3 replies to this topic

[rolf]

I've been searching for our company name and found a result in G with the headline of one of our articles and a snippet saying 'this article was first published by' and the company name.

On clicking through I get a 404 with a link to their home page, which has a very prominent post on the same subject containing links to their own company's commerce site.

Checking the cache in G shows the full article with all our links disabled

The blog post is dated 4/09/09 on the page and there is a comment dated 22/09/09 and the cache date is 24/09/09

It's entirely possible, of course, that they used our article, saw some interest, wrote their own and removed ours, but is there any way to tell exactly what's going on and if they're cloaking? The removal of our links is what really sets alarm bells going and makes me think this is not entirely innocent.

[Jill]

There's a firefox extension where you can switch user agents. Try viewing it as Googlebot.

It's likely just the usual scraper crap.

[rolf]

Hmm, seems you're right Jill, just some scraper stuff going on serving up the same c**p to G as to everyone else. Thanks for the tip.

[Michael Martinez]

Some scraper sites will respond to DMCA takedown notices, especially if you spell out in tedious detail how you will out their network to their advertisers and everyone else on the Web.

Usually works for me.

Then again ... I am me.