So what do we do if we are being duplicated?

[BenjArriola]

Ok, I really had no plans of talking about this, but what are the rules if a site is doing duplicate content on our site?

This is what was done...

1. Old site, since 2,000, more than 18k backlinks, high PR.
2. Cloaked content by user agent detection.
3. All his 8000+ indexed pages show my site's content cloaked by user agent. Displayed to Googlebot.
4. Cache dates were as early as March 18.

Obviously this is a separate site from any of the competitors entries. Thus you cannot really say who is doing this. But definitely one of the competitors and I do not like pointing fingers are people that I really don't know who is responsible since I believe that is wrong.

Maybe some of you have noticed already that his site is already ranking.

So what's our rules? Obviously duplicate content will pull my site down. But if you plan to disqualify people who implemented this, then that is the problem. Who implemented it.

Anyway, it's just a contest and it's just $1k. This #1 ranking is not for any of my SEO clients anyway.

 

[BenjArriola]

Btw, since this is exposed already and his site is already ranking for it... and i am now talking about it. I expect that it may disappear soon and pretend as if nothing happened.

 

[temi]

It is very sad to hear allegations like this

 

[Eclipsis]

Well, several hacking attempts on seocontest2008-sphere.com (including brute forcing attempts on our WP console and injections), SQL injection attempts on both seocontest2008-sphere.com and seocontest2008.com, duplicate content attack now on seocontest2008.com, ... (what next??)

It seems that there are bad-asses on this contest, who are trying to down the leaders... It's the first time I see such things on a SEO contest, I don't know what is different with this one, and I just hope this will not be a tendency on future contests.
:nono:

Benj, your site is strong, and it always was during the whole contest, I think that this attack will not affect your site. I hope that your site won't drop, and that you'll remain on... 2nd place (just kidding Good luck) !

 

[eli03]

I think this happen in every contest, you just need to find a way to overcome the blackhat. Benj I know you can do it we still have two days.

 

[BenjArriola]

The duplicate results no longer appear. I have also checked their site and it's back to normal, so far.

 

[Bagi Zoltán]

May I ask the URL of the site which cloacked the googlebot? It would be wuite important to know.
Thanks in advance

 

[Théo B.]

It was not me, and I think it was not our team.
It looked like to be a canadian website.

 

[BenjArriola]

I'll PM you Bagi

 

[BenjArriola]

He put back the duplicate content. I wonder who is so eager to push me down and what is their main motive? I send you a PM Bagi for the URL. So far as of this exact moment the duplicate content is back up.

 

[kineticdc]

who does this site belong to?
seocontest2008

There is copied content from many contestants

 

[BenjArriola]

Hi Kinetic, I don't know whose site is that, but the person doing duplicate content on me copied my exact same site. Even the template, and everything. It is an exact identical homepage. Then replaced all my links to a nofollow so they get no link credit going back to my site. Then it is an old site with 8900 pages. And all pages are duplicate content of my homepage. If you visit it you see nothing. But it uses a useragent cloaked pages and shows my homepage to googlebot.

I am somewhat hesitant still in over exposing the site because the bad side to it is it will also promote the technique and we do not want this technique to go into the wrong hands.

 

[kineticdc]

Benj it is already in the wrong hands. Do you think it is in the right hands?

This is only one of several poor seocontest2008 techniques I have seen. Two site even posted bad singing videos on their site. One girl and one boy. Ughhh (sorry a little humor in my pain). I even have seen a fake page with links to your site.. Did you know about that one? It is not an official entry but a page from the Philipines. Yep, a lot of different tactics. A few sites have copied tactics and content. I checked the 5000 links in my Google account and found some weird sites with bad content linking to me, it seems as an attempt to drag me down in SERPS.

Funny, I even got an undeserved infraction in another forum from a mod who is participating. Not very funny. I enjoy the competition but I don't do this full time. I am a business owner that does SEO as a hobby, I am learning what is happening as the contest was going on. Like one contestant has all these gambling links? does that create better SERP? I don't know, I am learning as I go along.. I don't think these are bad things, just things I did not think of in February, but I know about now.

I am looking forward to using my newfound talents in social bookmarking and blackmarking (happened to me the second week) Not my style but a guy from DP did it to me. I like competition but fair competition is a lot more fun.

So back to your point, If you don't want to post the site to the public, at least PM the contest mod so they can watch for it in the future.

And please tune your guitar.

 

[BenjArriola]

Thanks Kinetic for the insight. I'm starting to look at this in a whole new way. I guess I am overreacting as well. My bad.