Should You Be Worried About Stealing Content for SERPs Purposes?

There is nothing to wonder about. In a video hangout, John Mueller (a Google Webmaster Trends Analyst in Switzerland) said that sometimes Google ranks stolen content better instead of banning them from search results. 

So now, you are feeling insecure that anyone can steal your content and will get a better search engine ranking for that.

Before deciding what to do with stolen content and its ranking in Google SERPs, it’s essential to understand how Google handles such content.

Google ranks stolen content, but not for all!

Google may rank the copied and original content separately for a better user experience (watch the video below). 

However, Google will evaluate two main things before ranking duplicate content. And those two are-

1. Purpose of contents
2.  Site targeting factor

To describe that, John used a clear example- if someone copies a product description from a local eCommerce site to eBay, Google might rank both contents separately and display it separately for international and local search queries. 

Indeed, a local site will be displayed for all relevant local search queries, and the eBay version (copied content) will be displayed for international search queries.

Suppose someone copies eBay to eBay or a local eCommerce to another local eCommerce. In that case, Google may not rank copied and original content separately. In this case, the original content will win the battle.

The point is that Google is always looking for a more relevant topic for each separate search query to improve its SERPs. 

Therefore, no matter whether it’s original or copied if Google finds both valuable for a different type of searcher, then both will be ranked separately in the Google SERPs. 

Here are some common topics which can be stolen and categorised easily-

1. eCommerce product descriptions.
2. Classified Ads.
3. Song lyrics.
4. Poetry, Novels, Physics & Mathematical Equations. Biography, etc.

Here is the video hangout by John Mueller-

From my point of view, you no need to be worried about stolen content if you own an eCommerce site or a classified site or something like that. Because Google will still send organic traffic to your original content for the relevant search queries. There will be no effect on the search engine ranking of your original content for the relevant search queries.

Here, you might be confused about- how your ranking will remain the same where a duplicate one also ranks in Google SERPs?

Here, you should remember one thing- in this case, “Google rank original and duplicate content separately“, not together. That means if Google finds a duplicate one is also valuable to a different group of Google users, then Google will display the exact content to them only, not to the same group of people who belongs to your content.

For instance- if a person from the USA searches for a second-hand camera, then, obviously site like eBay will be displayed in the Google search result yet for copied content from a local website from another country.

But, if a person searches for the same product within his country, then the local site with original content will be displayed instead of eBay in the Google search results. So, ultimately the traffic flow of the original content will not change.

So, should you steal content? 

No, you shouldn’t steal content from another place to get a ranking in the Google search results pages. 

No one knows exactly how Google ranks copied content separately. Therefore, if you copy content (a product description or a classified ad matter) from another site, there is a great chance of being blocked by Google.

Always try to use original content for your business. Your competitors might have created great content for their own business, but you can make the greatest. Just believe in yourself!

Still, if you think that you are affected by stealing content from your website, then you can report that on Google.