1.
HOW TO IDENTIFY STOLEN
CONTENT AND TAKE ACTION!
By. Jordan Lowry
Digital Marketing Analyst

2.
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.

3.
HOW DO YOU RETALIATE?

4.
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.

5.
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.

6.
VERIFY YOUR SUSPICIONS ARE CORRECT

7.
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).

8.
STEP 2: INVESTIGATE THE EXTENT OF THEFT
Check to see if your content has been copied verbatim.

9.
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!

10.
STEP 3: REACH OUT TO THE WEBMASTER

11.
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.

12.
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

13.
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.

14.
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.

15.
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.

16.
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.

17.
DMCA REQUEST
Before After

18.
END RESULT IF YOU ARE SUCCESSFUL

19.
RECOMMENDED READINGS
 How-To: Robots.txt Disaster Prevention
 How to Properly Handle Pagination for SEO *Tool Included
 How to Find Bot Traffic and Segment It Out in Google Analytics