Plagiarism An Affiliate Marketer's Nightmare

Over the past few weeks I have had three of my sites, which were product review sites plagiarized. The sheer fact that another webmaster just downloads all of your content, images and then tries to call them there own is just ridiculous.

We all know it goes on and it is very hard to stop so I am going to give you some tips on how to prevent this from happening.

The downside is that usually the site has been live for a few weeks before you find out about it. What these innovative affiliate marketers don't realize is the damage that will occur to their site and possibly the product vendors site that they are now promoting with stolen content.

The least they can expect is a loss of credibility for the product they are promoting.

So what actions have I taken to prevent this from happening..

Firstly I always try to do the right thing by contacting the webmaster of the site via email and advising them that there is a problem with there site content.

Usually I add the copyscape stats to the email so they have it in plain sight that the content has been copied. .

While waiting for a response from the webmaster I am also gathering up all the information about the site from the publish date using Alexa Wayback Machine or Google Cache.

I then find the product vendors details and also the affiliate id.

Once I have all the information I need to prove that my site has been plagiarized I then wait to see what damage has been done.

If the offending content has been removed and I have not lost any standing in the search engines I do nothing.

If I receive no response I then contact Google through  my webmaster tools account if you have not got one get one.

I then also contact the affiliate network and the vendor which usually results in the affiliate account being cancelled.

Hopefully this gives you an insight into what you need to do to stop your site content being stolen.

There are many new people trying to make it big online and they really have no understanding about what it is they are actually doing.

By copying someone else's website they are limiting their own online business to the extent of being de-indexed from the search engines which at the end of the day means they have a very limited existence online.

There are so many different ways to make money online today without stealing site content.

Message From Google

We take the quality or our results very seriously, and we thoroughly investigate every report of deceptive practises and take appropriate action. We will remove websites from our index immediately, so they don't show up in the search results.

As angry as this will make you, STAY CALM you will win in the end. Google takes this very seriously and in some cases these sites can disappear forever and only after a few days of sending them an email through your webmaster tools account.

If you have had your site plagiarized we want to hear from you. Let us know what steps you have taken to have the offending content removed.