Negative SEO attack / cloned website

[Matevzus]

I just noticed today that one of my sites is being attacked by a cloned website.

This is what I know so far:
1. They made a complete duplicate of my website on a different domain
2. I got over 4.000 incoming links from this domain, as well as a lot more from bunch .xyz domains with a high spam score
3. Google has already deindexed my website in some cases. While the site is still getting traffic and is holding in the ranking (for now), I noticed this because meta descriptions and titles are being deleted by google .. also I can't index new content (not allowed)
4. As per point 3. I assume that they reported my site as a duplicate

Has anyone experienced this, or do you have any ideas of how to try to solve this?

I already added disavow for their links, and report it through safebrowsing.google.com, but haven't figured out much else.

Thanks

[Matevzus]

I found an earlier post on this forum about this.

So currently I filed DMCA against it, as well as report to Google.

[gm2891]

Try also getting ANY help/advice from here -- https://support.google.com/webmasters/community?hl=en

[Lee1]

A route that I could recommend is contacting the web hosting company and possibly domain registrar to report the sites.

Especially if you can provide proof.

[Matevzus]

Try also getting ANY help/advice from here -- https://support.google.com/webmasters/community?hl=en

I went over this thread and only thing I found was to report it to Google, which I did.

A route that I could recommend is contacting the web hosting company and possibly domain registrar to report the sites.

Did this too. I guess we'll see how it goes.

[chaumi]

Good luck Matevzus. This is a nightmare. If it happened to me I would not have a clue. Hope it works out.

[Cash Bonus]

Take a look at these sites:

hxxps://ahrefs.com/blog/negative-seo/

hxxps://pigeonpairandme.com/what-to-do-if-your-blog-or-website-is-cloned.html

[Former Member 14]

Try also getting ANY help/advice from here -- https://support.google.com/webmasters/community?hl=en

Unless things have changed, I've found from a past dealings with the Google webmaster forums, anything related to igaming, is frowned upon. In the end I gave up trying to gain any sort of assistance there because all I'd cop is negative comments.

By all means post there, ask your questions BUT be prepared to cop a mouthful of garbage, when most find your an igaming affiliate.

[gm2891]

Unless things have changed, I've found from a past dealings with the Google webmaster forums, anything related to igaming, is frowned upon. In the end I gave up trying to gain any sort of assistance there because all I'd cop is negative comments.

By all means post there, ask your questions BUT be prepared to cop a mouthful of garbage, when most find your an igaming affiliate.

You're righ, i guess because once i had a problem with Elementor and went on their forum to ask for help. I decribed everything as detailed as i could and added screanshots. Everyone seemd there like an "elementor gury" and me -- "a spammer." I did not hyperlink my site URL and even did not mention it because if they would want to help me they could see it on screenshots.


Then i went and started to help others, by providing informationt that i know. And only after that one of their gurus replied to me and said that i must flush cache, etc... LOL

In the end i sorted all out myself.

[Former Member 14]

once i had a problem with Elementor and went on their forum to ask for help. I decribed everything as detailed as i could and added screanshots. Everyone seemd there like an "elementor gury" and me -- "a spammer."

This is going back 12+ years for me, but I asked a question, one of the G member's asked for the URL. I added in via a shortened URL, then I was accused of SEO word stuffing, which frankly, I don't know where they got that notion. Seems they just hated gambling affiliates. Personally I found 95% of the members there were self-serving goofs.

[wonderpunter]

DMCA and disavow.. this has happened to me and usually once the cloned site is removed from the resutls ranking usually jumps back, you will get this a lot so keep your eyes peeled

[Matevzus]

We are still battling this and we definitely took a hit on rankings, hopefully just a short term. It's getting better but we are still waiting for google to resolve some of the search console warnings (Indexed page with no content). At first, it was robots.txt not found ...

As they did this to several of our sites the key takeaway is that the sooner you discover this, the better. As I mentioned one part of this attack is a large number of incoming links from the cloned domain. I should have definitely discovered this much earlier since they started doing this in May. However, these links are only visible in Search Console. Semrush, Moz, and/or Ahrefs do not show it. The second tool I would recommend is Copyspace.
DMCA and disavow are in fact the most effective in dealing with this. However, I would recommend going page by page with DMCA, not just a domain.

Smaller niche sites are more susceptible to this than bigger and branded sites with more sources of traffic obviously.

[Matevzus]

Unless things have changed, I've found from a past dealings with the Google webmaster forums, anything related to igaming, is frowned upon. In the end I gave up trying to gain any sort of assistance there because all I'd cop is negative comments.

By all means post there, ask your questions BUT be prepared to cop a mouthful of garbage, when most find your an igaming affiliate.

I found some threads there on this topic, however it's mostly just links to Google report tools.

[Springbok]

We are still battling this and we definitely took a hit on rankings, hopefully just a short term. It's getting better but we are still waiting for google to resolve some of the search console warnings (Indexed page with no content). At first, it was robots.txt not found ...

As they did this to several of our sites the key takeaway is that the sooner you discover this, the better. As I mentioned one part of this attack is a large number of incoming links from the cloned domain. I should have definitely discovered this much earlier since they started doing this in May. However, these links are only visible in Search Console. Semrush, Moz, and/or Ahrefs do not show it. The second tool I would recommend is Copyspace.
DMCA and disavow are in fact the most effective in dealing with this. However, I would recommend going page by page with DMCA, not just a domain.

Smaller niche sites are more susceptible to this than bigger and branded sites with more sources of traffic obviously.

Have you made any progress with this?