On Thursday, Google made a call for publishers to report if sites have copied or “scraped” their content and are outranking the publishers themselves. But a tweet from a marketer pointing out that Google might be doing what it’s against got far more attention that Google’s own request.
The head of Google’s web spam team issued a call for reports about scraper sites
If you see a scraper URL outranking the original source of content in Google, please tell us about it: http://t.co/WohXQmI45X — Matt Cutts (@mattcutts) February 27, 2014
Marketer Dan Barker came up with an example of Google scraping Wikipedia’s content to outrank Wikpedia for “What is a scraper site”
.@mattcutts I think I have spotted one, Matt. Note the similarities in the content text: pic.twitter.com/uHux3rK57f — dan barker (@danbarker) February 27, 2014
The tweet currently has nearly 15,000 retweets, which is approaching the 16,000 retweet level of Oreo’s famous Super Bowl “blackout” tweet
Power out? No problem. pic.twitter.com/dnQ7pOgC — Oreo Cookie (@Oreo) February 4, 2013
That’s pretty impressive for a topic that is far removed from a major sporting event. For more background on the reporting form, and some of the issues about Google’s increased use of content from other sites, see the stories below from our Search Engine Land sibling-site:
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