As unethical as content spinning is, the practice is still rampant across the web. A quick Google search on ‘content spinning’ reveals, unfortunately, not solutions, but tips on how to spin content.
While most of this material is masked as strategies to recreate your own content, it usually becomes an aid to unprincipled theft.
Content spinning is done primarily for the purposes of SEO. It includes taking existing content, and replacing words and sentences to create what appears to be new content, in an attempt to trick search engines into driving traffic to the new website.
The practice is most often employed by small businesses that are seeking short-term, quick profits from a surge in traffic.
Practices like these are known as ‘negative SEO‘.
Becoming a victim of content spinning can be incredibly frustrating – not only because another website has stolen your content, but also because they can capture a large share of your target market.
Their content may appear different because it has been ‘spun’, but their keywords often remain the same, which means they could be ranking higher than you on search engines and getting your potential customers to click on their links.
If you believe you have come across a website that has spun your content, here are the steps you can take:
Determine Whether It’s an Issue
Content spinning is sometimes done manually, which means a single person has rewritten your content. More often, however, forgers will use software to steal your content.
Software may seem effective, but it typically does not create well-written copy. The algorithm in these software programs replaces most words with adjectives, which results in content that may not be readable.
If this happens with the page that stole your content, it may not be a major cause for concern since Google’s algorithm usually recognizes and removes it.
Report the Website
Fortunately, Google has measures in place to tackle content theft.
To report your stolen content, fill out Google’s Copyright Infringement Form.
If the content is found to be hosted by Google, it is likely that the copied pages will be removed. If not, they will be deindexed, which means their URLs will cease to appear in search engine results.
Another party you can report theft to is the copier’s domain host.
Use a WHOIS lookup to find the owner and registrar of the domain name. Then file a complaint with the registrar citing a copyright infringement issue.
Major hosting providers like GoDaddy take these complaints seriously in order to protect their brand and be associated with genuine websites.
If both of these methods fail and you are prepared to invest financial means into protecting your content, seek out legal aid.
Look for a lawyer who is experienced with DMCA law and copyright infringement.
Protect Your Content in the Future
Content theft cannot be entirely prevented but there are measures you can take to reduce the likelihood:
- Use a protective service like Cloudflare to guard your content so that any automated scripts tracking your content will be detected.
- Submit all of your new content to Google for manual indexing.
- Watch out for repeated visits from suspicious IP addresses.
The process can be taxing, but the good news is that spun content often tends to rank for short periods of time and will either lose its ranking or be taken down.
