[Life] - Fighting with unauthorized copies of your content

Posted on Edited on In Disqus:

Last Friday, while looking through the stats from my blog, I notice something strange. A hyperlink that lead to my blog is not “right”. I clicked on that link (a web search result page actually), a search tool appeared with my original post listed as page 2. Curios, I click on page 1 of the search result, and voila, some sites with tricky SEO technique take the few first result.

The point is, they are copying content from my blog, without my authorization. It’s time to tackle this problem.

1. Search for all other sites

I thought this would be easy. Turn out it the most difficult step to take. The violated sites are managed by ‘master’ of Search Engine Optimization. They know how to optimize their site for better place in Google search result. They also know how to change your post just a little bit to deceive the Google algorithm to find duplication.

  1. Search for the title. This search is easy. Copy your post title (maybe you have to remove all the special character like [] or {}). Sometime, when your title is written in English, you can translate it to your mother tongue language.
  2. Search for a sentence. Choose short sentence with your writing style that cannot be meet elsewhere is the best option. A short sentence for this search to work would have more than 10 or 15 words.
  3. Search by Image. This is the last search that I have made. The result is not useful but try anyway.

2. Is the site tolerable?

In Vietnam, it’s a tacit agreement when you copy the whole post published by someone else, then re-post it on your site and have a link back to the original content (at the end or beginning of the post). I know this is not legal in many countries. Instead, you are only allowed to “quote” a segment, a sentence from that original post with appropriate citing.

That’s why your next job is to determine that the violated site worthy to use your hard work and research, time and money for free.

I suggest no.

3. File a DMCA report

This will be the easiest step. You will need your Google account, and

  • Link to your original content.
  • Link to violated content (must be a link to specific post)
  • Time

Go to Google Legal page and select accordingly

Click this link

The result should look like this

result

4. What happened after a link is approved

The certain outcome is that the link will be removed from Google search result (including all other search tool using Google search engine).

Another possible outcome is that the violated site (with enough DMCA report), will be remove completely from google search result.

Cheers :D