What do you guys do with scum that steal your Title and Meta Tags?

I just found a real estate directory masquerading as a reputable company that copied my Title and Meta Tags from a site I have and it has been that way since at least early 2003 according to the Wayback Machine. They never even bothered to remove my company name from the keyword tags for crying out loud!

I have just sent them an email and if not removed in 24 hours I will post complete info here - but I am curious - has any one else here had a similar experience?

Hi Doug,
Lets make the first 10 results in the serps, threads that tell everyone what a slimy operation it is

Post the name so everyone can start pulling their links off:)

That is a good idea - notify the host, advertisers, lnk partners, etc. - I may begin that tonight. How incredibly stupid - what moron would build a business around stolen copy? They even had their link partners use the desciption in their links. Total idiots! On top of that their directory links redirect so they don't count as links anyway and are of no value to the Realtors listed within.

A little digging turned up that the mental midget is actually a numbered company registered in Ontario that has a few other things going on - a web hosting business, a sex toy auction site, and a car decal business on Ebay as well.

Reporting them to their host may not help as they are their own host. Lots of bad publicity to go around on this one!

Well, I have not heard back from them but so far today they have rearranged their Meta Description tag and Keyword tag - and taken my company name off their site. They did not edit the Title tag though so if you are curious as to who the scum is - just search Google for "Realtors in USA and Canada" and in the top few results you will see my site - http://www.epoweredprofessionals.com - and also the thieving slime's site. You can also search for "real estate agents USA and Canada" and you will see the sites there too - just look for the site where the title is identical to http://www.epoweredprofessonals.com except they inserted their owm dot com.

Who would want to do business with them? - I would be embarrassed to have their link on my site if I was a Realtor! It is like saying you associate with dishonest people in my view. Don't you think so?

So, now everyone will know who they are until they do change their Title so that they will not show up for the Google search mentioned above. As long as they are being dishonest, maybe check it out and tell all your friends about them and remove any links to them. There is no benefit from being in their Directory anyway as all the links to agents can't be followed by search engines.

Don't reward crooks!

Hey Doug,

Let's get a power thread going somewhere. We'll get some links pointed at it and we'll teach them a little lesson;) I'm Happy to help

Thanks Rich - the way information is so widely available on the net - what on earth would lead them to believe they could get away with it?

There is a good lesson here for others that may be thinking of stealing content or page jacking - you will get caught and the whole world could know what a dolt you have been!

Maybe I'm being dense but I don't see the harm in copying a generic phrase such as "Realtors in USA and Canada" as a title tag. If I were to open a restaurant and have a sign on the building that says "Home Cooking" I couldn't reasonably expect that no one else would be allowed to have a sign saying "Home Cooking" on theoir restaurant.

It isn't just the phrase that he had copied - that phrase was just part of the title and I used it above as a search term so the sites would show up together when a search was performed.

He had copied the whole title tag word for word including the dashes. He also copied exactly the Description tag and he also copied the Keyword tag complete with my company name. This was not a case of someone accidentally using the same generic phrase.

In case anyone is interested about how search engines view copying there is more info here .

Doug-

How did you stumble onto this in the first place? I think you're very lucky that you FOUND it. Can you imagine what would have happened if you hadn't?

Good luck, keep us posted!

http://www.copyscape.com gave me enough information to make me want to examine the site further - it is a good resource

your right, nice resource, Thanks!

What would have happened if he never found it, aside from them not getting caught?

Doug, is your site a registered copyright? If you're going to invest time and money building a business/website, it might not be a bad idea to file a copyright for the whole site.

Then all you'd have to do is send the hosting company your copyright certificate to preserve your rights under the digital millenium act.

I beleive the FBI is in charge of copyright enforcement.

Sorry to hear that Doug, however there is nothing that can be done for theft of title and meta tags according to the DMCA. Those are not copyrightable. Only certain parts of your code, your design and content is available for copyrighting.

As VTWS said though, there is more than one way to skin a cat. With the power of this forum or if you have a powerful blog you can use those to target their company and a keyphrase that you wish the public to see. However they could come back at you for libel. Best Of luck.