When is plagiarism not plagiarism

Huff · Share | #1 (**permalink**) 03-05-2011, 03:10 PM

Hi

Having recently updated my old website I ran all my pages through Copyscape as I wanted to ensure I had not accidentally made a duplication of anybody else's site content.

The program found a number of sites that had copied my old websites content that I have continued to use on my updated version.

My question is if another website which is very much younger than my own has copied for example 65 words in the same order in the same paragraph which makes up 19% of the copiers page be detrimental to my own site, in other words how much content copied would it be prudent to take action.

Many thanks for any replies.

JakeMoore · #2 (**permalink**) 03-05-2011, 03:50 PM

It's case by case. There are no bright lines. But you should contact the site owner and then their host as initial steps.

Huff · #3 (**permalink**) 03-05-2011, 04:38 PM

Will be sending a polite email pointing out the result of my search.

Is this level of copying detrimental to my site ranking with Google ?

JakeMoore · #4 (**permalink**) 03-05-2011, 05:30 PM

It should not affect your rankings if they copy you. You were indexed first. They just may not get indexed for it. How google responds to them will depend on how this new farmer update plays out.