Do DMCA Take Downs Help Your Rankings / Traffic?

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   quotationsposted 5 years ago

   I have had about 5 of my hubs stolen. They have been shamelessly republished on over 5 sites (some hubs were stolen by more than one).
   
   They look to be low quality sites, so I don't think that they are making a lot of money off of my work. I am not sure if it is worthwhile to file DMCA complaints. The bad guys are doing this as a business model and look to be foreign, mainly India, so I doubt they will care. If they don't take down I would have to pursue their listings on Google, etc.
   
   My question to you is this: does the existence of this copied article hurt my traffic and rankings. I know that Google has methods of telling which article is the original, but what if I update my hub and theirs then becomes the older, "original" article. Are they likely to be taking traffic away from me?
   
   I guess my question is whether the effort to fight these pirates is worth it.
   
   Has anyone gotten pirated content taken down and then noticed a rise in traffic to their stolen hub?

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      chef-de-jourposted 5 years agoin reply to this

      I always try and get a copied article taken down - email first, threatening email second, whois third, DMCA last. Currently I have no copied articles. I see it as a duty to at least try and stop the cheats.

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   2. 69

      Miebakagh57posted 5 years agoin reply to this

      Hello, Quotations, I am yet to experience this. I felt for your loss. I hope those who have gone through this scenario will help you out. Thanks for sharing.

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      1. 87

         quotationsposted 5 years agoin reply to this

         Thanks for your kind words.

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            Miebakagh57posted 5 years agoin reply to this

            Hi, quotation, I appreciated it. It's okay.

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   Wesman Todd Shawposted 5 years ago

   They are never going to update the copy. They don't know anything about the subject. Google used to do a takedown for my complaints so fast it would make my head spin. Last time I filed complaints, they did nothing at all.
   
   What's just funny to me is how sometimes very weak articles get stolen. Other times I see them stolen, and people put my name at the top of the thing, as they are more or less trying to do 'the right thing.' It's kind of a case by case basis, whether or not I'm going to do anything about it. Usually I don't.

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   1. 87

      quotationsposted 5 years agoin reply to this

      > Other times I see them stolen, and people put my name at the top of the thing, as they are more or less trying to do 'the right thing.'
      
      I also have some hubs where people have quoted large sections (far more than allowable as fair use) but at least they gave a link back to the original. I'm not even upset about these. The ones that really annoy me is where they quote the entire article, sometimes with the pictures, and don't give me any credit. In one case, they even have someone else from their site listed at the author.

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3. 95

   DrMark1961posted 5 years ago

   I have had the majority of my articles copied, and as far as I can tell it does not matter much to traffic or ranking. The only time I do notice and bother to report it is when a Youtuber copies my hub and then reads along with photos. I followed an article last year that was copied the first week by Youtube, and when I had about 100 page views his video (of my text) had about 1000 views.
   In that case I had it taken down. I will look at the others but they are usually Russian sites (that will not take it down) and have no Google ads on them so I do not report it to Google.
   I have had some health articles copied to blogs from the US but they are usually meant to help a certain dog breed so I do not try to have them taken down. If I check anonymously the copies of my articles are never rated higher than my own original, so it appears the people at the search engines know.

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   ThelmaCposted 5 years ago

   Dr. Mark your articles are so informative and you put a lot of work into them.  It makes me so disgusted the majority of them have been copied and people are taking advantage of your knowledge of your niche. I'm glad to know it hasn't hurt your ranking of them on Google.

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      DrMark1961posted 5 years agoin reply to this

      Thank you so much. At times I do get frustrated seeing those "this article has been copied" marks on my account page but...

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