Google Clampdown on Websites That Steal Articles

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   PaulGoodman67posted 13 months ago

   This sounds like good news. I read about it on SE Roundtable. Websites that have lots of DMCA notices are getting hit harder. Some of the tricks they use are also being countered.
   
   Google: "Demotion of Websites That Receive A Large Volume of Notices. We have developed a "demotion signal" for Google Search that causes sites for which we have received a large number of valid removal notices to appear much lower in search results. We have also made it much harder for infringing sites to evade demotion by redirecting people to a new domain. Finally, we have added a "still-in-theaters/prerelease" flag for DMCA notices involving this category of content to enhance the Search demotion signal. When a site is demoted, the traffic Google Search sends it drops, on average, by 89% on average."
   
   Here's link to the full SE Roundtable news article

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      alexadryposted 13 months agoin reply to this

      This is great news! I hope Google also targets those who re-word our articles paragraph by paragraph, parroting our whole content without giving any credit or attribution to us doing all the hard work!

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      Miebakagh57posted 13 months agoin reply to this

      Its good news indeed. Thefts of our contents mill have a hard time and will suffer harder. I'm so happy. Thanks  Paul Goodman for informing us.

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      bravewarriorposted 13 months agoin reply to this

      Great news, Paul. Thanks for the info!

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      OldRosesposted 13 months agoin reply to this

      This is a baby step.  Unfortunately, the sites are allowed to remain and be discoverable in searches.  This is still stealing from the original authors, both in terms of money and clicks. 
      
      I'm having a terrible time getting Google, who owns Blogger, to take down pages from Blogger that are copied and pasted from my copyrighted articles.  Google acknowledges my DMCA complaints, but never removes the pages.  Now I know why. 
      
      It's still theft of intellectual property and still wrong.  Google needs to do more than demote copied articles.

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         Miebakagh57posted 13 months agoin reply to this

         I now realized that the 'baby step' could not do us any good. Google should take the whole thing down.

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         SuperBrainsposted 13 months agoin reply to this

         I don't think that protecting writers has ever been a high priority for Google. If the piracy affected Google's profits directly, more serious action would have been taken years ago. The reality is that they're generally half-assed, unfortunately.

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            OldRosesposted 13 months agoin reply to this

            I agree.  I was just venting.

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               Miebakagh57posted 13 months agoin reply to this

               That talk sense to me.

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      erorantesposted 13 months agoin reply to this

      Hello mister Paul.It is an excellent news. My T Mobil stop working for a few minutes. I could not make any phone calls. Only an emergency phone call. Luckily, I had the SIM card when Sprint and T mobil emerged together. So I made a phone call from a land line number. I spend at least an hour to fix it with the technician. The lady was so knowledgeable. I check my iPod. I saw a note that 111 times someone was trying to still my articles; but that the iPod security protection stop it. It is a good idea to security our devices. Honestly, it shows in records who takes them if we search. You have a good day. Thank you for the news.

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      jansharesposted 13 months agoin reply to this

      Thanks, Paul. It's about time.

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         Miebakagh57posted 13 months agoin reply to this

         Let's and see. If Google sweep off these thefty websites omlina, we writers are a happy folk.

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   bhattucposted 13 months ago

   I think this is a good step by Google.

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   Jodahposted 13 months ago

   Excellent news! Thank you for sharing this, Paul.

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   Dean Traylorposted 13 months ago

   Sounds good. I have one site that lifted four articles. I've been having an extremely hard time getting them to remove these articles. The site is one of those "essay" services (if if one of those articles stolen was a short story), which supply essays for college students to use in their classes. They are trying to sell them for $10. Hopefully, this new revelation will put a dint in their operation.

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      Miebakagh57posted 13 months agoin reply to this

      Let your prayer be answer.

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      bravewarriorposted 13 months agoin reply to this

      That site stole one of my short stories, too, Dean. I reached out to them and asked them to take it down. They said they would, but it's still there!

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         Dean Traylorposted 13 months agoin reply to this

         By any chance was it writemyessay.nyc?

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      eugbugposted 13 months agoin reply to this

      Maybe shame them on social media. That sometimes works.

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         bravewarriorposted 13 months agoin reply to this

         I'm not very active on social media, Eugene, but thanks for the idea!

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         Dean Traylorposted 13 months agoin reply to this

         In a way I did in my last article (about plagiarism). Also, did that to someone who took a story of mine and made it his own on his blog (even writing a bio about how he "came up with the story"). It became the topic of another Hub. Thankfully, his entire site was taken down.

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   Ben716posted 13 months ago

   That's welcoming and somehow comforting. But, I don't think Google can ever remove such sites from being listed on their search engine.
   
   They should warn the sites of infringing with serious consequence of removing their site from appearing on their search engine. This would be a step forward.
   
   I tend to contact hosting companies since they don't want to tarnish their name by hosting sites that steal writers' content. It has always worked in my case as I'm now dealing with another site that has copied roughly the whole of my article without attributing the writer of the content.

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      PaulGoodman67posted 13 months agoin reply to this

      Google can get rid of articles by de-indexing them, but more often it chooses to sink them in the search engine rankings. If something doesn't appear on the first few pages of a search, it's as good as dead.
      
      I agree that contacting the hosting companies isn't a bad tactic for writers combatting piracy, it's just very time consuming if you have a lot of articles and sometimes they want you to prove ownership of articles.
      
      It's much easier if Google just takes direct action. They are a huge tech company with much more power and greater capabilities than individual writers. Ideally, we shouldn't be expected to do anything other than write, especially when it's pirates exploiting Google's weaknesses.
      
      That's not the reality, though! I welcome any improvement, however small.

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         Miebakagh57posted 13 months agoin reply to this

         Paul, I'm completely, with you in that.

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