Cloned websites

[dashu1]

Hello,
has anyone had any experience of other websites ripping off your site &/or content, and if so how have you dealt with it & have you been succesful in getting it removed?

The reason I ask is that a customer of mine has a website I've revamped & SEOd for him. It keeps appearing on page 1 of Google then disappearing again and I've now discovered 2 sites that are ripping his site off.

One has a couple of pages that are exact copies, the other is a complete site rip off.

I've contacted Googles webspam team, my customer is contacting the website owners, and i've located the hosts so that we can file a DMCA report - but does any of this actually have any effect or do people just ignore it unless a solicitors letter arrives?

Thanks.

 

[golddiggerguy]

Get the I.P. and then contact the hosting company. I have done this and have had sites pulled down.

 

[MattUK]

Most hosting companies have pretty strict rules about hosting copyrighted materials. I would drop their host a quick cease and decist, I usually find the site is down within a few hours.

I wouldn't worry too much about the SEO and Google though, they're usually pretty good at picking up the original source of the contenrt, it probably explains why their rankings keep fluctuating.

 

[dashu1]

Thanks guys.

I just had a quick look at the offending 2 sites & both have been removed - I guess my customer is pretty persuasive

It's a pisser that people think they can do this & get away with it though.

 

[tifosi]

Agreed, there's a big difference between inspiration and copying.

I love trawling the css sites like cssmania, and looking at the source/css to see how they've done things, but never blindly lift a site.

S

 

[ddwebguru]

The first thing you should do is to approach the respective persons of those websites and ask them top remove the content. If they do not agree to remove it, you can legal action then.

 

[golddiggerguy]

A lot of people do it to clone the Page Rank for the new domain. After a few months the cloned site with PR of 6 (usually a high profile site) rubbs it's PR off on the offending domain.

But i'm sure legal matters would cause the guilty party one BIG head ache.

 

[purg]

If youre wanting to protect your backend database from being taken (via site cloning software) think about blocking how many pages any IP can view. On all resent sites ive made a page pre day blocking has been implemented.

Doesnt sound like your client needs this but very helpful for a mini sites that rely on its database for an income.


Table SQL

       create table visitorlog
    (    visitID int(10) auto_increment primary key,
        visitIP varchar(15),
        visitURI varchar(255),
        visitReferer varchar(255),
        visitDate int(20),
        visitAgent varchar(255)
    )

You still need to connect the dataset for the table
somewhere close to the top of the php scripting side of the side include the foolwing

include("dbinfo-def.php");
include("per_day_block.php");
if ($visitcount > 300){
	$rmip = substr($_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'],0,strrpos($_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'],'.'));

	$ip = "deny from $rmip\n";
	$banip = '/hosting/full/dir/ofsite/.htaccess';
	$fp = fopen($banip, "a");
	$write = fputs($fp, $ip);
	fclose($fp);

	//@ symbol hides errors from visitors
	// @mail('[email protected]',
	// 'Banned IP '.$_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'].
	// ' at '.$_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER'],
	// ' IP '.$_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'].' banned'.
	// ' request URI '.$_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'].
	// ' referrer '.$_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER'].
	// ' agent '.$_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'].
	// ' cookie1 '.$_COOKIE['somecookie'].
	// ' cookie2 '.$_COOKIE['someothercookieid']);
	return;
}

per_day_block.php

<?php
$cutOffDate = strtotime("-7 day");
@mysql_query('delete from visitorlog where visitdate<$cutOffDate');

$log = new logger(); //this creates the class and logs the current visit

$visitcount = $log->numRecentVisits();


class logger{
    
    public function __construct(){
        $this->agent = $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'];
        $this->uri = $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'];
        $this->ip = $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'];
        $this->ref = empty($_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER']) ? null : $_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER'];
        $this->visitDate = time();
        $this->logVisit();
    }
    
    private function logVisit(){
        $sql = sprintf("    Insert into visitorlog
                            (visitID, visitIP, visitURI, visitReferer, visitDate, visitAgent)
                            values
                            (null, '%s', '%s', '%s', %d, '%s')", $this->ip, mysql_real_escape_string($this->uri), mysql_real_escape_string($this->ref), $this->visitDate, mysql_real_escape_string($this->agent));
        @mysql_query($sql);
    }
    
    public function numRecentVisits(){
        $dayago = strtotime('-1 day');
        $sql = "Select count(*) as c from visitorlog where visitIP='$this->ip' and visitDate>'$dayago'";
        $result = @mysql_query($sql);
        $row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result);
        return $row['c'];
    }
    
public function outputLog(){
        $sql = "Select visitDate, visitIP, visitURI, visitReferer, visitAgent from visitorlog order by visitDate asc";
        $result = mysql_query($sql);
        echo <<<HTML
<table border="1">
    <tr>
        <th>Time</th><th>IP Addr</th><th>URI</th><th>Referer</th><th>User Agent</th>
    </tr>
HTML;
        while ($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result)){
            $row[0] = date("Y-m-d H:i:s", $row[0]);
            echo "<tr><td>" . implode('</td><td>', $row) . "</td></tr>";
        }
        echo "</table>";
    }
}
?>

 

[retired_member4]

I had some US dickhead rip off my Anydocs - Free legal and business documents templates website

I pursued it for a while and had him shut down a couple of times.. He ripped it word for word and the same design etc.. Used all my documents etc.. He eventually changed the colour scheme

In short, all I could do was to continually contact his new host and get it shut down, but a few days later it was back up on another host. I hit them with DMCA notices etc but finally got bored. If he was in the UK I would have paid a personal visit just to explain my "situation"

I also contacted adsense which killed his revenue, and his domain is now parked, and probs making nowt LOL

 

[dashu1]

Thanks for all of the input.

My customer contacted the sites concerned & they have both removed all of the offending content - in fact both have completely removed their sites.

My customers website reappeared on page 1 of Google today, so perhaps the duplicate content was the problem.

 

[aZooZa]

If youre wanting to protect your backend database from being taken (via site cloning software) think about blocking how many pages any IP can view. On all resent sites ive made a page pre day blocking has been implemented.

Doesnt sound like your client needs this but very helpful for a mini sites that rely on its database for an income.


Table SQL

       create table visitorlog
    (    visitID int(10) auto_increment primary key,
        visitIP varchar(15),
        visitURI varchar(255),
        visitReferer varchar(255),
        visitDate int(20),
        visitAgent varchar(255)
    )

You still need to connect the dataset for the table
somewhere close to the top of the php scripting side of the side include the foolwing

include("dbinfo-def.php");
include("per_day_block.php");
if ($visitcount > 300){
    $rmip = substr($_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'],0,strrpos($_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'],'.'));

    $ip = "deny from $rmip\n";
    $banip = '/hosting/full/dir/ofsite/.htaccess';
    $fp = fopen($banip, "a");
    $write = fputs($fp, $ip);
    fclose($fp);

    //@ symbol hides errors from visitors
    // @mail('[email protected]',
    // 'Banned IP '.$_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'].
    // ' at '.$_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER'],
    // ' IP '.$_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'].' banned'.
    // ' request URI '.$_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'].
    // ' referrer '.$_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER'].
    // ' agent '.$_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'].
    // ' cookie1 '.$_COOKIE['somecookie'].
    // ' cookie2 '.$_COOKIE['someothercookieid']);
    return;
}

per_day_block.php

<?php
$cutOffDate = strtotime("-7 day");
@mysql_query('delete from visitorlog where visitdate<$cutOffDate');

$log = new logger(); //this creates the class and logs the current visit

$visitcount = $log->numRecentVisits();


class logger{
    
    public function __construct(){
        $this->agent = $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'];
        $this->uri = $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'];
        $this->ip = $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'];
        $this->ref = empty($_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER']) ? null : $_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER'];
        $this->visitDate = time();
        $this->logVisit();
    }
    
    private function logVisit(){
        $sql = sprintf("    Insert into visitorlog
                            (visitID, visitIP, visitURI, visitReferer, visitDate, visitAgent)
                            values
                            (null, '%s', '%s', '%s', %d, '%s')", $this->ip, mysql_real_escape_string($this->uri), mysql_real_escape_string($this->ref), $this->visitDate, mysql_real_escape_string($this->agent));
        @mysql_query($sql);
    }
    
    public function numRecentVisits(){
        $dayago = strtotime('-1 day');
        $sql = "Select count(*) as c from visitorlog where visitIP='$this->ip' and visitDate>'$dayago'";
        $result = @mysql_query($sql);
        $row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result);
        return $row['c'];
    }
    
public function outputLog(){
        $sql = "Select visitDate, visitIP, visitURI, visitReferer, visitAgent from visitorlog order by visitDate asc";
        $result = mysql_query($sql);
        echo <<<HTML
<table border="1">
    <tr>
        <th>Time</th><th>IP Addr</th><th>URI</th><th>Referer</th><th>User Agent</th>
    </tr>
HTML;
        while ($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result)){
            $row[0] = date("Y-m-d H:i:s", $row[0]);
            echo "<tr><td>" . implode('</td><td>', $row) . "</td></tr>";
        }
        echo "</table>";
    }
}
?>

Thanks for sharing!