8 ms·

Are you actually losing any queries to this site or seeing a drop in your traffic? Google is very smart, they probably know your site is more trustworthy and h

by birken 13y ago

Are you actually losing any queries to this site or seeing a drop in your traffic? Google is very smart, they probably know your site is more trustworthy and had the content first. If the person is hosting a bunch of similarly crappy pages on the same IP and/or the same host, Google knows about it. Any suitably popular site is going to have all sorts of people ripping off your content. Google knows this, and work very hard to deal with it. I just searched for a bunch of things related to your site and the legitimate pages appears to be winning them all, and I don't even see the bad page showing up in the top 10. If the site is sapping traffic, file a DCMA against their hosting provider (though there are some shady web-hosts who won't do anything about it). Obviously if they are filing a DCMA request against you, defend yourself. But just because somebody is ripping off your content doesn't necessarily mean you need to do anything.

fchollet 13y ago
If Google could detect this behavior, wouldn't they kick the culprit out of AdSense?
- walshemj 13y ago
  Not always - they let doddgy "helper" sites that charge a fee for things available for free from government sites e.g. passport applications back in after they added some minor tiny text to their site. http://www.theguardian.com/money/2013/apr/15/passport-application-online-service-taken-ride http://www.theguardian.com/money/2013/apr/15/passport-applic...
  - walshemj 13y ago
    I see the google fanbois are out in force
- birken 13y ago
  Being able to be part of Adsense and ranking for search terms are completely different things. And even if everything were integrated, the bar for kicking somebody out of Adsense would be much higher than demoting somebody in the rankings. Kicking people out of Adsense also is much more permanent, because Google has all of the person's information so they can easily block future attempts to signup if they kick you out. The #1 thing Google is concerned about for search is webspam. The #1 thing they are concerned with for Adsense is click fraud. So in this situation, we probably have a) a site which gets little traffic because google search has detected it is webspam and b) a site which makes little money because it gets little traffic, and c) doesn't engage in click fraud. Therefore, it still is a member of Adsense, but gets no search traffic in google search.
- moultano 13y ago
  Ads and Search are kept very far apart from each other organizationally, so things that search knows about a site may not always get over the firewall to Ads. This is an unfortunate consequence of the sort of Church/State separation we've set up that is in most ways very beneficial.
  - blakeley 13y ago
    Purportedly, Google has recently started banning YouTube accounts that are associated through common linkage in Adsense to other YouTube accounts which were banned. So this firewall you mention is not as strong as it may have once been.
    - vdaniuk 13y ago
      Youtube doesnt belong organizationally to Search AFAIK.
dangoldin 13y ago
Based on the Google analytics the traffic's steady but who's to say that this won't happen in the future? I think the fact that this behavior is allowed to happen is the problem. Even if this adversely affects one real business it should be fixed. To note - my mom found out about this site when she received a note telling her she needs to pay close to a $1000 to license the photo that was ripped off from her site. Otherwise she wouldn't even have found out about this.
- jotm 13y ago
  Google is implementing a new (almost completely rewritten according to them) algorithm right now, but right now it's kind of easy to edit the timestamp and make GS believe that the copied content was posted first...
- gingerlime 13y ago
  > To note - my mom found out about this site when she received a note telling her she needs to pay close to a $1000 to license the photo that was ripped off from her site. To me this is smells like the real motive behind this. It's not about trashing your SEO, or stealing traffic, but rather to scare those small website owners into paying some kind of 'fee'. It's pretty safe to assume lots of small websites for local businesses use various photos they found online or downloaded from Google images, rather than their own content or images they bothered paying license for. Copying those images onto a seemingly legitimate site and then filing a claim for license payment seems like a pretty good strategy to milk money out of innocent site owners. I'd be curious to see the note your mum received and what kind of language or tactics it's using.
  - dangoldin 13y ago
    So I just dove into it and that notice was actually from Getty images which claimed she was using an unlicensed photo. When she asked which photo they replied with a photo from the rip-off site which she has no control over. Getty is actually responding correctly in this case but falsely targeting my mom since they assume it's her site. Now if only they can issue a DMCA notice to that other site..
- 13y ago

by birken 13y ago

fchollet 13y ago

If Google could detect this behavior, wouldn't they kick the culprit out of AdSense?

walshemj 13y ago
Not always - they let doddgy "helper" sites that charge a fee for things available for free from government sites e.g. passport applications back in after they added some minor tiny text to their site. http://www.theguardian.com/money/2013/apr/15/passport-application-online-service-taken-ride http://www.theguardian.com/money/2013/apr/15/passport-applic...
- walshemj 13y ago
  I see the google fanbois are out in force
birken 13y ago
Being able to be part of Adsense and ranking for search terms are completely different things. And even if everything were integrated, the bar for kicking somebody out of Adsense would be much higher than demoting somebody in the rankings. Kicking people out of Adsense also is much more permanent, because Google has all of the person's information so they can easily block future attempts to signup if they kick you out. The #1 thing Google is concerned about for search is webspam. The #1 thing they are concerned with for Adsense is click fraud. So in this situation, we probably have a) a site which gets little traffic because google search has detected it is webspam and b) a site which makes little money because it gets little traffic, and c) doesn't engage in click fraud. Therefore, it still is a member of Adsense, but gets no search traffic in google search.
moultano 13y ago
Ads and Search are kept very far apart from each other organizationally, so things that search knows about a site may not always get over the firewall to Ads. This is an unfortunate consequence of the sort of Church/State separation we've set up that is in most ways very beneficial.
- blakeley 13y ago
  Purportedly, Google has recently started banning YouTube accounts that are associated through common linkage in Adsense to other YouTube accounts which were banned. So this firewall you mention is not as strong as it may have once been.
  - vdaniuk 13y ago
    Youtube doesnt belong organizationally to Search AFAIK.

dangoldin 13y ago

Based on the Google analytics the traffic's steady but who's to say that this won't happen in the future? I think the fact that this behavior is allowed to happen is the problem. Even if this adversely affects one real business it should be fixed. To note - my mom found out about this site when she received a note telling her she needs to pay close to a $1000 to license the photo that was ripped off from her site. Otherwise she wouldn't even have found out about this.

jotm 13y ago
Google is implementing a new (almost completely rewritten according to them) algorithm right now, but right now it's kind of easy to edit the timestamp and make GS believe that the copied content was posted first...
gingerlime 13y ago
> To note - my mom found out about this site when she received a note telling her she needs to pay close to a $1000 to license the photo that was ripped off from her site. To me this is smells like the real motive behind this. It's not about trashing your SEO, or stealing traffic, but rather to scare those small website owners into paying some kind of 'fee'. It's pretty safe to assume lots of small websites for local businesses use various photos they found online or downloaded from Google images, rather than their own content or images they bothered paying license for. Copying those images onto a seemingly legitimate site and then filing a claim for license payment seems like a pretty good strategy to milk money out of innocent site owners. I'd be curious to see the note your mum received and what kind of language or tactics it's using.
- dangoldin 13y ago
  So I just dove into it and that notice was actually from Getty images which claimed she was using an unlicensed photo. When she asked which photo they replied with a photo from the rip-off site which she has no control over. Getty is actually responding correctly in this case but falsely targeting my mom since they assume it's her site. Now if only they can issue a DMCA notice to that other site..
13y ago