Question : Company trying to sabotage our SEO

Hello Experts, I hope everyone is doing great today.

I have a big problem. There is a company who has taken our website, proactionmedia.com, and duplicated it somehow on their website under a link like this - hearmyspace.com/proactionmedia.html I am the webmaster of proactionmedia.com.

Now I had a talk with our SEO people and theys tated a company would do this to attempt Google to index that website, see their are two exact same websites out there and ultimately drop them both all together. This seems a bit harsh and we have had high rankings for a number of years now so my question is; Wouldn't Google know the imposter URLs from the actual ones?

Does anyone know a way I can prevent any possible bad scenarios from this.

I sent them an email, I was very polite and asked for the removal of it, I got no response. I did a whois on them and the registrant is listed as the technical contact.

Even if I did  contact them and had something done about it who is to say it won't happen again with another company. I could rant about the immoralities of this but i'll spare you that.

Does anybody know a way of preventing this? Maybe a code snippet which will tell Google which website is the real website.

Thank you all very much for taking the time to read this. I appreciate it it very much.

Answer : Company trying to sabotage our SEO

Google has no say in this, this is a private legal matter.

I'd start by taking screen shots of both yours and their website, I would then email them to several trusted sources so there is an electronic trail of these screens as ultimately if you just showed them to a lawyer in a few months time when they remove the cloned site, the arguement could be that you fashioned them yourself in photoshop and there's no case (albeit they have removed the site.)

By emailing them to various sources there's a time line being generated that shows the email and it's attachement was sent here and now and that is the state of the screenshot. This will preserve the evidence for any later issues.

Ensure you capture the address bar in your screen shots.

Having scanned your website I don't actually see terms and conditions regarding the copyright and circumstances the website can be used in - you have a copyright statement but that doesn't actually account for somebody taking a clone of the site, merely the design is yours so don't use it for yourself.

You should get yourself a terms & conditions that stipulates no part of the website may be reproduced.

As to why they are doing this I am not sure, I am also unsure as to how you found that link... can you tell us?

Looking at this as an outsider, not knowing the full story and therefore being totally objective:

1. Is there a possibility that an employee of your business who was involved in developing the site, has used that link to test the system while he built it? Perhaps a freelancer who is using that server as a testing ground?

As a systems developer myself, I have copies of dev. sites for my clients sitting on a web facing server and it's a case of forgetting to remove them after presentation.

2. Is it a possibility that the people behind HearMySpace who are Music related and therefore use CD/DVD media/duplication are planning to build their own CD duplication service as an extention of their service, and as such have found your site to be a perfect example of how to do it?

They've then performed a whack on the site and scarped all the structure in order to duplicate it under their own brand.

If you have the contact details of the person via who is, I would send a well worded email with a Cease and Desist order - simply make them aware of the situation, present them with both screen shots informaing them that independant 3rd paries also hold this evidence and that they have 30 days to act on that order. CC yourself and the people who have the evidence.

If they ignore that request you are justified in approaching legal action - they have had adequate time to reply, and the evidence is irrefutable; from that point on they will be liable for any action against them.