I understand you would absolutely love it if search engines rank your website on the top positions. And you are probably aware of the following ranking factors in SEO:
1) Unique content: Is your content original and not copied from another website?
2) Fresh content: When was your content published and when was it last updated?
Pretty straightforward… Or is it? There are a few practical problems you should be aware of: Big websites that duplicate your content have a pretty decent chance of outranking you (since search engine bots crawl bigger websites more often). Publication dates are easily tampered with to trick search engines.
To counter this, people often choose one of the following two not so preferable options: Ignore the problem and let other websites benefit from their hard work. Or Invest time and money in protecting your content by actively chasing the bad guys.
But there is a 3rd option, which doesn’t only help you with these problems, but lets you contribute towards a safer internet as a whole.