One of our clients does a great job writing tons of original content on their websites. If you search for a neighborhood in certain parts of Charlotte, you’ll see at least 1 or 2 of their websites on the first page of Google. They’ve worked very hard for this, and you can imagine their surprise when they stumbled upon a competitor’s site that had “lifted” their copy, word for word.

There are two very good reasons why you should never steal someone else’s copy.

1. You can get sued. If you have a few minutes, read this blog from ActiveRain. This is serious stuff. People spend time and money on their content … if you steal it, you’re risking a pricey lawsuit.
2. It won’t help you, anyway. Google is very smart — that’s how they became the 300-ton gorilla of search engines. When they index sites, they know if one site is a copy of another (or if one block of text is a copy of another), and will mark it as spam content. So apart from risking the aforementioned lawsuit, you will not get very good search results by doing so.

Typically, this is the result of a lazy website developer or content creator. If you’ve paid someone to create a website for you and you find out that they stole copy, it’d be a good idea to find a new technology vendor! Most technology companies don’t know much about real estate (that’s where Davis Farrell is different, ahem), and so they might cut a few corners on content. With technology, as with some real estate, buyer beware!