Ask HN: Has anyone else noticed Stack Overflow clones in Google search results?

#1

Post by rchrd2 » Sat, Aug 22, 2015, 7:55 PM UTC

Has anyone else noticed Stack Overflow clones in Google search results? They come up frequently for me. I can't help but wonder who's behind these. It can't be hurting Stack Overflow's SEO.

So far I have saved 5 different domains, and it looks like 2 have vanished.

- [dead] http://www.codeitive.com/0izVUjjXVP/selective-foreign-key-usage-in-django-maybe-with-limitchoicesto-argument.html

- [dead] http://www.codedisqus.com/0QmqWVgjgg/hide-label-in-django-admin-fieldset-readonly-field.html

- http://w3facility.org/question/image-servingurl-and-google-storage-blobkey-not-working-on-development-server/

- http://goobbe.com/questions/3109325/how-can-i-disable-a-third-party-api-when-executing-django-unit-tests

- http://www.ciiycode.com/0HyN6eQxgjXP/django-admin-inline-popups

I actually wrote Stack Overflow support about this in April 2015, but so far nothing has changed. Here's the thread:

Me: "Hello, There a lots of spam results on Google. As a web developer, I am frequently googling for how to resolve some programming issue. Often, I get these spoofing sites that link to stack overflow.

I would suggest adding a stricter robots.txt or perhaps blocking some of these bots that are scraping your site.

Here is an example. http://www.ciiycode.com/0HyN6eQxgjXP/django-admin-inline-popups

Thank you."

Response: "Hello,

Thank you for reporting this content. I've passed the information along to the person at our company who handles such issues. It's the diligence of users like you that helps us stay valuable!

Please note, bringing these sites into compliance (or getting them to no longer serve our content) is often a long and arduous process. You may not see immediate results. However, rest assured that we're working on it.

Thank you again, Stack Exchange Team"

Thoughts?

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone else noticed Stack Overflow clones in Google search results?

#2

Post by nmbdesign » Sat, Aug 22, 2015, 8:08 PM UTC

Have been noticing this for the last few months too, very weird.

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone else noticed Stack Overflow clones in Google search results?

#3

Post by kjhughes » Sat, Aug 22, 2015, 8:12 PM UTC

See "A site (or scraper) is copying content from Stack Exchange. What do I do?"

http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/200177/234215

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone else noticed Stack Overflow clones in Google search results?

#4

Post by jrockway » Sat, Aug 22, 2015, 8:16 PM UTC

Stack Exchange makes all the content available as a downloadable file, so they must be expecting clones.

https://archive.org/details/stackexchange

They then have a bunch of licensing terms if you reuse the content, which must be what they're referring to by "bringing these sites into compliance is often a long and arduous process".

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone else noticed Stack Overflow clones in Google search results?

#5

Post by plorkyeran » Sat, Aug 22, 2015, 8:19 PM UTC

They've been around for years. A while back a few were sometimes beating SO in google results, but google eventually fixed that. Everything on SO is cc-by-sa licensed, so as long as the source is attributed (and it is on some of the sites), it's legal. The motivation is simple: the clone spam sites have ads on them. They're not actively trying to attack SO; they're just leeching value.

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone else noticed Stack Overflow clones in Google search results?

#6

Post by volaski » Sat, Aug 22, 2015, 8:27 PM UTC

I don't understand why StackOverflow allows this, yeah creative commons is cool and all but it IS NOT COOL for actual users. I get so annoyed every time i search for something on Google and it leads to an its clone site. It's not like StackOverflow has better search than Google (which is ridiculous). I still have to search on Google if I want quality search result instead of StackOverflow. With more power comes more responsibility. StackOverflow's policy feels too irresponsible in this regard

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone else noticed Stack Overflow clones in Google search results?

#7

Post by rchrd2 » Sat, Aug 22, 2015, 8:28 PM UTC

plorkyeran wrote: post #5

They've been around for years. A while back a few were sometimes beating SO in google results, but google eventually fixed that. Everything on SO is cc-by-sa licensed, so as long as the source is attributed (and it is on some of the sites), it's legal. The motivation is simple: the clone spam sites have ads on them. They're not actively trying to attack SO; they're just leeching value.

I guess it's a win-win situation. Stack Overflow's ranking goes up, because of all the sites referencing it, and the spammers make money.

But as a consequence, the users have to sift through spam results.

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone else noticed Stack Overflow clones in Google search results?

#8

Post by rhinoceraptor » Sat, Aug 22, 2015, 8:39 PM UTC

volaski wrote: post #6

I don't understand why StackOverflow allows this, yeah creative commons is cool and all but it IS NOT COOL for actual users. I get so annoyed every time i search for something on Google and it leads to an its clone site. It's not like StackOverflow has better search than Google (which is ridiculous). I still have to search on Google if I want quality search result instead of StackOverflow. With more power comes more…

Just append your query text with 'site:stackoverflow.com'.

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone else noticed Stack Overflow clones in Google search results?

#9

Post by ivanca » Sat, Aug 22, 2015, 8:40 PM UTC

jrockway wrote: post #4

Stack Exchange makes all the content available as a downloadable file, so they must be expecting clones. https://archive.org/details/stackexchange They then have a bunch of licensing terms if you reuse the content, which must be what they're referring to by "bringing these sites into compliance is often a long and arduous process".

They even have a tool/site to query the data: https://data.stackexchange.com/stackoverflow/query/new

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone else noticed Stack Overflow clones in Google search results?

#10

Post by JasonPunyon » Sat, Aug 22, 2015, 8:42 PM UTC

volaski wrote: post #6

I don't understand why StackOverflow allows this, yeah creative commons is cool and all but it IS NOT COOL for actual users. I get so annoyed every time i search for something on Google and it leads to an its clone site. It's not like StackOverflow has better search than Google (which is ridiculous). I still have to search on Google if I want quality search result instead of StackOverflow. With more power comes more…

We use that license because it protects the content from us. No matter who comes along to run Stack Overflow in the future, Stack Overflow can't do something like put up a paywall and lock it up. Someone else'll just be able to host a copy.