Piracy is one of the biggest problems on the Internet , and websites related to it have been receiving constant penalties.

Search engines aim to reduce the organic search rankings of content that infringes copyright. Google introduced a filter in 2012 that reduces the visibility of websites reported for numerous DMCA-related takedown requests.

Plagiarism and Content Piracy

An article on the website searchenginejournal.com features a commentary by John Mueller explaining how and why Google might choose to rank plagiarized or copied articles over the original.

Why does Google rank plagiarism higher than original content?

John Mueller explained why Google might rank plagiarized content higher than original content in a Google SEO .

Mueller explains that this can happen when the original content is generally of low quality. Answering the question: “Can you tell me if someone is consistently copying my content and ranking higher than us, … what factors should we consider or what steps should we take…? ”,

Mueller states:

From my point of view, it's something we can largely determine. But even if we know which is the original and which is the copy, sometimes it makes sense to show a copy in the search results. So it's something that can happen.

And one of the situations where I've seen this happen consistently is if a website is of lower overall quality, when our systems look at it, they seem to think, well, we can't really trust this website. But if a higher-quality website were to take some of that content and publish it, we would say, well, we know more about this website and maybe we should show that content in the search results.

This is also one of those situations where you might encounter the possibility of investing in improving the overall quality of your website. Therefore, not just that article that people seem to like, but also the rest of your website in general.

John Muller