Is there anything I can do about blogs and businesses taking my titles and ideas? I’ve been working on my travel blog for over 10 years, and I used to get around 500,000 page views. Now, barely 5,000. It all started in 2021 when other blogs began copying my content. My unique posts are now lost in a sea of copycats.
I’ve lived in 20 cities for firsthand experiences, and these sites just steal my headings, sometimes changing a word or two, and using AI or paraphrasing tools. They hardly use pictures, maybe just a stock image. It’s obvious they’re just trying to ride on popular search terms.
For example, I was ranked #2 for years for a query like ‘Orlando besides theme parks,’ but now there are hundreds of blogs with the same title, and many are AI-generated. Even after sending DMCA notices for the content theft, my ranking didn’t improve. Am I stuck with this? Should I just keep creating new posts, only for them to be copied? Google used to rank me higher than the copycats, but now I’m out of the search results altogether!
I get it, this is what’s happening because Google doesn’t care about search quality anymore. They don’t seem to care if copycats counter your DMCA claims. Just keep your evidence handy. Honestly, Google’s updates seem to hurt small businesses the most. It’s a free-for-all now.
Wow, I didn’t know blogging could be this shady. I thought Google would punish the copycats and reward the original creators, but it seems like that’s not the case anymore. Sorry you’re going through this!
Maybe try focusing on content that doesn’t rely on clicks, like on social media. It’s getting harder to rank with blogs anyway. I think that’s the future.
SubSavant said:
Maybe try focusing on content that doesn’t rely on clicks, like on social media. It’s getting harder to rank with blogs anyway. I think that’s the future.
I’ve been trying to grow my social media channels, but it’s tough to get traction unless something goes viral.
There’s not much you can do, honestly. Blogging is kind of on the decline. You might want to shift to YouTube or focus more on social platforms. Also, take a look at your website layout. Even if your content is unique, a bad layout might cause people to leave too quickly, which Google notices. Ranking is more about engagement now, like click-through rates and how long people stay on your site.
@UpvoteVoyager
My husband, who’s a web designer with 20 years of experience, says the site’s layout is fine and we have no tech issues. Our bounce rate is low, around 30-40%. My click-through rate did drop after Google stopped showing my thumbnails, and we can’t seem to fix that, despite adding new code. Google just doesn’t show them anymore, and my authority plummeted after we were hit by 2 million spam backlinks from casino sites. I’m cleaning that up now, but it’s a slow process. I even know which site is behind the negative SEO attack.
Did you get any warnings in Google Search Console? And what about your page speed? Sometimes, Google drops sites that are slow or have a bad user experience.
Masitsa said:
Did you get any warnings in Google Search Console? And what about your page speed? Sometimes, Google drops sites that are slow or have a bad user experience.
No warnings, everything seems fine. Page speed is good too. My site is running at 97 for desktop and 57 for mobile. The mobile speed is slow because of ads, but there’s not much we can do about the ad network’s JavaScript. We’re disavowing the spam backlinks, but it’s a slow process, and it could take months to see improvements.
Hey, I’m sorry this is happening to you! One thing that might help is blocking AI crawlers from scraping your content. It’s not a perfect solution, but it could make it harder for people to copy your work automatically.