A site that loves our content so much!
By Rudolf Boogerman
There is a site that loves our content so much that it places a copy of our article, almost as soon as we publish it. Sounds good, you might think and indeed, if it is one article, it is not an issue, but if they take over whole categories, and you discover the sites contains only copied material, that’s another matter.
www.myrain.org is one of those typical cases of copycats that are popping up everywhere. This one is based in Beijin, China according to the information retrieved from the domain registration. The site copies articles from everywhere and has stolen numerous articles from WomenCorp. It posts about 10 copies of articles a day and it is all automated. It even takes over whole categories with articles, images, and it leeches video and audio. Leeching is showing off with your media on another site while you pay for the bandwidth.
Why are copycat sites a problem?
Copycat sites like myrain.org, newsami.com and others aggregate several articles daily, therefore, it looks as if they have daily fresh content, which can make them appear important to search engines. In combination with the ping backs, they get ranked easily in Google, and as soon as they rank higher then your site, they will show up in search results before your site. That is the problem.
Duplicate content can become an additional problem if a copycat sites takes over complete categories.
How do I find out copycats?
Luckily, this is easy. There is an article on Womencorp discussing a way to scan copycats of your content: You want to know who steals your copywriting?
With Google alerts, you can ask Google to send you automated emails on search engine results from specific keywords related to your site, which is another way to get notified on possible copyright theft.
What if you fall victim to copycats?
If your articles are picked up by myrain.org or any of the other copycats, you best report the site to Google. You can do this in the Webmaster tools Section, click on the link Report spam in our index. If you do not have an account with Google yet, this is the time to do it.
If enough site owners complain about a particular site, Google eventually removes the perpetrator, but it can take a loooong time, so don’t wait it out and stay calm.
Forget about going to Court. It’s a waste of money and it will wear you out. You sue one copycat today and tomorrow another one pops up. But there is some positive action you can take immediately:
Make sure you create links in your articles to link back to your own site, because by placing a relevant link within your article here and there, you at least get some traffic back to your site. Also, if you link to a related article, you get a trace back warning when another site refers to your article, because it contains a ping back to the related article. In short, a link to another article on your site can function as an alarm system. However, some copycats, like newsami.com, for instance, often remove all URL’s from articles.
Trace backs or ping backs show up as a comment on the referred article in your blog. If the referring site shows an excerpt of your article with a link to the original, all is well and you shouldn’t take action because an excerpt will send traffic to your site. This is what makes blogging work. But if it is a full copy and it doesn’t refer to the original source properly, it is a copyright infringement. Do not approve a trace back or ping back from copycat sites, because you give them credibility this way.
If you have already ping back comments from copycats on your site: remove them now.
Set commenting to “Approve comments before publishing” if comments on your site are published automatically. That way, you are in control of the ping backs and you can prevent copycat sites from promoting themselves via your site.
To resume: actions to take
- In your new articles, make sure you link back to a related article or page within your site.
- Disable automatic publishing of comments
- Remove existing ping backs from copycat sites
- Warn Google about the copycat site. Yet make sure it is indeed a copycat site, not an isolated incident.
Things you better not do:
- Do not send offending comments.
- Don’t start an argument with copycat site owners by email or phone. If you must contact them, leave it to a lawyer or an organization specialized in copyrights, like the DMCA.
- If you are a small entrepreneur, forget about suing. International court cases are very expensive and even if you win, there is little chance you will see any money.
Update: this article has been picked up by both myrain.org and newsami.com on the same day. Newsami removed the links, myrain.org left them in.
Did you experience problems recently or in the past with copycats? If so, how did you deal with it? We would like to know.
Author site: Rudolf Boogerman | View all articles by Rudolf Boogerman
Topics: Business, Infopreneuring |
