how can they copy or steal your content, Immediately hire an lawyer one can take you seriously after that.
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    1800CS
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  • Profile picture of the author jinx1221
    Some people's answer to setting up websites is to download and basically use someone elses site html docs as a template. Obviously what they did here and on a side note how they set up websites for other people.. so much for originality!

    My guess about ranking, their site age may be higher than yours, but previously had different content. Who knows. Anyways, yes, a quick and simple DMCA takedown notice emailed or snail mailed to them should scare them enough, you probably wont even need to go through any actual legal channels. Search for a sample. (they will probably just as easily go copy someone elses site rather than face legal hassles)

    Also, I would contact google, I know google gets sort of a fear factor around here, but they can be your friends.. they may do a manual review and remove their site. Keep us updated!
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  • Profile picture of the author yukon
    Banned
    Why are you guys giving the site backlinks?
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  • Profile picture of the author yukon
    Banned
    This is nothing new (scraper outranking original site) & there's absolutely no possible way Google's algo. could know which page was the original page/domain for the content. Even the first page cached could be a scraper site/page, so they couldn't use a cache date.
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  • Profile picture of the author AlexSuwarna
    Used DMCA For Secure Content of website.
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  • Profile picture of the author dcary13
    DMCA - they will vanish faster as they can say "poof" from google.

    You can also mark them as phishing site, which is true here in some way.

    People simply underestimate what a DMCA can do.
    Let them copy your content, it will cost them usually days and weeks.
    You can remove them in 10 minutes from nearly every SE.

    You do not need a lawyer or any time or money consuming procedure.

    If the site is not taken down in short times, go to the google help forum
    and open a thread there. That should force it even more.

    Also, go direct to facebook, twitter and so on and show them that they
    are complete stolen and fake sites. Even they are perhaps not complete fakes,
    they will be removed with a high chance and they will have big problems to
    come back because they have to explain why they are real but used complete
    faked & illegal content.

    Tip: Use archive.org to show in an easy way where the original content was created
    and how it was copied.
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  • Profile picture of the author kaytav
    Originally Posted by TechGuy1 View Post

    Hello,
    I am enraged at the moment and just need to vent. Im not sure if it should be in another forum so feel free to move it.... So I run a web development compnay (http://wwww.techguywebsolutions.com) Weve been around for around 4 years. We had really good rankings for good keywords like Joomla web design, affordable web design, etc. Anyway, I noticed my site was quickly moving down. I know there is alot of the penguin updates aftermath , etc but I never engaged in spam for seo or anything like that.

    So yesterday I decided to highlight some text on pages that seemed to disappear from google and my site does not come up but this other site TraitDesign.com does. I thought it was odd and figured they were jerks that just copied some text from me. Then I browse their site and noticed that they had stolen EVERY bit of content from my site. The menu struture, the pages, images that I created, etc. All that is different is their template. They even have 3 images in their slider with pictures of websites that my company built. That is just straight up illegal.

    I couldnt fathom that someone would be so low as to do this. So back to Google, it seems all the pages they copied, mne got dropped. Whay google would do this is beyond me. They can tell that my pages were up 3 years before theirs. I have lost business because of this

    If you have some time, take a look at what they did...browse a few pages
    my site - techguywebsolutions.com
    their site - traitdesign.com

    All pages are the same and get this....they copied my TETIMONIALS page and just replaced my name with theirs. These are personal messages from my clients...

    Im not sure what to do here. Do I call a lawyer? I worked hard on all my content and it makes me feel ill that someone would just take it ALL like that....

    thanks
    Brad
    ________________
    I wonder why you gave backlink to a site that copied your content and you have put a wrong url of your own site. This is really amazing. If someone would have copied from my website, I would have seriously done some damage to that stealer, instead of providing a valuable link from here.
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    • Profile picture of the author yukon
      Banned
      Originally Posted by kaytav View Post

      I wonder why you gave backlink to a site that copied your content and you have put a wrong url of your own site. This is really amazing. If someone would have copied from my website, I would have seriously done some damage to that stealer, instead of providing a valuable link from here.

      Lol, you dropped a 2nd backlink for OPs competition when you quoted OP asking why he dropped the 1st backlink.
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      • Profile picture of the author paulgl
        Forget a DMCA. Forget contacting google. Totally useless in
        this case.

        Google does not give a hoot if someone has copied content.
        If they did, wikipedia would be buried 6 feet under, along with
        amazon, youtube, etc., etc. etc.

        Do a search for, oh
        "Taken in by a well-to-do family and offered a second chance at life"

        Every site selling that movie uses the same image. Ditto for every
        movie site online.

        Try this line:
        "What the homeless teen knows are the streets and projects of Memphis."
        Amazon ranks #9 for me. They use the same tagline as a zillion other sites.

        So what?

        I have no idea why people still go gaga over google and the same
        content, across the web. Like it's bad or something. Google never
        said anything of the kind.

        Paul
        Signature

        If you were disappointed in your results today, lower your standards tomorrow.

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  • Profile picture of the author palms
    Sending a DMCA to the perpetrators is a useless move. They already know they stole your content and they know you're not going to get a lawyer because it's too expensive.

    Be smart: Send the DMCA to GOOGLE and they will remove the offenders from the index. I've done it over a hundred times and succeeded in all but one case.

    Fax a PROPERLY FORMATTED DMCA notice to:

    (650) 963-3255
    Attn: Google Legal Support, DMCA Complaints

    (and don't forget to sign it)
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