Other Sites Syndicating Content

illmasterj

BuSo Pro
Joined
Aug 5, 2018
Messages
461
Likes
401
Degree
2
I've published a fair bit of new content lately, some ranks top 10 very quickly, the others don't.

What I've found is, the ones that don't rank are being copied/republished on other sites. These posts index fine, but so do the other sites that are copying that content.

I'm guessing it's someone's crap PBN strategy.

What's happening here? Is Google skeptical my site is the canonical source? What's the way to make this content perform?
 
Usually these kind of spam sites are either copying stuff out of your RSS feed or are crawling and ripping down the entire HTML. In the case of the HTML, if you're using canonical tags pointing to your own post within your own post, they end up copying that as well which ends up with you getting all the credit.

Google has no easy way of knowing what the canonical source is without you explicitly telling them. They mess it up regularly even for big news sites. It's not even a matter of "who published first" since dates can be backdated, nor a matter of "who did we index first" since that can be manipulated. The method to fight this automatically is the canonical meta tag.

Otherwise, you're looking at doing DMCA takedown notices and filing with Google for each post, etc. And the bad guys will just roll out more domains anyways, perhaps doubling down on you just to be a pain in the ass when they find you're on the offense. This is a manual approach while theirs is automated, so you'll never win in this way. I'm thinking the canonical tag is the only realistic approach.
 
Yeah I figured the DMCA route is a waste of time. Canonicals are set up but they aren't being added to the other sites.

I guess its a case of build links and keep publishing.
 
Back