What to Do When Your Website Is Plagiarized

So, someone copied your website. That sucks.

You probably feel a mixture of surprise, disbelief, and anger. At least that’s how I typically feel whenever I find a website that has blatantly copied and pasted our text, or ripped off our design.

This has happened to us more than 5 times over the past few years, so I want to share what I’ve learned from these experiences so you can deal with copycats the right way.

Quick disclaimer before we get started: I’m not a lawyer, and this article is not intended to be legal advice.

1. Collect evidence

You’ll want to make sure you have enough evidence to provide to the copycat (and the authorities) if it comes to that.

Screenshots of the copycat website

Take time-stamped screenshots of the offending website. Make sure you get all of the offending pages. The more evidence you have, the better a case you can make. Use CopyScape to find additional pages or sites that may be copying you.

Screenshots of your own website

Having screenshots of your own website could be useful in case you need to show a side-by-side comparison of the two sites to show the places where plagiarism occured.

Screenshots of Archive.org backups

You might want to use the Wayback Machine from Archive.org to look at previous versions of the offending website to see when the plagiarism started and document this as well.

If you don’t have any evidence of when you published the original content, you could also use the Wayback Machine to find previous versions of your site to prove you published it first.

Other evidence

If you have previous versions of your website saved, or evidence of when you made the plagiarized content live, make sure to save that just in case you need it.

2. Email the owner

You could jump right to step 3 (cease and desist letter), but I like to start out with an assertive-but-kind email informing the owner of the website that their site contains plagiarized content.

Here’s an email template you can use. It’s based on my own emails to offending websites:

Hi [offender’s name],

My name is [your name] and I’m the creator of [website or plagiarized content], published [date].

Recently I stumbled across [offending content] on [offending website] and noticed a few things that were surprising and concerning:

• [specific example of plagiarism]

• [specific example of plagiarism]

• [specific example of plagiarism]

I also attached screenshots of the copied content.

I kindly request that you remove these items from your website by [date and time].

Thanks in advance,

[Your name]

Notice a few things about this email:

• I don’t accuse the person directly. The owner of the website may not be aware of the plagiarism.

• I reference specific examples of plagiarism. This makes it clear to the person that they’ve truly been caught.

• I am being assertive, but kind, and stating just the facts

• I don’t try to make them feel bad. I think allowing them to take down the content while still keeping their pride makes it easier for them to do the right thing.

• I give them a specific deadline so that I know when it’s time to follow up with step 3 (cease and desist letter).

How to find the website owner’s email

Some websites don’t have the owner’s email listed, or even a contact form. Here are a few ways to find the owner:

• See if there are any social links and follow those

• Google the business name or search LinkedIn

• Do a WhoIs Lookup to see who registered the domain

If you can’t find any contact information for the website owner, you can skip to option 4 (reporting the site to the website host).

3. Send a cease and desist letter

If your first email to the website owner was ignored, sometimes sending a cease and desist letter will get their attention.

A cease and desist letter informs someone that you may take legal action against them if they don’t remove your content.

I personally have never taken legal action against anyone because there are better and easier ways to get the content removed (see steps 4 and 5).

Make sure to send this as soon as your deadline from the first email expires so they know that you’re serious.

To create a cease and desist letter, talk with your lawyer. Or you can create one online using RocketLawyer.

4. Report the site to the host

Instead of trying to fight a legal battle, you can report the offending website to their hosting company. This is the company that uses servers to store the website’s files and allows the website to be online.

Use HostingChecker to find out what company is hosting the copycat site, and contact the website host directly.

Many hosting companies and domain registrars have a way to report something like this directly through their website.

Let’s say you found out that the copycat was using GoDaddy as their website host. You could go to their report abuse page and make a copyright complaint.

For some smaller hosts, you may need to contact them directly to make a complaint.

From what I’ve read, website hosts take these complaints very seriously and will often take down the offending website.

5. File DMCA complaints

If nothing else works, take your complaint right to the source of most traffic: the big search engines.

You can file complaints directly with Google, Bing and other search engines in order to get the plagiarized content removed from search results, which essentially hides it from the web.

You’ve got this!

For all the times that our websites have been copied, the vast majority were resolved quickly with a professional email.

Remember that in the end, copycats probably aren’t a serious threat to your business. The people that rip off your website intentionally, won’t make it far. They want shortcuts to success and you’re way ahead. Keep innovating and looking forward and you’ll leave the competition in the dust.

Good luck, and let us know how it goes!