HOW TO IDENTIFY STOLEN CONTENT AND TAKE ACTION!By. Jordan Lowry

Digital Marketing Analyst

STOLEN CONTENT Imagine you and your team have worked hard to research,

brainstorm, and produce stellar content. Only to find out that unscrupulous webmasters have scraped content

without your consent. It can be inevitable that your content will get copied and

repurposed, often times without a link.

HOW DO YOU RETALIATE?

STEPS TO DEAL WITH STOLEN CONTENT

We have compiled a set of easy to follow steps for getting back at the thieves who stole your content.

STEP 1: VERIFY YOUR SUSPICIONS ARE CORRECT

Perform a quick Google search to determine where else your copy may be showing up across the internet.

Randomly select a piece of copy from a webpage (copy and paste a few sentences in a Google search box) to run a query.

VERIFY YOUR SUSPICIONS ARE CORRECT

VERIFY YOUR SUSPICIONS ARE CORRECT

The search results will provide you with a list of webpages where that content appears.

As you can see in this example, there is another website using content I wrote without my consent (see the red arrow above).

STEP 2: INVESTIGATE THE EXTENT OF THEFTCheck to see if your content has been copied

verbatim.

INVESTIGATE THE EXTENT OF THEFT

You’ll want to check if this is an isolated event or if the website in question has copied multiple pieces of content.

However, in our example above, you will notice multiple instances of stolen content.

It’s time to take action!

STEP 3: REACH OUT TO THE WEBMASTER

REACH OUT TO THE WEBMASTER

If the webmaster’s email contact isn’t readily displayed, check the about or policy sections of their website.

The webmaster’s address is often hidden within these pages. Once you have found the address, notify them immediately that you

are aware of the offending activity and request they remove the stolen content.

REACH OUT TO THE WEBMASTER

Should the webmaster voluntarily remove the stolen content, have a latte your job is done.

However chances are most webmasters will ignore your request

STEP 4: CONTACT THE HOSTING PROVIDER

It’s time to perform a who-is-lookup. This will provide you with the webmaster’s identity and their hosting provider.

Let them know that a site they are hosting is blatantly infringing on your copyrights.

STEP 5: FILE A DMCA REQUEST If the hosting provider fails to respond then its time to take more

assertive action Its now time to file a DMCA request *It is important to note that you will need to have the authority to act

on behalf of your organization to do this You have the option of drafting your own DMCA takedown request or

you can download a sample DMCA template to customize however you like.

STEP 6: REQUEST GOOGLE REMOVE CONTENT

Log into Search Console. This will take you to the copyright removal section within Google.

Simply follow the instructions and be sure to clearly describe the nature of work being copied.

Make sure to include URL’s where the copyrighted work can be viewed.

DMCA REQUEST The DMCA request tends to work pretty quickly so you want to keep

an eye on how many pages are currently indexed and compare it over the next few days or weeks.

You can easily run a search query to double check if the DMCA request is currently working.

If you are successful in your attempt at protecting your content then you will notice the indexed pages dropping off over time.

DMCA REQUEST

Before After

END RESULT IF YOU ARE SUCCESSFUL

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