Help ! I have a Panda Penalty

[JimFranco]

Help,
I have a Panda penalty for duplicate content and the people who stole my content ranks number 3 for house cleaning atlanta . while my site suffers.

how do I go about shutting that site down.

is there a way for google to see who wrote the content originally ?

 

[Linda Buquet]

Find out who the host is and send a DMCA complaint.
.

 

[JimFranco]

They removed the content but others have stole my content too. How much do I have to rewrite my page ? It seems like everyone stole some or all of my site.

I have to rewrite it , but how much so. I know the words have to be different but how much the structure. I took a long time to write it and had this content for quite awhile but I see now its all over the web now.

Sigh what should I do ?

how can I prevent this and how come Google penalized me ?

 

[valesence]

I experienced this on my own site. A local competitor copied and pasted content, including typos. I notified google of the copied content with screenshots and they de-indexed the offending pages. Use copyscape to find offenders and when their pages are de-indexed you shouldn't have a penalty. I would be careful to make sure that is the reason for the penalty. I never received one when it happened to me.

 

[JimFranco]

When I looked to contact Google they said , I had to do it through their hosting and they did not remove content or something. how did you do it ?

I was looking at my analytics and looking at Panda updates and huge drop on a Panda update. Not only did this one website copy my work , there is seriously like a hundred others . sigh


what should I do ?

 

[James Watt]

Not sure about getting the spammer's content taken down, but you should read experiment 4 on this article. The basic idea is that Google will show whichever duplicate has the best rankings. You see this a lot in the news industry, where you've got a hundred syndications all publishing the same few paragraphs. Google ranks the one that's got the best page rank and settles it with that.

I know it's frustrating to have your content stolen, and hopefully you'll be able to level that playing field and get them to take it down, but in the mean time if you do some backlink building and SEO work, you'll start ranking and they'll be the ones getting the duplicate content penalty.

 

[JimFranco]

GOOGLE IS CRAZY.

They refused to take down my content from the offenders Google Plus page. What in the world they stole my content almost word for word.

my website is mightycleanhome at the .com


the offenders Google Plus page is

https://plus.google.com/+LisasNaturalHomeCleaningServiceSmyrna/about



they had all this content on their homepage too. Now they had someone spin the context but still there

But why would google not take any action , while the content is clearly mine !!! ???????

 

[JoyHawkins]

Have you tried posting in the Webmaster Central forum to see if the issue can be escalated at all? I'm not 100% sure if they can do anything about it.

 

[JimFranco]

Legally they are suppose to take down copyrighted infringement context

 

[Marie Haynes]

Panda is actually not really about duplicate content. If someone scrapes your website and republishes data from it, that really should not harm you.

John Mueller has said before that if your site is ranking below someone who has scraped your site, then it's because your site has issues that are pulling it down. A Panda suppressed site can be outranked by scrapers.

Here is more information on Panda and duplicate content:

https://moz.com/blog/have-we-been-wrong-about-panda-all-along

It's never nice to see someone ranking well with your content and I agree that you should file a DMCA to see if you can get it taken down. You could also consider having an attorney contact them as well. That may accomplish things faster.

I seem to recall that we reviewed your site before (I could be wrong on that though) and it was a different design.And, I seem to recall that that site had a number of significant issues. If the old site was affected by Panda, it will take some time for Panda to reassess the new site and see that it is now high quality and remove the Panda filter that is hindering you. Unfortunately at this point we don't know how often Panda is re-running. But, you may find that at some point weeks or months from now you suddenly lose the Panda filter and are able to rank well again.

 

[Eric Rohrback]

Technically there is no "panda penalty" nor is there any such thing as an "algorithmic penalty." I wanted to point that out in this thread. I think everyone' else's suggestions on how to take down the offending content is great advice, so I don't have much to add when it comes to the strategy.

Basically what you need to do is prove you posted yours first. I ran Lisa's Natural's homepage through copyscape and it came back clean. Can you give a few specific examples what you're seeing?

 

[JimFranco]

I did I thought have some backlink issues but I am not sure now. I thought I might have a Google Penguin penalty on top of this issue. I do still rank on the first page and in the three pack for my main keywords / local town. So I am not sure if that would be a Penguin Issue.

I ran my site through one of them analytics sites to compare when Panda was updated and when my page rankings dropped and every time there was a Panda Update in 2012 ( this time line around 2011 that my content was originally stolen it appears)my site tanked again and again. Only issue I would think I had would be from duplicate content . My content is not thin or copied (other than people copying), not over optimized or anything as seen from someone ranking in the major city near me (atlanta)

Here is the screenshot from the tool. I used , is it a Panda Penalty ? What do you guys think ?

 

[Eric Rohrback]

There is no PANDA PENALTY. That doesn't exist. When Google updates their ranking algorithm it's a shuffle of input data they're using. It doesn't mean you got penalized, that's just your perception of change. Just because those events may be correlated, doesn't mean it's a penalty that caused it.

Panda is an algorithm adjustment used to filter low value content. What the drop implies is that Google (and the users who contributed data) finds the site content less valuable than the sites ahead of it. My recommendation is to re-evaluate the usefulness of the content and rewrite where necessary.

Even though someone's tool tries to show you've been hit with a "penalty" it doesn't mean it's necessarily correct. Keep in mind those are big money makers for those companies (even if not directly). If you don't have a manual penalty, then it's not a penalty. Do some competitive analysis and see what high ranking competitors are doing, and objectively compare to your site. My bet is they're doing something users like a lot more than your site. Dig into that and find some solid opportunity gaps that you can bridge.

 

[DanLeibson]

There is no PANDA PENALTY. That doesn't exist. When Google updates their ranking algorithm it's a shuffle of input data they're using. It doesn't mean you got penalized, that's just your perception of change. Just because those events may be correlated, doesn't mean it's a penalty that caused it.

Panda is an algorithm adjustment used to filter low value content. What the drop implies is that Google (and the users who contributed data) finds the site content less valuable than the sites ahead of it. My recommendation is to re-evaluate the usefulness of the content and rewrite where necessary.

While I love everything you are saying (keep on fighting the good fight), the real problem is the SEO blogosphere that keeps referring to these as penalties versus "turning down the dial" on the success of a given tactic

 

[JimFranco]

There is no PANDA PENALTY. That doesn't exist. When Google updates their ranking algorithm it's a shuffle of input data they're using. It doesn't mean you got penalized, that's just your perception of change. Just because those events may be correlated, doesn't mean it's a penalty that caused it.

Panda is an algorithm adjustment used to filter low value content. What the drop implies is that Google (and the users who contributed data) finds the site content less valuable than the sites ahead of it. My recommendation is to re-evaluate the usefulness of the content and rewrite where necessary.

Even though someone's tool tries to show you've been hit with a "penalty" it doesn't mean it's necessarily correct. Keep in mind those are big money makers for those companies (even if not directly). If you don't have a manual penalty, then it's not a penalty. Do some competitive analysis and see what high ranking competitors are doing, and objectively compare to your site. My bet is they're doing something users like a lot more than your site. Dig into that and find some solid opportunity gaps that you can bridge.

But, the issue is my high ranking competitor stole my entire content of my site and sits in the top of Google serps rank 3 and I am thrown to page 4 .

So penalty or filter it is still a penalty of sorts for your site is being penalized and rank lowered for thin or duplicate content is it not ?

My content must be good enough to rank number 3 for house cleaning Atlanta , if my competitor has stolen all my content and put in on their page and have that rank .

 

[Eric Rohrback]

While I love everything you are saying (keep on fight the good fight), the real problem is the SEO blogosphere that keeps referring to these as penalties versus "turning down the dial" on the success of a given tactic

It's hard to fight against the volume of mis-information, but that doesn't mean I'll stop trying to debate my position More and more i'm tuning out SEO blogs in favor of reading the patents myself to understand the intention. As always... test test and test again

 

[Eric Rohrback]

But, the issue is my high ranking competitor stole my entire content of my site and sits in the top of Google serps rank 3 and I am thrown to page 4 .

So penalty or filter it is still a penalty of sorts for your site is being penalized and rank lowered for thin or duplicate content is it not ?

My content must be good enough to rank number 3 for house cleaning Atlanta , if my competitor has stolen all my content and put in on their page and have that rank .

This may go back to what I mentioned earlier where this your perception of a penalty, because you have been cheated by a competitor. The previous comments of a copyright infringement/takedown request would be very acceptable in this situation. Google's ranking algorithm believes (I use that word loosely) that your site contains the exact same info as the competitor. If that's the case, they may use other UX metrics to determine which page users find more useful. If the content is equal, then you won't win with a poorer page experience.

I think the previous advice from other members has been excellent, and definitely recommend reviewing takedown notices to help resolve this. While you do that, take a close look at UX metrics like time on site, CTR from the SERP (check search console for a rough estimate), pages per visit, etc. Take a look at design changes and how they affected the site, and check over your conversion paths.

I ran lisas natural dot com through copyscape and came up empty. Do you have a few examples that could show the dupe content? Maybe copyscape missed it?

 

[JimFranco]

This may go back to what I mentioned earlier where this your perception of a penalty, because you have been cheated by a competitor. The previous comments of a copyright infringement/takedown request would be very acceptable in this situation. Google's ranking algorithm believes (I use that word loosely) that your site contains the exact same info as the competitor. If that's the case, they may use other UX metrics to determine which page users find more useful. If the content is equal, then you won't win with a poorer page experience.

I think the previous advice from other members has been excellent, and definitely recommend reviewing takedown notices to help resolve this. While you do that, take a close look at UX metrics like time on site, CTR from the SERP (check search console for a rough estimate), pages per visit, etc. Take a look at design changes and how they affected the site, and check over your conversion paths.

I ran lisas natural dot com through copyscape and came up empty. Do you have a few examples that could show the dupe content? Maybe copyscape missed it?

I called them today and they removed my content. But they actually kept it and just spun the context so it does not show up now on copyscape.

But on their Google Plus page it has all my context still on there and it is exactly what it showed on their page yesterday. example https://plus.google.com/+LisasNaturalHomeCleaningServiceSmyrna/about`

on other pages such as FAQs they still have it completely exactly as my context How It Works |


they did not steal one page they stole my entire site!

 

[Eric Rohrback]

Fair point, but those pages are also very similar to Frequently Asked Questions

Out of those three I couldn't tell which had the original content. From an aesthetic view I think Lisa's Natural is a little better formatted, because it separates the question from the answer nicely with bold styling.

I ran a few of their pages through copyscape and it came back mostly clean. I think you're looking at the wrong factors for the ranking drop. Yes content may be a part, but you might be missing on some important user experience factors. What is the bounce rate, time on site, pages per visit, CTR from the SERPs (check search console for estimate) etc... etc...

I feel like there's more to this than just a few stolen paragraphs. Dig into the site analytics and let us know what you find.

 

[JimFranco]

Fair point, but those pages are also very similar to Frequently Asked Questions

Out of those three I couldn't tell which had the original content. From an aesthetic view I think Lisa's Natural is a little better formatted, because it separates the question from the answer nicely with bold styling.

I ran a few of their pages through copyscape and it came back mostly clean. I think you're looking at the wrong factors for the ranking drop. Yes content may be a part, but you might be missing on some important user experience factors. What is the bounce rate, time on site, pages per visit, CTR from the SERPs (check search console for estimate) etc... etc...

I feel like there's more to this than just a few stolen paragraphs. Dig into the site analytics and let us know what you find.

It was more than a few paragraphs it was my whole site. not only that they still have my entire context in their google plus page. and bits of it all over the web at different citation sites. ( I think this is how Google saw their page as the original content. They put parts of the context copy on a bunch of citation sites , etc and then pointed it back to their domain. I believe that gave them authority over the context.)

The kicker is that this is still on their google plus page and Google would not removed it , said they wont take action like my claim is invalid even though I showed that this content was up on my site through the web archive in 2008 and their site did not have it till 2011 / 2012