Real Estate Websites Being Unethically Copied
ByThis might not be quite as interesting to the average buyer or seller of real estate or to anyone visiting this blog trying to find information on Oak Lawn, Illinois. However, to those of us that provide websites and blogs to the public, we spend a lot of time and money on these endeavors.
Because I have a large network with other real estate agents throughout the United States, Canada and abroad, we take our websites very seriously and as you can imagine, we are not happy when an uninformed agent steals our content. That is just what happened with an unscrupulous agent in Charleston, South Carolina.
An agent I do happen to network with has spent time and money on creating a beautiful website full of unique content that he either worked on himself or paid to have someone else provide some of the content specifically for his site. His site appears on Google’s lst page for some specific search phrases.
He recently noticed a “copy” of his site (not 100% the exact same style), but with much of his unique content copied word for word. The original site owner contacted the website developer who blamed the client (the real estate agent), for requesting a similar site. The developer said he had no control over the copied content and defended that he changed enough colors and graphics to make the style of the site different enough so that further action to make him change it could not be taken.
The real estate agent of the copied site blamed his developer for copying the content exactly and promised he would make the necessary changes. Who should we believe?
