How to deal with Pagejacking

Pagejacking: is the process of copying a webpage by third parties that have not been authorized to do so. This does not only include copying of content but sometimes the entire HTML code of a page. As a result some of the traffic that should have gone to the original page now ends up at the pagejackers website. This is exactly why a pagejacker would copy your page or content.

Although pagejacking could be effective in the short run, most search engines pick up on the scheme and either lower a pagejackers rank or ban them altogether. Pagejacking is not a good search engine optimization (SEO) technique. This article therefore doesn’t focus on how you should pagejack, but rather on the process of detecting it and on how you should deal with a pagejacker.

How is pagejacking done?

Some starting website owners are sometimes low on content and decide it’s best to add pages by stealing this content. Most of the times this is simply done by copying the entire content or HTML code. Some links might be added or removed and some paragraphs might change. This is the simplest form of pagejacking.

However the more experienced pagejackers use pretty advanced techniques to get what they want; more visitors. The simply use a serverside coding language like PHP, JSP, ASP etc to detect is a search engine spider (using the user agent information) is visiting their webpage. If so they show the pagejacked content. If a regular visitor visits their webpage they simply redirect to other content. This usually isn’t useful information, but rather some landing page that persuades visitors to buy products.

Another popular scham is trapping users by building a redirect page that will create a loop out of which the user will be unable to break using the "back" button.

The process of showing different pages to search engines spiders then to normal visitors is called cloaking.

How can you detect pagejacking?

If you have a large web site with a lot of pages it’s impossible to check every page for pagejacking. Therefore keep in mind that pagejackers focus on pages with the highest ranking. Do some random checks once in a while but focus on your top pages.
Here’s how you can easily check if your page has been pagejacked:

• First identify a unique and uncommon sentence or phrase within your page content.
• Enter this phrase in Google, Yahoo or MSn encapsulated by quotes (“).
• If you get a large number of results find another uncommon phrase to search for. Please also keep in mind that if you have allowed your content to be used on other sites, for example through rss feeds you could have a lot of pages to cover. But, by looking at the snippets or descriptions from the results on the Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs) you can easily filter out a pagejacker, as they will probably use the same met description.
• Once you have found a page that looks like it belongs to a pagejacker click on the link and see if you are dealing with a ‘newby’ that has simply copied your page or with an expert, that is showing different content. If different content shows up, the page has probably been cloaked.
• If the page has been cloaked you can use the ‘cached’ button on the SERP to see how the search engine has viewed the page whilst spidering. If this is the same content as your page you know you’ve been pagejacked. Pages are crawled regularly so the page is probably still using your content to attract visitors.

How to approach a pagejacker?

Once you have identified the pagejacked content you should immediately store a copy of cached page. When you view a cached page in Google it shows the pagejackers URL and the date. You could make a screenshot or better, save a copy of the page.
To do this go to file in internet explorer and choose save as. Select “Web archive, single file (* .mht)”. By doing this everything will be downloaded, including the Google info and all images and it will all be stored in one file.

Before sewing the bastard you should send him an email. Please keep in mind that some kids out there don’t do this on purpose or don’t understand the seriousness off the issue. So stay polite but bring you message across. Also sent a copy of your cached file to show you have proof and send your email as high priority.
Another thing to remember is that when you neglected to put a copyright statement under your page, the pagejacker might use this against you, so be very reasonable and polite ins this case. (You could add a copyright statement before you take action, but the pagejacker might have cached your page aswell.)

If you haven’t received a reply or the content hasn’t been taken down you should contact the hosting company. The hosting company can be tracked down by doing a trace or whois lookup on the domain name. Sometimes an address and phone number even show up. Use the nameserver information to find the hosting company.
Most hosting companies have a department for copyright infringement complaints and you could contact then, but make sure you follow their guidelines carefully.

If all this doesn’t help and you have lost serious profit form the pagejacked content you should contact a lawyer.

How do I prevent pagejacking?

There is no watertight way to prevent people from copying your content. Every time a visitor comes to your site your content is sent to their computer. They can always get to it. You can not prevent it just spend some time monitoring and you’ll find them.

Other potential effects of pagejacking

Nowadays search engines detect duplicate content quite well. And they usually punish the pagejacker as they remember on what website they found the content first. The website that published the content at a later time is usually not indexed or doesn’t get a high rank. There are however numerous reports that pages with a higher ranking get the benefit of the doubt and the are seen as the original publisher in that case. If the pagejackers website has a higher PageRank (which is pretty hard to get using duplicate content only) you could be in trouble.

Another negative effect of pagejacking could be that the pagejacker uses your content in a way that could damage your brand. If surfers end up on the pagejackers page and they associate your brand or name in the pagejacked content with the deceitful website they might lose faith in your products.

Please remember that search engines deal with most of the pagejackers out there and major profit loss doesn’t occur a lot. But, checking you pages once and again will save you from the pitfalls of running a successful website or e business.