Blatant Copyright Violations by TopSEOs.com
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I have had to deal with lot of copyright violations for the content our writing team generates but most of them have been by small sites who think they will pass through the crack.
But I was surprised to see a reputed firm (I am not sure if I can all them reputed) like www.topseos.com following un-enthical practices by violating copyright openly.
Our writers publish lot of articles on ezinearticles.com to promote our sites and our client sites. The content published on ezinearticles.com is protected by copyright and they have clearly specified rules on how you can republish them. But TopSEOs.com decided to copy those articles on their site and replaced the links in the author signature with their own links, pointing to their site topseos.com (clear violation of copyright).
We published an article on Top 10 must have SEO Tools on ezinearticles.com here: http://ezinearticles.com/?Top-10-Must-Have-SEO-Tools&id=2716896 TopSEOs copied the article on their site with our author name and conveniently replaced the author links with their own links. See for yourself: http://www.topseos.com/articles/vikas-s/top-10-must-have-seo-tools/9013/ (pay attention to the author links at the end of the article)
Update (September 9, 2009): Two days back I got another call from Scott (@Top SEOs) saying that they had fixed their articles to comply with EzineArticles publishing guidelines. I did go to the website and check few of the posts and they are in compliance now. I would like to congratulate them for taking the right step.
Update (Aug 16, 2009): I got a call from guy named Scott @ TopSEOs.com. It was a long conversation and they have decided to restore the author links to the original urls. I checked just now and it seems like they have restored my deleted article with links but I can still see them inserting additional links in other author’s article. I hope they are in the process of changing this as Scott said he should be done with all changes to make the articles compliant with ezinearticles republishing guidelines in 4-5 days. Will keep you guys updated. This is a positive step by TopSEOs.com in the right direction. Let us wait for the articles to be fully compliant.
Update (Aug 15, 2009): TopSEOs.com has removed our specific article mentioned in this post but they continue to keep other author’s work and manipulate the signature to get their own links. I had kept a copy of snapshot of the article when it was live on their site and even now Google index shows our article. Here I have attached both:
Original snapshot (now removed on site) - Click to enlarge
Google cache of article (click to enlarge)
Till date no apology from TopSEOs.com and they think they can remove mine and get rid of the issue. They have copied almost every article on their article section from various article sites and changed the link to their sites. Just search for the title of articles on Google and you will see the sources from where these articles have been copied. I am amazed that they decided to go with ignoring this. If you are one the victims, please join hands to discourage piracy and bring the perpetrators to justice. Some authors whose content has been most likely been copied are: Hardeep Sharma Singh, Wendy Maynard, Steve Hochman, Billy Ojai, Jordan Gottlieb, Maria Johnsen and many more. I would request you guys to be a part of this campaign.
On digging deep I saw that they were openly doing it for other authors on ezinearticles as well. Just look at the articles on search engine marketing here (visit each of them and notice the hyperlinks in the author signatures, all have been changed to point to their own pages on topseos.com): http://www.topseos.com/articles/
A company which boast of being an independent authority on vendors who supply internet marketing products and services ranging from the best search engine optimization companies to the best pay per click management tools doing this?
Before they help people figure out “How do I find a competent, trustworthy, and a genuine firm?” (as mentioned on their page: http://www.topseos.com/seo-and-ppc-competition), they should try and figure why anyone should consider them trustworthy at all and who are they to judge trustworthiness when their own deeds point the other way.
I think it is time Jeev Trika (Partner) and Bill Peden (Partner) set things straight and ensure the company makes amends.
Where any of you aware of it? Any similar violations by big firms you are aware of? Do share it here.
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You are right vikas. Such violations must be complained to DCMA and Google too.
Hope that everything becomes alrite after this post.
Yup, they stole a case study from my site (clearly marked copyright, all rights reserved.) This was taken straight from my site, with all links back removed completely.
They even had the gall to mark the article as ’submitted by Peter.’ I did no such thing. They even have a link to contact me… wonder where those messages go.
I notice that they don’t include any instructions for contacting them regarding abuses of intellectual property.
These guys are frauds and I am currently building a wonderful case against them for violating a number of FTC regulations, misrepresentation and fraud. They are paid outright by the companies they rank, and I have some wonderful proof. I cannot wait to see this site taken down.
I had a subscription of leads program from Topseos.com and they delivered me forged and used leads for my investment of $2100 with them, they also refused to offer me refunds and also never come up with any solution except they consumed the whole lead subscription span with sending unsolicited and forged bogus leads. Beware !!
@Rohan: Could you let us know which is your company?