I'm about to show you the opening paragraph of my website at
www.thebridesmother.co.uk
I have used this for about two and half years.
I recently did a crawl to see who else in the locality amongst my competitors had a website and I found almost exaclty the same wording on their index page.
Here goes with mine:
"Congratulations.
You have just found the best collection of individual ladies fashions in the north-east. Our designer collection of Mother of the Bride outfits and dresses, Mother of the Groom outfits, and special occasion dresses and suits are from leading fabulous fashion houses. If you're wondering where to buy your outfit then is the best you can expect to see in any boutique in the UK, let alone the north east.
We only buy our stock on trust for you, as it is you who must be satisfied with it more than us. It must therefore fulfil three essential criteria. It has to be superb in style, perfect in quality and above all it must represent the absolute best in value for money. Although we stock many labels, we only choose those items from each suppliers range that matches our own exacting standards.
We make no compromise on this as we don't just want your business today, we want it tomorrow as well. More than that we need your personal recommendations to friends and family. Some of the labels we stock can also be found in the high street clothes shops department stores where they are generally much more expensive. Let's face it, the high street rent and rates have to be paid by someone. This means you. Anyway clothing stores on the high street don't have the same commitment to their customers as we do. The best fashion items are generally sold by independents."
The content of the competitrs site is as follows:
Congratulations. You have just found the best collection of individual ladies fashions in the north-east. Our designer collection of mother of the bride outfits, mother of the groom outfits and special occasion dresses and suits are from leading fabulous fashion houses and is the best you can expect to see in any boutique in the UK, let alone the north east.
Although we stock many labels, we only choose those items from each suppliers range that matches our own exacting standards. We make no compromise on this as we don't just want your business today, we want it tomorrow as well. More than that we need your personal recommendations to friends and family. Some of the labels we stock can also be found in the high street clothes shops department stores where they are generally much more expensive. Let's face it, the high street rent and rates have to be paid by someone. This means you. Anyway clothing stores on the high street don't have the same commitment to their customers as we do. The best fashion items are generally sold by independents.
As you can see, the text is almost verbatim from my site.
While I don't worry at all about the other site taking business from me because the site is so poorly designed in the code, it just doesn't appear on the searches, I am a bit miffed that I have had some of my content stolen.
As we are getting ready for the big season for the sale of mother of the bride outfits I don't want to lose any advantage.
Is plagiarism an actual offence or can it be construed as a copyright issue, although I have no copyright protection as such.