Yesterday I had an interesting thing happen. I had Matt Roberge from SLC Bookkeeping contact me with an interesting question. His question went something like this…
So here is an odd question for you.
What would you do if someone copied your entire website and blogs, word for word, and put it on their site as their own?
Wow! This was a great question. I personally have experienced this on a small scale, but nothing to the extent that Matt was talking about. So I needed to do a little research to find out how to handle this. The first thing I did was go to the alleged site to review it. Sure enough the content from SLC had been lifted and place almost word for word on a few pages of this bookkeeping site. They just dropped the “Salt Lake City” references since they were in another city. Yikes! He’s right, there were multiple places this happened.
Although, Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery as they say, this company was a little too flattering. This could actually get both companies blacklisted in google for duplicate content which could hurt search ranking. If online marketing is a big form of lead generation for your business development this could really be harmful to your business growth goals.
So what can you do about this? Well, the first step is to check your site to see if there are other people using your content. Go to Copyscape and use their free tool to test your site. Just add your URL and click Search.
Here’s an example when I ran it myself for Brandwise. Luckily it only found a second domain name pointing to my own site.
Rick Roberge (Matt’s father) found a quick easy solution. As a 3rd party Rick posted on twitter something like: “Hey @slcbookkeeping did you see @xyz-company (name removed) plagiarized your content www.plagiarized-content.com”. This goes to show you the power of twitter… even though this person was not active on twitter, they got the message and quick. This person called Matt apologized, blamed the issue on their expensive web company and then instantly took their site down to figure things out. How do you think that conversation is going to go, if in fact the web company stole Matt’s content and then charged this bookkeeper for content development? Wow, I’d like to be a fly on the wall for that conversation. The site is now a godaddy parked page. Wow! Again, powerful stuff. Can I just say Twitter Rocks!
Ok so what do you do if you do not have a 3rd party to work twitter for you? Here are 4 articles I found that were very helpful for other tactics that I’d bet would work, but might not work as quickly as Rick’s technique.
Extensive, but lots of good info on the topic and ideas for connecting with content thief as well as google info: What Do You Do When Someone Steals Your Content
Same author, but focused on finding content thieves: Finding Stolen Content and Copyright Infringements
Brief and to the point some additional tips beyond #1: What to do When Someone Steals Your Blog’s Content – Blog Plagiarism
Good info on using offenders website host to deal with copyright issue: How to Protect Your Website’s Copyright When Someone Steals Your Content
As with any brand asset it is important to protect your content. Content is hard to write on an ongoing basis and so making sure you are not being plagiarized is important. I hope this article helps others figure out how to deal with plagiarism if it happens to them and also allows other to monitor their brand assets (web content) so they do not get blacklisted from google (or other search engines). Keep in mind if you do not want to manage this manually a few times a year, Copyscape also offers a paid version of their tool that monitors your site for you and sends you email updates if/when it finds content plagiarism happening. This tool is relatively cheap and might be worth looking into. With that, I’ll end this article and wish you the best as you manage your brand assets – good luck!
Dale – timely article. I found out today that I was plagiarized. I had a blog post that was picked up by Social Media Today and shared almost 2,000 times. I was doing keyword research today and found that a digital marketing agency wrote a blog with a slightly different title, re-produced 4 sentences word for word and basically changed a word or two in the other sentences. I furiously called up the owner, who apologized and told me that their young content editor did it without his knowledge. I may be getting played, but I believe him. He told me he was going to fire the person today. Everyone should follow your advice to see if they’re being plagiarized. Great article and timely.
Dale – timely article. I found out today that I was plagiarized. I had a blog post that was picked up by Social Media Today and shared almost 2,000 times. I was doing keyword research today and found that a digital marketing agency wrote a blog with a slightly different title, re-produced 4 sentences word for word and basically changed a word or two in the other sentences. I furiously called up the owner, who apologized and told me that their young content editor did it without his knowledge. I may be getting played, but I believe him. He told me he was going to fire the person today. Everyone should follow your advice to see if they’re being plagiarized. Great article and timely.
John, I’m really sorry to hear about this. It is frustrating as hell when you find someone ripping you off. I’m glad this article was timely and that it was helpful for you. Thanks for the RT too by the way!
John, I’m really sorry to hear about this. It is frustrating as hell when you find someone ripping you off. I’m glad this article was timely and that it was helpful for you. Thanks for the RT too by the way!
Unfortunately, there are cheats and thieves in the world and it’s illegal to shoot them. So, when I find one, I typically tell the world about them so that EVERYBODY will know that they are a cheat or a thief. In reality, I tweeted @wordpressdotcom because that’s where the site was hosted and @LinkedIn because 200+M users is a significant group. My advice to anyone that feels like a victim is Go Big or Go Home.
Unfortunately, there are cheats and thieves in the world and it’s illegal to shoot them. So, when I find one, I typically tell the world about them so that EVERYBODY will know that they are a cheat or a thief. In reality, I tweeted @wordpressdotcom because that’s where the site was hosted and @LinkedIn because 200+M users is a significant group. My advice to anyone that feels like a victim is Go Big or Go Home.
Great work Rick! Nice job getting this taken care of and fast. Go Big or Go Home!
Great work Rick! Nice job getting this taken care of and fast. Go Big or Go Home!
We were happy to see that Hubspot thought this article topic was so good that they wrote an article on this topic as well. They also put together a good slide deck on this topic. Get more tips at their site : Are People Stealing Your Content? How (and When) to Fight Back [SlideShare]
We were happy to see that Hubspot thought this article topic was so good that they wrote an article on this topic as well. They also put together a good slide deck on this topic. Get more tips at their site : Are People Stealing Your Content? How (and When) to Fight Back [SlideShare]
Hey Dale,
What strikes me is how pretty sophisticated folks like you and John and Matt just accidentally discovered plagiarism …
Now that you know about automatic monitoring to discover duplicate content before it hurts your SERPs, are you doing that?
I’d love to know if you guys think it’s worth investing in?
PS A blog post from my client on the topic:
http://info.icopyright.com/discovery-copyright-infringement-detection/plagiarism-detection-tools-how-to-fight-content-theft
Hey Dale,
What strikes me is how pretty sophisticated folks like you and John and Matt just accidentally discovered plagiarism …
Now that you know about automatic monitoring to discover duplicate content before it hurts your SERPs, are you doing that?
I’d love to know if you guys think it’s worth investing in?
PS A blog post from my client on the topic:
http://info.icopyright.com/discovery-copyright-infringement-detection/plagiarism-detection-tools-how-to-fight-content-theft