Someone copied my site title and description and now out ranks me, what can I do?
Hello guys, I have an affiliate site that ranks pretty good for a specific keyword. I've spent quite a lot on Google ads which lead me to this position. Now a new site, copied my general design, same placing of images, menu and so on, he also copied my description and site title 1to1 , and outranks me. A few weeks ago he changed the title of his site (to be different than mine) and dropped a few days later beneth me, now he put back my title and going up again. What can I do to stop this? Any suggestions? I'm using canonical in all my pages, but other than that not sure what to do . Thanks! 48 💬🗨
TheTemp0rnaut File a copyright claim with Google. Use wayback machine to show when your version was first up (if available). Google is likely to drop the infringing site from its rankings but can't force bringing down the site. If the infrining party counterclaims I think the standard is that you have 10 to 14 working days to file a court order at your expense. I'm in a similar boat.
NHRADeuce You can't copyright design. At best there might be a Digital Millennium Copyright Act Policy (DMCA) take down if the content is exactly the same.
_ZenPanda Even if it's 100% same, I don't think DMCA will work here, because it's just title and description, not even full content. No trademark, no legal registration, no Internet Protocol (IP) rights? Well, good luck with DMCA then… NHRADeuce Yeah, it's a stretch, but doesn't hurt to try.
ClickedMarketing There isn't really anything you can do about someone copying a title unless it includes a registered trademark maybe. There are tons of articles with the same title out there. The description could maybe be an issue, assuming that it is the actual description they listed on their site and not one Google is picking. You can file a DMCA notice with Google and their web host.
_Emerald_dream_ Three is nothing he can do if it's not registered.
_ZenPanda That's right. They won't budge if you don't have actual IP rights and some legal documents to prove the origin of your content (eg. receipt for paying someone to write it, receipt for developers of the site), but most times they just ask you to go to court and show them court order to remove it. This is from my experience.
mantas8 for copied title and desciption you can't claim DMCA
SaaSWriters It depends. If you want to succeed long term, you can spend your time and energy improving how you serve your buyers. Then, you won't have to worry about someone copying your description and your title.
I've spent quite a lot on Google ads which lead me to this position.
How did Google ads lead you to this position?
stockshere ✍️ More traffic, spent like 100k on ads in the last year.. All that extra traffic definitely helped ranking up my site. and it's a shame seeing him riding on my back.. I'm pretty sure Google is in someway mixing our sites, seeing them as duplicate or something like that
Herb_Maxwell The money you spent on ads didn't help you rank organically. milosmudric Well, besides probably nothing you can do to hurt him (legally), you can work more on improving your site. If he outranks you and has the same structure and content, he probably has more backlinks. If he copied your content, maybe you can replicate his backlinks…And build some more. SaaSWriters
More traffic, spent like 100k on ads in the last year.
What are your conversions like? stockshere ✍️ ~7% conversion overall. ~70% from my site to the destination site, and 10% of them complete purchase. I'm not trying to outbid my competitors, I check conversion rate , decide on profit margin I want and bid accordingly.. No expert or something SaaSWriters It seems you're doing well. Focus on improving your sales/conversions. That's much better than worrying about these guys. In reality, there's nothing you can do anyway that will be worth the time, effort, and money.
DennyBenny Google and Bing are supposed to see you were first and put you there. Whom ever is doing this to you is a schmuck. Check your structure content to the new person's website source code. This has happened to me many times and I have sent firm email indicating ethics and what they are doing. Sometimes it works, other times it makes no difference. Since I now do all this via Gmail it seems if you add the domain name and what his happening with keywords Google adjusts sooner than later and I am not totally sure why this may have changed the timing. Wayback is your friend in these situation and a good reason to donate to them.
_ZenPanda The trick is to be indexed by Googlebot first. Like manual request from search console. If the copycat gets (manually) indexed before the original, then it's over. It's not fair, but it's the way Google works.
DennyBenny True, but I can tell you this is not bullet proof. Changing some of the structure can get past the bot. The bot will crawl even if it is not submitted and index a website and it will rank first page for some key words..
Radio_Sudden Hey! You can't do anything legally but instead of cry, you should focus on the improvement of the page. Tweak your Title and Meta with additional keywords and English words. Apart from this increase the social visibility of your page. By this way, you can outranked him or get better position in Search Engine Result Page (SERP). TysanSEO This is a common occurrence as many people have said. The only thing you can really do is try to make sure that the content below that title is better than your competitors. Your backlink profile and other web presence come into play here as well. If a "stronger" site comes along and copies your keywords your best option is to make your site stronger. It would be nice if Google recognized originality, and in some ways they do. They can understand duplicate pages but not so much with copied titles. I believe this will change as Artificial Intelligence (AI) (like Google BERT) gets smarter. AI is already doing a better job by the day, of understanding the internet and how everything is connected. The best advice I can give is just to keep adding content and improving your current content. Another thing I would look at is if your competitor has video on their page. Google has been very clear that video is becoming a much larger ranking factor this year. If your competitor does not have a video I would recommend posting a relevant video to that page. That might be all you need to get your spot back. I hope this is helpful. Tysan www.tysanseo.com ConsiderationCute545 I am not sure about the "copied description" but you can do the following to give your competitor a tough time by analyze his backlinks and find opportunities on the sites from where he gets backlinks. • Navigate to Link Explorer. • Enter your competitor's URL. • Navigate to the "Inbound Links" tab. • Export backlink data into. • Compile backlink. • Sort all backlinks by Page Authority. • Review all linking sites for opportunities. For further knowledge about this strategy, check Moz Blog. F5_Studio It happens everyday, but people still ask "What can I do?" First, you can't know that competitor outrank you. Because it is a challenging task to measure positions. But you can notice the drop in website traffic. Well, that's a sign. If it happens you need to react. Someone outranks you because someone created better site than you. In this case "better" means better for search engines (and maybe someone's site better for people). To be honest most sites when you break them down to their layout and basic building blocks are just the same as a theme but with different images and most have similar layouts. What casn you do? Improve your content. Do it every day. Create a new content from time to time. You need to get ahead of competitors. You need to have a plan of your content growth. But you should focus on branding and message marketing. That's all. Don't waste your time with reading patently obvious advice. Do! priscilla136 This is why content is king, so time to add massive amount of content. Check out how many pages this other website has and x3. Drip it 2-3 times a week.
Allpurposelife Are they ranking higher than you and you aren't getting traffic anymore? or you just don't like how they are getting above you? Also, Blast em! Blast him with a ton of backlinks and put him in the sandbox. This is my advice, but I don't know what kind of Karma it includes. I do see that they might blast you back. Hopefully, they don't have a ton of site authority yet.
stockshere ✍️ Yea hurting my traffic, plus it's annoying he just copied me. About bad backlinks, never understood what considered a bad backlink. Looking at my search console I have 9 backlinks from site like.org is that bad? I also have Tiptipo.net Websitedigger Similars Co.com Rawranked Login post Couponsale Are they bad/good , never really understood this, maybe he is doing it to me? Thanks
Allpurposelife No no. You send the backlinks to your competitor to deindex them. I'm warning you that it's risky because of the karma. But at the same time.. he stole your site. Get la backlink blast service for over 100000 links in 1 day. You can find it on Fiverr. This is a very powerful technique and it can really do some damage. You could also check out the site yourself and see how you can improve your site instead. stockshere ✍️ Oh I now I get it. Then Google recognize 10000 backlinks same day , and punish his site? Interesting (: Thanks man MrRedditKing I don't think this would actually work. If it's this cheap and easy to "really do some damage" it would be the quickest way to outrank competitors for scrupulous site owners. This seems way easier than "building a ton of backlinks and great content".
simulation_goer I once had someone posting content I produced without attribution. I reached Google, produced the documentation (in this case, there was a Google doc with the original content, time-stamped), and they moved my request forward, de-listing the page that had stolen my stuff. This was a while back though (think 6-7 years ago), so I don't know what would be the best way to handle it now. Good luck! lucborg Re: " I've spent quite a lot on Google ads which lead me to this position." Are you referring to Paid Google Ads or Organic Search Results? Please note that Google Ads do not affect your organic rankings, so if you're talking about Google Ads then you might need to increase your bidding, but if you are referring to Organic Results than you need to do some research on your competitor. Check on-page content (relevancy, keyword use, length, etc); site speed (and core web vitals metrics); backlinks (check competitor backlinks to see if this is why his site is beating yours); and many other things, like Schema, AMP, etc. 140414 Did he also copy the headings and content in your pages?
stockshere ✍️ He copied keywords, and definitely some sentces. But not a all article or all paragraph. Let's say the "about page" is same words written in different order.. But I think it doesn't qualifies as copyright. Can a few copied sentences from the "about" be copyright protected?
