Need to vent: someone stole all my content

[BradT81]

Hello,
I am enraged at the moment and just need to vent. So I run a web development compnay (http://wwww.techguywebsolutions.com) Weve been around for around 4 years. We had really good rankings for good keywords like Joomla web design, affordable web design, etc. Anyway, I noticed my site was quickly moving down. I know there is alot of the penguin updates aftermath , etc but I never engaged in spam for seo or anything like that.

So yesterday I decided to highlight some text on pages that seemed to disappear from google and my site does not come up but this other site http://www.traitdesign.com does. I thought it was odd and figured they were jerks that just copied some text from me. Then I browse their site and noticed that they had stolen EVERY bit of content from my site. The menu struture, the pages, images that I created, etc. All that is different is their template. They even have 3 images in their slider with pictures of websites that my company built. That is just straight up illegal.

I couldnt fathom that someone would be so low as to do this. So back to Google, it seems all the pages they copied, mne got dropped. Whay google would do this is beyond me. They can tell that my pages were up 3 years before theirs. I have lost business because of this

If you have some time, take a look at what they did...browse a few pages
my site - techguywebsolutions.com
their site - traitdesign.com

All pages are the same and get this....they copied my TETIMONIALS page and just replaced my name with theirs. These are personal messages from my clients...

Im not sure what to do here. Do I call a lawyer? I worked hard on all my content and it makes me feel ill that someone would just take it ALL like that....

thanks
Brad

 

[chrishirst]

Do I call a lawyer?

Yep and send a DMCA complaint to the other site and to google.

 

[Phreaddee]

indeed you should get a lawyer!

your testimonials is outrageous. word for word. even the clients name is the same. still you've got the links to your clients sites on there. and no doubt the original emails/letters to back it up.

and yes like chris said a DMCA complaint to the other site and to google.

I can't believe someone would do that, that is seriously dodgy.

 

[AsheSkyler]

That's just stupid to no end. Even if the guy tries to put up a fight, you've got several solid witnesses in the form of your clients alone to back you up and say "yeah, he's a lyin' arse".

Er, on one positive side, a saying in the art community goes "you know you've achieved greatness when somebody parades your work as their own". Congrats on being an outstanding techie?

 

[ian]

I gave up worrying about these things a long time ago.
It is annoying and those people who do it, are really low and pathetic.
And yes, often because they do a lot of spamming on high profile sites, they can rank better than the original content creator.
In my experience, google has never done anything about complaints if you make them.

 

[notarypublic]

It appears they have a new site, now - wonder if it's stolen from somewhere else?