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Article: How Does Google Punish the Content Thief?
Of the topics relevant to you as a blogger, none may require more of your attention than content theft and unoriginal content.
In your defense, Google also takes a dim view of “unoriginal content”.
Google and Original Content
One of the most important steps in improving your site’s ranking in Google search results is to ensure that it contains plenty of rich information that includes relevant keywords, used appropriately, that indicate the subject matter of your content.
However, some webmasters attempt to improve their page’s ranking and attract visitors by creating pages with many words but little or no authentic content. Google will take action against domains that try to rank more highly by just showing scraped or other auto-generated pages that don’t add any value to users.
- Thin affiliate sites: These sites collect pay-per-click (PPC) revenue by sending visitors to the sites of affiliate programs, while providing little or no value-added content or service to the user. These sites usually have no original content and may be cookie-cutter sites or templates with no unique content.
- Doorway pages: Pages created just for search engines
- Auto-generated content: Content generated programmatically. Often this will consist of random paragraphs of text that make no sense to the reader but that may contain search keywords.
- Scraped content: Some webmasters make use of content taken from other, more reputable sites on the assumption that increasing the volume of web pages with random, irrelevant content is a good long-term strategy. Purely scraped content, even from high-quality sources, may not provide any added value to your users without additional useful services or content provided by your site. It’s worthwhile to take the time to create original content that sets your site apart. This will keep your visitors coming back and will provide useful search results.
Affiliate Marketing
Google has been known to be harsh on affiliate marketers for failing to add value to its searches. The impact to you as an affiliate marketer is a serious loss of income potential on your part.
There is no problem in being an affiliate as long as you create some added value for your users and produce valuable content that gives a user a reason to visit your site. For example, you could create product reviews, ratings, and product comparisons.
Let me show you the result of Google preventing search results from being displayed:
In the example above, Google has “omitted” 53 results from being displayed to a Google search user that has typed in a particular set of keywords.
Of those 53 instances, how many conversions do you think those site owners receive? My guess is zero. What do you think?
Although Google does offer to display the results for the Google Search user, this will appear at the bottom of the very last page. If a keyword search returned hundreds of pages of results, the likelihood that the Google search user will even see this is next to impossible.
Do not allow Google to omit or prevent users from finding your articles in search.
Sometimes, even Google gets it wrong.
Perhaps this portion of this post will be encouraging to the content thief. That is not our goal. But, there has been a trend online from those who manage their prime keywords that some of the scraped material is ranking higher in searches than the original content.
Because of that occasional miscalculation on Google’s part, the content thieves keep hope alive – especially with terms that are more frequently searched.
Want an example? Click the image below to expand:
Great content comes out of a talent of reaching, engaging, informing, and entertaining readers. This type of creativity is in extremely short supply in the blogosphere. It is often much easier to copy and paste content that presently exists than to start from scratch.
What are you thoughts on scraped and unoriginal content? How often do you think sites are scraped for content? What about sites that offer a brief summary of an article before providing the link to the original article? What happens if that site shows more prominent in search listings? How do you think Google is doing at handing this problem? And could this happen to you?
8 Comments
I didn’t know that affiliate sites had such problems with their search engine rankings. It seems that just adding products to a site for sale is not the way to go and you will have to add some originality on your side.
As far as I know, most of the popular sites are scraped pretty fast(I have noticed less than 30 minute time). I hate scrapers and in past, have taken 2-3 scrapers down by either contacting their host or domain registrar. Google is handling scrapers as they usually do everything, via bots. Most of the times, their algorithms get pretty good but there’s still a big portion of scrapers that easily rank higher!
Ishan recently posted..20 Dead Simple Ways To Promote Your Blog
You know, I get so mad at those sites that scrape and autogenerate content. I do not have an SEO blog, I do not have a blogger tips blog, I have a mom blog. Yep, a mom blog. And I find my stuff taken all the time. Pictures and everything. The words are bad enough, but the pictures really upset me. I don’t have unlimited band width, I went with a more reputable company where I have so much bandwidth a month, they are using my bandwidth hotlinking to my site. I want to disable hotlinking via htaccess, but my banners is stored on my account and if I disable access, the people who truly like my blog, who have linked to me via a button, they will be disabled to. I told one site they were in copyright violation as they were using my pictures, my words, everything. It was all stolen from my site. They claimed it wasn’t because it is autogenerated. Yes, that makes it ok.
Sorry for my rant, your post just hit home. Stopping by from Blog Engage!
Heather,
Based on your experience, you are entitled to rant!
I am pleased that my article struck a nerve and you chose Source Blogger as your vehicle to share your story.
When I was performing my research on this topic, I noticed that many Mommy/Family bloggers were being targeted. So, you are not alone.
You have been on quite a journey, and there are those who could learn from your ordeal. Let me know if you are considering writing a guest post on this topic.
The timing is right as I have another article scheduled in the pipeline regarding content theft/scraping.
Your friend,
Jeffrey Baril <> Source Blogger
Source Blogger recently posted..What is Googlebot Why Does Googlebot Visit My Site
I have a lot of images on my website, and one guy stole one of my pictures and said he actually printed the shirt, which he did not.
Somehow he managed in the image search to get ahead of my own image, so he was in a position to steal my customers using my own image. After warning him 2 times I took action, and had his website shut down for about a day, until he had his image taken down. I would recommend not submitting anything to google, and be careful on the forum, Google’s computer might have just misinterpreted my posts.
Easiest way to go after someone is go after the websites host, since you can actually sue the host for serving the duplicate content, they tend to act fairly quickly.
Here is a link to all the forms etc you need to fill out to take action against someone.
How To Report Stolen Images, Text, and Website Content
http://www.khulsey.com/reporting_image_theft.html
Please beware however Google does not like to hear about your content theft problems, not only will they submit any claims you send to them in http://www.chillingeffects.org/ , but after I announced this guys image theft on a few forums that I thought he might visit, next thing I knew I get a Google alert that my domain was flagged with image theft, and I am not sure if this was related or not, but my images in Google were soon de-indexed and two months later they are only re indexed up to about 20%.
Hey, you want the answer? Well, the answer is no. Forget how many times I have seen my content and pictures on other sites – ranked higher than me!
These pathetic crooks cannot even correct my [i]mizpellinz[/i] even! It is like a joke where they simply come by and scrape. Google awards these MFA – MADE FOR ADSENSE sites top billing based on my hard work to some slob that cannot type fast or operate a camera.
I want to quote your post in my blog. It can?
And you et an account on Twitter?
Hi Jeffrey
I’ve just read a similar post where a guy was doing his keyword research, saw who was ranking highly, went to the site and it was this guy’s original coypwrited (been copy & pasted) work! So this seems to have been happening like forever!
Then the guy who has stolen his work takes exception and comes on the site to comment! I was shocked by his brazen justification of how he was helping said copyright owner’s SEO!
Another experienced blogger commented how he had gone to a site and discovered all of his articles including the graphics were posted on someone else’s site. Through a lengthy process he got the site banned. Sadly it was PR6 and couldn’t claim to be an ignorant newbie. Not that newbies wouldn’t know that plagarism is a big no-no!
All these people wanting quick ranking and quick bucks. Instead their sites taken down and banned.
Patricia Perth Australia
Patricia recently posted..A Gardener’s Guide to Growing a Business