My Site's Been Penalised For Dupe Content, But I Didn't Do It. Suggestions?

[KirstyM]

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I don't know if this is a temporary blip or what, but my lovely new mens undies site's organic traffic has drained away over the last 4 days with referrals dropping 90%. Lots of rankings have vanished and I wasn't sure why as I've worked really hard to make sure nothing went wrong this time.

URL Designer Mens Underwear : Boxers Strings & Briefs : Blokes Undies

However, i've just done a search on one of my vanished terms....

"D&G Maxi Logo Boxer Shorts" - Google Search

Looks like my content has been ripped off and duplicated multiple times over loads of sites.

In addition to this, something really, really weird is showing up in the SERPS when I make a search on my individual blog post names. For example: -

"Blue Boxer Shorts By Frank Dandy - Vibrant Mens Underwear" - Google Search

The post title is showing up as being on multiple pages of the site... when its not and never has been. Actually, I have just checked and when you search on a snippet of text from most posts they show up on multiple site pages. I've noticed a few wee funnies like this with Google recently, such as when the entire text of a post that was only featured on the home page in snippet form, was credited in its entirety to the home page. This happened as soon as I posted my newly crafted content.

I can't check the file caches on the site as I'd accidently checked the "nocache" option on my robots plugin (click happy McCubbin strikes again!).

This is really frustrating as I've gone to a fair bit of trouble to try and ensure I don't have dupe content on my site. I'm assuming it might well be something I've done accidently (its too easy to instantly blame the big bad Google wolf isn't it?).

*sigh*

Any insights would be greatfully received :td

*Just like to add, that I keep on seeing a lot of my content being indexed by this new glue.yahoo.com service. Also... take a look at this page....

FeedAgg.com | Feed | Ladies Pajamas news

About half way down there's nothing but content from my sites and they've replaced the links that'd usually reference my site with their own.

[aaclapham]

Are they picking the info up from your rss feed - perhaps shorten it.

I get the odd site ripping my content, but never multiple sites like that.

[KirstyM]

Good point Andrew. Been thinking there might be something I can do with my feeds (on all my sites) to prevent this kind of problem in future. I imagine they did get the content via my feeds.

I've never seen the like either actually. Mind you, they're not ranking for any of the content they've ripped without quotation marks. Shame they've taken my site down with them!

I'm wondering if this situation might be a combo of the funny indexing of content on my site and also the ripped content.

[getvisible]

Can't see http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools on there. That should highlight any issues with internal duplicaton, crawl amount etc. I'd defo do that first!!

I've also seen loads of listings on glue.yahoo.com so am definitely keeping an eye out for that.

Often having high PR will help break the duplication issues from other sites. What was it before the problems started? How old is the site?

I can see some snippets just attributed to your site. So I'd try and get GWT loaded on, get some more links from your mates, get the RSS feed to produce less content and then get seriously jiggy with some new content and monitor how that's being used.

[Brendon]

Hmmm, looks like there's some wierd DNS jack stuff going on there. The search results are allowing clickthroughs from Google, but return a 503 via direct nav - must be the server picking up referred_by, and showing content based on that. Really odd. Very clever though

[Dynamoo]

Report the other results as spam (because they are): http://www.google.co.uk/contact/spamreport.html

I'm guessing that your site has been scraped, blocking access to your site from 64.15.79.64 - 64.15.79.79 might help prevent it (these are the IP ranges associates with the spam).

What those results are a a VERY well hidden CJ affiliate link to raffaello-network.com. The SERPs spammer has gone to some considerable length to prevent analysis, but this is roughly what happens when you click on one of the spam links:

howtotiemicrobraids.dynalias.net/dolce-gabbana-mens-underwear.php ->
www.jdoqocy.com/click-3344049-10273877?url=[snip] ->
www.apmebf.com/ft79gv32L/[snip] ->
www.commission-junction.com/7h104birqA/ipu[snip] ->
www.raffaello-network.com/raffties/detail.php?itemid=71983&rangeid=151&AID=10273877&P ID=3344049

I can't remember enough about CJ to sell you if the affiliate ID is 3344049 or 10273877.

It may well be that the merchant or network might take exception to these practices. I've attached the log to this post in case you want to complain to them.

[KirstyM]

Can't see http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools on there. That should highlight any issues with internal duplicaton, crawl amount etc. I'd defo do that first!!

I've also seen loads of listings on glue.yahoo.com so am definitely keeping an eye out for that.

Often having high PR will help break the duplication issues from other sites. What was it before the problems started? How old is the site?

I can see some snippets just attributed to your site. So I'd try and get GWT loaded on, get some more links from your mates, get the RSS feed to produce less content and then get seriously jiggy with some new content and monitor how that's being used.

Thanks Lee, the first thing I did was check webmasters tools and its the only site I've ever done to date where absolutely no errors were reported, lol. The frustrating thing is I've gone to considerable lengths to prevent duplicate content.

It's a brand new site, so the PR hasn't been penalised... just none has turned up yet!

I still don't know why content that is not on my site pages is being attributed to them? I put two new posts up yesterday and the entirety of the text in them is being indexed by Google on the home page when I have my theme set to only display the first 150 words. I'm sure this is also causing an issue, as many of my posts seem to be indexed on many pages of the site that they're not even on as a related post. That might actually be a bigger issue than the ripped content.

Dynamoo, thankyou so much for that info it is much appreciated.

Seems I'm in for an interesting day!

[purple]

I still don't know why content that is not on my site pages is being attributed to them? I put two new posts up yesterday and the entirety of the text in them is being indexed by Google on the home page when I have my theme set to only display the first 150 words. I'm sure this is also causing an issue, as many of my posts seem to be indexed on many pages of the site that they're not even on as a related post. That might actually be a bigger issue than the ripped content.

!

I have had a similar proble, with google indexing the home page, and the whole post appearing in serp queries for home page, when only a excerpt is shown on home page, its very odd, most of time google settles down and listing the single post. I have no answer just saying i have had similar happen.

[KirstyM]

Well, its good to know I'm not unique.. I've been racking my brains to try and work out what I might be doing differently with this site to cause it to happen. But perhaps the answer is nothing!

Very frustrating is this as the site has really been the focus of a LOT of work these last 8 weeks and it all just seemed to be getting off the ground nicely.

It may be it will all sort itself out as Google realises which site is spam and which is not. Fingers crossed!

[Dynamoo]

It may be it will all sort itself out as Google realises which site is spam and which is not. Fingers crossed!

Seriously, file a spam report. Don't wait for Google to work it out, sometimes it won't.

[KirstyM]

LOL, don't worry I will file a report. Actually I did one yesterday, do you think I only need to do one example or should I do more than that?

[Brendon]

Reports from within Webmaster Tools get a higher priority, just so's you know

[KirstyM]

Cheers Brendon, didn't know that. Might submit another one today just to cover it.

I'm totally bewildered about the issue with the wrong content being indexed on wrong pages still. Can't find anyone talking about it online.

It's never dull is it? Time for a cuppa and a quick gibber under my office desk I reckon!!

[cashchampion]

Hi Kirsty,

Sorry to hijack your thread, but it seems that most of the seo guru's are here.

I have a site (about 2 months old) and been ranking nicely. Traffic was up and up consistently.
Then 2 days ago I stopped ranking for my core terms and even some unique ones where I was number 1.
All pages are till indexed.
The site has only unique content (blog format).
I did buy 1 link a few weeks ago (just 1) and am thinking this could be it.

Webmaster tools says nothing is wrong?

Any ideas?

Thanks (and sorry again Kirsty for the hijack).

Marc

[Brendon]

1 paid link is unlikely to kill the site (there are a very few exceptions, "silver bullet" sites that kill what they touch, but thats rare). Most likely it's just to do with the site being so new, and it's rankings therefore being a bit unstable. Leave it a week before assuming anything is actually wrong

Kirsty, there's some wierd DNS jack / scraping stuff going on that I don't immediately understand, and haven't investigated nearly as much as Dynamoo did. When peeps are back from NY, I might well ask someone to look it over, because whilst I obviously disapprove of spam like this *ahem*, it intrigues me