POS Site Copied Content Verbatim, Now Ranking Higher

[Darth]

So someone has copied certain old high-performing content of mine completely and is now ranking higher than me. This has been happening for like 6 months since I first noticed them in the serps.

Only thing I can see in SEMRush are spammed blog comments and forum posts with exact match anchor text. A few thousands of them. Like WTF GOOGLE!?

What's the best way to get them kicked out of the serps? If they were beating me with their own content like this, fine. That's the game. But literally copying and pasting my own words? Too far...

Only issue is the content (some text and a large table) is old content of mine (exact text I wrote) from a few years ago. I have since tweaked my content so it's now not an exact match.

This a real POS site compared to mine. Eg contact, about, etc all "/#". Template is garbage. Very bad. Not sure why Google is ranking it so highly at all!! Frustrating as hell though.

 

[Ryuzaki]

Take screen shots of their content, go to the Wayback Machine and get screen shots of your old content, then write an official sounding letter about infringement and damages, and shoot off a DMCA takedown notice to their hosting provider. If the hosting provider doesn't act, contact the registrar after that.

I don't recommend using any spam methods to try and tank them. You don't want to plant that kind of seed in their head when it comes to retaliation. They likely intend to burn their site with spam over time or wait it out until they get taken down, and just walk away. You probably aren't the only site they're doing this to. It's probably a numbers game and they expect to lose some sites.

 

[Darth]

Thanks @Ryuzaki yep no way in hell am/was I gonna try spam them. Not my thing and yep, don't want any retaliation or blowback.

Wouldn't the hosting provider possibly provide my details and site to them though, possibly causing retaliation that way? I'm assuming these guys have no ethics. Is there no form or way to contact Google about it?

 

[Ryuzaki]

My understanding is that these notices are typically private, and only allowed to be private because the infringements are verified by a 3rd party.

I had thought you could only have Google take results out of the SERPs after you already had the host take it down. You could request them to clear their cache of the pages and stop serving them in the SERPs. I guess that was the old way. I found a more updated method here that lets you directly file with Google:

https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/dmca-notice?pli=1

You'll have to be logged into your Google account before you can access that page.

I'm the least knowledgable about any of this, but I've read that your written work online is protected under copyright law as soon as you publish it, because it is an "original work of authorship" on a "fixed and tangible medium of expression."

You're right though. I'd go straight to Google before I went to the hosting company. Especially if they keep your information private. The bad guys will have to be told what exactly is infringing and can probably figure out who you are. But if you keep yourself as invisible as possible in the process, they're far less likely to retaliate and more likely to simply move to the next hit or focus on their current other scams.

Although, there is the path of asking the stealers to take your content down first. In some cases I could imagine they might. In other cases I'd imagine them deleting your email immediately and this building up anger before you have Google take them down.

How big is this site that they have ranking?

 

[Darth]

How big is this site that they have ranking?

About 20 pages. Their key content is the pages they stole from me (around 5) and then it appears they have scrapped YT videos into their own player for the remaining pages