Google Panda and EASY Rankings Quick

No I'm not selling anything here.

Consider this a poke in the eye of Google's so-called "quality control" (a.k.a. Panda updates). You know, the update to the algo where dupe content and low-quality is supposedly out the door? The algo change where sites are penalized for such?

Quick Introduction

If you don't know me, I blog at TheAverageGenius.net - I have about 3 posts there recently about this whole fiasco, the first entitled, simply, WTF Google? and the other two my reaction and further discovery.

For those who skim-read, I'll save you the time (though there's a lot of details at my blog) - I have a site that makes my living. It's not the IM-related or SEO-related site: I just blog about what I do for fun and some spare change (literally it's "date my wife" money, nothing more than that as far as internet marketing tools and my income off the SEO community goes).

I make a living selling physical products, from Commission Junction primarily.

As of May 10th, 2011 - my would-be passive income is negligible. I was making over $5k a month passively from pure SEO and copywriting, my original work, no outsourced anything.

What happened to me could happen to you, too - thanks to Google Panda I largely suspect.

What happened?

My best site - the one that supports me - yes: I said ONE site (I have a small network but this one is the best of them all) went from ranking #1-10 for my main terms (over 30 long tail KW's) to ranking #200+ in Google...

I have a few terms still ranking #1, but for the most part I'm ranking nowhere - this is a sitewide phenomenon as of May 10th.

Thing is, I didn't backlink the whole site - I've had rankings at #1 for the past seven months.

The domain is almost 2 years of age...

What I found today really disturbed me - so listen up.

Someone copied my entire site - images, layout, theme of the site - everything...

Rewrote my content...

And has taken my rankings without any backlinks.

How is this even possible?

I'm not entirely sure - BUT I know that Google Panda has a low tolerance for dupe and low quality content, especially unoriginal writing...

I found over 10 pages of my content strewn about the web, copied word-for-word.

Because of plugins I have in place on my site, I know they cannot just right-click - someone went the extra mile and used either an RSS feed or copied the source code of my site to grab my content...

They used the same WordPress theme (I suspect they just used the "WP Twin" plugin to copy my site, but I'm not sure it can copy someone else's website, that's just a guess on my part)...everything.

Then I suspect they simply published my original content everywhere (on their own sites no less - full on autoblogs)...and reported me to Google's spam team for dupe content.

That's how easy it is to take #1 rankings, folks - just copy and paste, rewrite someone's content, and "make it your own" by re-writing.

Who needs research???

Why am I telling you all this? Simple: it's a warning. Watch your back. Internet marketing is like the stock market in the 20's during the Great Depression - one minute you're all "set" and the next you're on your back wondering what that truck license plate read that just ran your living over...

As for me - I read the license plate. It read, "Google Panda."

Thanks for reading.