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My WordPress blog is completely cloned. That clone site is updating in real time with my blog. I am surprised that someone can actually do that.

What should I do to stop harmful impact in my search engine ranking? Is there any way to tell Google not to index that site?

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  • I see this now seems to have been "fixed" - the cloned site is no longer "cloning". How did you achieve this in the end?
    – MrWhite
    Mar 31, 2015 at 23:38
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    @w3d After two weeks and several conversation with Amazon Hosting, they decided to shut down that cloned site. Thanks everyone.
    – Tanvir Hasan
    Apr 4, 2015 at 20:23
  • note that dmca.com and google.com/webmasters/tools/dmca-dashboard are different when looking to claim infringement.
    – Sunrise Joz
    Jan 28, 2016 at 16:44

3 Answers 3

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They're simply loading your site via a server-side script. All you need to do is block their server's IP address via .htaccess. Simply open up your server's access logs, open the cloned page on their site, then view your log for the new entry and you'll have their IP address.

It also wouldn't hurt to submit a DMCA request to Google as well but this will not really be necessary as that content will instantly disappear once you block their IP address.

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  • 2
    I am going to double-down on the suggestion to make a DMCA request to Google. We are seeing various forms of this lately and I am just not sure of what the payoff would be. I would, however, suggest not blocking them for a period while Google does it's thing- then I would block them- but you may not have to when Google de-lists them. I am just suggesting that if you file a DMCA complaint with Google,give them a period to investigate before blocking. Otherwise just block them right away.
    – closetnoc
    Mar 21, 2015 at 23:13
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    Hi John Conde, I have tried to block block their ip address via .htaccess file using this code " "command Order Deny,Allow Deny from [that IP address] " But that clone site is still updating in real time with mine. Is that the right code to block that ip?
    – Tanvir Hasan
    Mar 22, 2015 at 10:04
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    @TanvirHasan That is the right idea, providing you have the correct IP address. Is that IP address still appearing in your access log when you visit the "cloned site"?
    – MrWhite
    Mar 22, 2015 at 18:25
  • My hosting provider give put those comand at .htaccess file and they are the one who get that ip address from log. But it is not working.
    – Tanvir Hasan
    Mar 23, 2015 at 1:04
  • Did this ever get resolved??
    – closetnoc
    Mar 24, 2015 at 0:31
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(In addition to @John's answer.)

Is there any way to tell Google not to index that site?

Rather curious that whilst they appear to have cloned everything (including your XML sitemaps*1), they have not cloned your robots.txt file. In fact, the robots.txt on that site actively blocks crawling of everything! So there would not seem to be anything to do in this respect. Doing a site search on that domain returns just the bare domain and a notice stating that its blocked by robots.txt.

(Rather curious what their intention would be in doing this? You could perhaps just assume that they made a mistake with robots.txt - and that maybe so - but this looks more like a deliberate exception to me?)

Also, whilst your XML sitemaps are cloned, they aren't updating the URLs in them (as they are doing on the main site pages), so they are still pointing back to your site.

*1 Regarding the XML sitemap(s). On your site "sitemap.xml" is actually a redirect to "sitemap_index.xml" and the cloned site has actually cloned the redirect... which redirects back to your site! (Surely a mistake on their part.) "sitemap_index.xml" is just an index, linking to 4 other sitemaps. If any of these actual sitemaps are requested directly on the cloned site then they are correctly cloned and the URLs updated. However, I would have said that these sitemaps are unlikely to be found on the cloned site because of the initial redirect of "sitemap.xml". (?) Although if they did submit "sitemap_index.xml" directly then that would obviously get around the redirect.

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    I made a request to the sitemap just a few minutes ago and there is a 301 redirect from the spam site to the original site.
    – closetnoc
    Mar 24, 2015 at 0:19
  • @closetnoc Ah yes! I missed that before. "sitemap.xml" is actually a redirect on the original site as well... it redirects to "sitemap_index.xml". The spam site appears to be cloning this redirect which sends the user back to the original site! If you request any of the 4 sitemaps listed in "sitemap_index.xml" directly on the spam site then the spam site correctly clones them, however, because of the initial redirect I would guess they will be difficult to find, unless they know to submit "sitemap_index.xml" instead of "sitemap.xml". I've updated the answer. Thanks.
    – MrWhite
    Mar 24, 2015 at 8:44
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If the site produces backlinks to you it is important to use the Google Disavow tool otherwise the algorithm will be working against you, regardless.

https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/disavow-links-main

create a .txt file and add:

domain:thedamnsitethatcloned.com

then upload it to Google via Webmaster Tools.

Here are exactly the steps that I would take to resolve this issue. I know that a lot of webmasters face this issue. I have had this problem before and there does not seem to be a straight answer on Google (ironically) (which is why I want to help). Matt Cutts is the dude who you are supposed to listen to about these issues, but listening to him is like trying to win a game of chess against a supercomputer inside a burning house (no help to be found).

The short Cutts:

  1. Register with DMCA and put the badge on your website.
  2. Gather all copied content by pasting the first 60 words from your website into Google and submut VIA https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/dmca-dashboard DMCA requests will only accept permalinks.
  3. Disavow EVERY site which has copied content linking back to you. Do this on every page of your website.

My first answer was to disavow the domain, but I forgot mention that you need to disavow:

  • www. AND
  • non www.

(Google counts them as two separate domains).

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