How to report duplicate websites to Google and remove copied content
5 mins

How to report duplicate websites to Google and remove copied content

Have you found complete replicas of your content on some random website?

It’s frustrating when you spend hours creating informative content for your audience only to have scammers copy and paste entire articles onto their domains.

And with advances in AI technology, it’s easier than ever for scammers to copy sites at scale. Google might even pick the scammer’s content to rank in its search results, which is another blow to your brand.

What can you do? You can report duplicate websites to Google to make sure your original content is what people see. You can also use Red Points’ AI-powered brand protection platform to remove infringing content as soon as it arises.

Read on for step-by-step instructions on how to report a website to Google and how to scale your efforts with Red Points.

Red Points' Search Engine Content Removal

Why manually removing duplicate websites is inefficient

Removing duplicate websites manually is possible but it might not be the best use of time in the long run. Infringers often change their domains, hosting providers, and site structures to evade takedowns. Plus, if you send one takedown, the scammer might set up shop in a similar domain with exactly the same content.

It’s labor-intensive to submit reports for multiple sites. You have to find the sites in the first place and then evidence to prove your case. Depending on who you’re reporting to (hosting service, directly to the site owner, etc.), you’ll have to gather different types of documentation.

Many businesses lack dedicated staff to handle these issues. If this rings true for you, it’s worth looking at a brand protection solution like Red Points that can act on your behalf and enforce your Intellectual Property (IP) online.

Removing one site manually takes care of just one instance of infringement. The person behind the site may run multiple URLs that copy your content and steal consumers’ information. Reacting to the sites you happen to find isn’t a holistic way of defending your brand against infringement. You’re simply at the mercy of the next scammer who wants to copy your content.

How to report duplicate websites to Google?

There are two main ways to report duplicate content on Google: use the legal help form or the copyright removal form. Both of these are manual processes, and there’s no guarantee Google will take the site down from its search results right away.

Let’s walk through the options.

Option A: Legal help form

Google’s legal help form lets you report a page for many reasons including duplicate content.

Step 1

Select the Google product where you saw the content:

  • Google Search
  • Blogger/Blogspot
  • Google Maps and related products
  • Google Play
  • YouTube
  • A Google Ad
  • Drive (Docs, Slides, Sheets, Forms, etc)
  • Google Photos and Picasa Web Albums
  • Shopping
screenshot of Google's legal help tool asking about where the content appears

Step 2

Select Legal reason for reporting then select Intellectual Property

Screenshot of Google's legal tool selection options for reporting reasons

Step 3

Select Copyright, say whether you’re the copyright owner, and choose whether the copyright applies to an image/video or something else.

Screenshot of Google's legal help tool with questions about the type of IP

Step 4: Complete the form

Once you click “Create request,” you’ll finish the form with a description of your copyrighted work,

Option B: Copyright removal form

You can fill out this copyright removal form to send a DMCA notice to the duplicate website owner and get it taken down. Here are the steps to fill up the form:

Step 1

Provide your name, contact information, and the name of your company.

Step 2

Mention if you are the sole copyright owner or reporting on behalf of the copyright owner (Make sure you are logged in from the right Google account since Google will use your contact details to reach you.)

Screenshot of content information form

Step 3

Now, you need to provide details of the infringed content and how it is duplicated from your website. 

  • Identify and describe the copyrighted work: Describe how your content has been infringed and duplicated as thoroughly as possible. You can also include snippets of the duplicated and original content here.
  • Share the location of the authorized example of work: Provide the URLs of your original content that has been duplicated. While you can provide the main website URL, you should also provide examples of specific web page URLs that have been copied directly. 
  • Location of infringing material: Now you need to add the URLs of the web pages that have copied your content. Again, while you can add the entire duplicate website here, you should also pull up some web page URLs that clearly show the extent of duplication. 

In case multiple websites/URLs are duplicating your content, you can click on the ‘Add a new group’ option to report multiple URLs through the same form.

Step 4

Checkmark the sworn statement, which confirms that you are the main copyright holder of the content and the duplicated content belongs to you. 

Step 5

Click ‘Submit’ and wait for an answer back from Google. It can take anywhere between 2-3 weeks for Google to provide an update.

Please note that this will only get the duplicate website removed from Google Search. Google cannot shut down a website completely. To get the website taken offline, you will have to contact the hosting providers of the duplicate website.

Reporting sites one-by-one is time-consuming and the process can draw out even longer if you decide to contact the web host or site owner. Our platform can step in and automate this entire process, from detection to enforcement and monitoring. This lets you enforce your IP not just on a few Google listings but across search engines and platforms.

Future prevention: Safeguarding your website content

Secure your website code: Encrypt your website code for an extra layer of protection. This prevents scammers from directly viewing your code or content by clicking on ‘view source.’

Disable copy/paste: You can disable copy/paste on all your website pages to ensure scammers cannot just right-click on your content or images to directly copy them. Of course, this doesn’t mean it would become impossible for scammers to copy your website content, they can still use other ways. You can consider this as more of a proactive step that can weed out at least some of the scammers.

Register your intellectual property: Registering for copyrights or trademarks for your business makes it easy to send cease and desist letters or a DMCA notice to duplicate website owners. It can also help you take down fake websites faster when you report them to Google.

Add a copyright notice to your website: Put up a copyright notice somewhere on the sidebar or the bottom of the webpage mentioning that all the copyright of the website belongs to you. Any attempts to infringe the website content will result in strict legal actions. You can also implement a DMCA badge on your content. This badge tells users you’re serious about protecting your copyrighted material.

Use canonical URLs: When you use canonical URLs, you’re letting search engines know which pages are the preferred versions to crawl and display. This can prevent search engines from displaying non-canonical URLs on other sites if they determine the page is a duplicate.

Watermark your images: If you’re concerned about people stealing your images, watermark them to show their origin.

Monitor the web: Constantly monitor the web for any brand mentions and for any new URLs that may be duplicating your content. One technique is to use Google Alerts to know about any new mention of your brand. You can also use an automated domain takedown solution to remove infringed websites as soon as they go live. Red Points’ domain takedown solution scans the web for duplicate websites 24/7 and reports them right away to get them taken down before they can cause any permanent damage to your brand.

Why choose Red Points for content protection

Don’t just react to infringements. Stay ahead of them with Red Points’ capabilities including AI-powered duplicate website detection. 

Our bot-powered search scans many corners of the online world including search engines, domain registries, ecommerce platforms, social media apps, and more. 

We use different types of technology like image search, logo recognition, and natural language processing to detect and prioritize infringements. Automated enforcement streamlines the enforcement process to protect your IP quickly.

All this translates to measurable results while requiring much less work on your part. We’ve worked with over 1,300 brands to stop scams and duplicate sites across industries. Protect your content today with Red Points to take down fake sites.

What’s next

To recap, you can report duplicate content to Google with its copyright removal request form or using the legal help form. With either form, you’ll provide details about where the duplicate page exists and show your original content.

These methods require time to manually complete for each infringement. You also have to discover infringing pages on your own—there could be many more than the ones you’ve come across.

If you’re experiencing more of these issues than in the past, it might be time to consider using AI-powered detection and automated enforcement.

Ready to stop duplicate content from harming your business? Let Red Points handle the heavy lifting. Reach out for a demo today.

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