Content theft and Google duplicate content penalty

>While maintaining a website belonging to a recently acquired client I
>discovered, thanks to Copyscape, that a competitor has "stolen" and
>copied 10 lines from my client's home page.
>As ridiculous and blatant as this theft may seem (no other words come to
>mind to describe it), my clients is not willing to go after these poorly
>minded guys or threaten any legal actions and I thought they would be
>"punished" anyway by Google's duplicate content penalty.
>Surprise. No, it's the other way round or so it seems:
>I take the first sentence I put it on Google search between invertted
>commas. One hit: *Their site* www.theirsite.com/
>Only if a click on "repeat the search with the omitted results
>included", I get three hits:
>Again www.theirsite.com/
>plus www.theirsite.com/default.asp (which is the same page)
>and finally www.oursite.com/index.html
>I'm sure they were the ones who copied and not viceversa (The wayback
>machine says so), I'm also sure my clients pages were already indexed on
>Google 2 years ago when their site did not even exist.
>So, why is it that? This thing annoies me a little.

> On Thu, 29 Mar 2007 13:31:51 +0200, THX-1138 put finger to keyboard
> and typed:
>
>> While maintaining a website belonging to a recently acquired client I
>> discovered, thanks to Copyscape, that a competitor has "stolen" and
>> copied 10 lines from my client's home page.
>> As ridiculous and blatant as this theft may seem (no other words come to
>> mind to describe it), my clients is not willing to go after these poorly
>> minded guys or threaten any legal actions and I thought they would be
>> "punished" anyway by Google's duplicate content penalty.
>> Surprise. No, it's the other way round or so it seems:
>> I take the first sentence I put it on Google search between invertted
>> commas. One hit: *Their site* www.theirsite.com/
>> Only if a click on "repeat the search with the omitted results
>> included", I get three hits:
>> Again www.theirsite.com/
>> plus www.theirsite.com/default.asp (which is the same page)
>> and finally www.oursite.com/index.html
>> I'm sure they were the ones who copied and not viceversa (The wayback
>> machine says so), I'm also sure my clients pages were already indexed on
>> Google 2 years ago when their site did not even exist.
>> So, why is it that? This thing annoies me a little.
>
> What search term are you using? It may be that the ten lines they've
> copied are being better optimised on their site than yours.

>Mark Goodge wrote:
>> On Thu, 29 Mar 2007 13:31:51 +0200, THX-1138 put finger to keyboard
>> and typed:
>>
>>> While maintaining a website belonging to a recently acquired client I
>>> discovered, thanks to Copyscape, that a competitor has "stolen" and
>>> copied 10 lines from my client's home page.
>>> As ridiculous and blatant as this theft may seem (no other words come to
>>> mind to describe it), my clients is not willing to go after these poorly
>>> minded guys or threaten any legal actions and I thought they would be
>>> "punished" anyway by Google's duplicate content penalty.
>>> Surprise. No, it's the other way round or so it seems:
>>> I take the first sentence I put it on Google search between invertted
>>> commas. One hit: *Their site* www.theirsite.com/
>>> Only if a click on "repeat the search with the omitted results
>>> included", I get three hits:
>>> Again www.theirsite.com/
>>> plus www.theirsite.com/default.asp (which is the same page)
>>> and finally www.oursite.com/index.html
>>> I'm sure they were the ones who copied and not viceversa (The wayback
>>> machine says so), I'm also sure my clients pages were already indexed on
>>> Google 2 years ago when their site did not even exist.
>>> So, why is it that? This thing annoies me a little.
>>
>> What search term are you using? It may be that the ten lines they've
>> copied are being better optimised on their site than yours.
>I just used the first of those 10 lines putting it between "..." to
>mean exact match. Do there should not be any optimization issue here.
>Or, am I wrong?

> On Thu, 29 Mar 2007 21:25:04 +0200, Massimo Fabbri put finger to
> keyboard and typed:
>
>> Mark Goodge wrote:
>>> On Thu, 29 Mar 2007 13:31:51 +0200, THX-1138 put finger to keyboard
>>> and typed:
>>>> While maintaining a website belonging to a recently acquired client I
>>>> discovered, thanks to Copyscape, that a competitor has "stolen" and
>>>> copied 10 lines from my client's home page.
>>>> As ridiculous and blatant as this theft may seem (no other words come to
>>>> mind to describe it), my clients is not willing to go after these poorly
>>>> minded guys or threaten any legal actions and I thought they would be
>>>> "punished" anyway by Google's duplicate content penalty.
>>>> Surprise. No, it's the other way round or so it seems:
>>>> I take the first sentence I put it on Google search between invertted
>>>> commas. One hit: *Their site* www.theirsite.com/
>>>> Only if a click on "repeat the search with the omitted results
>>>> included", I get three hits:
>>>> Again www.theirsite.com/
>>>> plus www.theirsite.com/default.asp (which is the same page)
>>>> and finally www.oursite.com/index.html
>>>> I'm sure they were the ones who copied and not viceversa (The wayback
>>>> machine says so), I'm also sure my clients pages were already indexed on
>>>> Google 2 years ago when their site did not even exist.
>>>> So, why is it that? This thing annoies me a little.
>>> What search term are you using? It may be that the ten lines they've
>>> copied are being better optimised on their site than yours.
>> I just used the first of those 10 lines putting it between "..." to
>> mean exact match. Do there should not be any optimization issue here.
>> Or, am I wrong?
>
> It depends on what else is on the page.

> What's the exact wording of the line you're using to check?

>
> Mark