What to Do When Someone Steals Your Content

Content theft is something that almost all content creators will come across at some point or another. Whether you’re creating content for a client or for your own blog, if you find that your content has been stolen, then it’s important to take the correct steps to make sure that the issue is dealt with accordingly. In this article, we’ll be showing you what to do should you find that someone is stealing your content, from contacting the owner of the site to naming and shaming.

Use ‘Who is Hosting This?’

Go to ‘Who is Hosting This?’ and type in the URl of the site that has stolen your content. These types of websites can be quite efficient in removing duplicate content, especially when compared to website owners and even, in some cases, Google. Instead of taking down individual stolen content pieces, it’s important to note that these types of tools will often take down the entire website in response to stolen content claims. 

If your content has been republished on an article-sharing site, then contact the site administration. They will ask you to provide the link to your original content, the date it was published and a statement that makes it perfectly clear that you are the original author of the content in question, and not the person who published the content onto the article-sharing website.

Action also means inaction

While it might not seem like the most ideal choice when it comes to stopping someone from stealing your content, sometimes, the best course of action is not to take any. Most of the time, if someone steals your content and publishes it as their own, it’s considered a duplicate, especially if it’s been stolen and published after your content went live, which would be the original piece. 

The duplicate content, the content that’s been stolen, will subsequently rank far lower in the search engine results pages (SERPs), often ending up in position fifteen or higher. As such, something you’ll be able to take from this is that, despite someone stealing your content, it will never rank as high up in the SERPs as yours. Google will penalise any attempt to publish duplicate content. Sometimes, it’s better to sit back and watch the perpetrator take absolute no benefit from copying and publishing the content that you created.

Contact the owner of the site

Copyright infringement happens on a regular basis, and it will likely happen to most content creators at some point or another. Sometimes, those who plagiarise and pass it off as their content might not know that they’re doing it. While it might be a daunting prospect to contact the website owner directly, you could be doing them a favour, whether they’re doing it knowingly or not. If they haven’t realised that it’s been done, then it prevents Google from flagging their content as spam. If they’ve done it intentionally, it makes the website owner aware that there will be consequences for such actions, meaning that they’re less likely to do it again.

Name & shame

Naming and shaming isn’t always as effective as it might sound, but it might well give you some closure. Not to mention, it will help other content creators to keep an eye out, allowing them to double-check that their content isn’t being republished on the same site. Also, if enough content creators find that the same website is stealing their content, then you can all come together and report the site for copyright infringement. This will give you some extra weighting when it comes to getting some justice. 

Let Google know

If you have no luck with any of the above suggestions, then the last thing you can try is to contact Google directly. You should detail the nature of the infringement, including what it is that’s been plagiarised and who has passed it off as their own material. This will make sure that Google knows that you are the original author and creator of the content that’s been stolen. As such, it will ensure that your content isn’t penalised for being a duplicate when, in fact, the content you’re reporting is the duplicated content piece. In addition to this, you should also look to file a Google Spam report in Google Webmaster Tools, just to cover all bases. 

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