Content Theft's Effect on Rankings and Preventative Measures
Page last updated on 2011 / 12 / 08A current discussion at Webmasterworld is looking at how content theft is affecting various site owners, to their detriment and usually to the benefit of the content thief.
The discussion, entitled Scraped content ranking higher than the original source looks at how hardened content scrapers are stealing unique content to place on their own sites, which can sometimes result in the original content (and owner's) site ranking substantially lower in search engines, hurting revenue and visibility.
This is because search engine's try to eliminate 'duplicate content', the same content in the top results for a query is of limited use to the user.
Some posts in the discussions go into detail about some preventative measures that can be done to protect your hard work and content from thieves.
The major problem, it seems, is that Google, or any other search engine has to find your unique content first in order to be able to understand that you are the original owner of the work, and any subsequent findings of the content is 'duplicate'. Falling short of spidering new content instantly and having a copy of the entire Internet at any one time, this problem will long continue and is a subject well worth being aware of as an owner of a website who puts time into writing quality content for their visitors.
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