If you have a blog, chances that your posts have been copied at least once. I’ve faced this situation several times. Whenever I found copied contents, I used to contact the publishers to remove the contents. Sometimes they did, sometimes they didn’t!

But I was never worried about Google rankings as I thought Google is smart enough to find out original content from duplicates. Things got worse when I found that copied content rank higher than original content of mine. That time I realize that I need to complain to Google to remove copied content from Search.

Copied content is the content that has been copied from the original work. Sometimes it becomes difficult for search engines to decide which one is original. To remove the copied contents from Google search, you need to file a DMCA complaint with Google. DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) helps you to protect your content from content thieves.

If your content is being copied by others, you are in the right place to deal with it. In this post, I am going to discuss how you can report about copied content to Google search team. Once you’ve submitted DMCA report to Google, Google will remove copied content from search results. And you’ll get your rank back in case rank dropping.

How to Find Out If Your Content Has Been Copied

At first, you’ll have to find out who copied your content. The easiest way is, using Google search. Just pick up few lines from your blog post and do a Google search with double quotes (“Lines from the post”). And it will show all contents that contain your blog post lines.

For example, here is a search for the line “How does it feel when you find that someone has copied your site’s contents without any permission?” which is a part of this post.

You can also use online plagiarism checker tools like Copyscape or DupliChecker to find copied content from your blog.

How to Report Google to Remove Copied Content

Once you’ve found the websites that copied your content, go to Google DMCA page and click on ‘Submit a Legal Request’. If the web site who copied your post is hosted on Blogspot, click on ‘Blogger’. Otherwise, click on ‘Web Search’.

In this case, I am selecting ‘Web Search’.

Then check the following options:

• I have a legal issue that is not mentioned above.
• I have found content that may violate my copyright.
• Yes, I am the copyright owner or am authorized to act on the copyright owner’s behalf.
• Other.

Now click on the link ‘this form’ and it will take you to the copyright removal page. Fill out the form and report the websites that copied your content. You can report multiple links on a single form.

And submit the form. If Blogspot blogs copied your content, use this form.

Google might take some time to remove copied content. You can track your DMCA complaint status from Webmaster tools. Just go to DMCA Dashboard.

Previously I never bothered on complaining to Google about duplicate contents. After getting hit by Panda update, I started reporting every site that copied my posts and things started changing. And I can see better rankings. So I would suggest you to submit DMCA complaint to Google whenever you find any websites stealing your content.

Hope it helps. Do let us know if you have any queries regarding this. And if you find this post useful, please help me by sharing this post on Facebook, Twitter or Google+.