This is somewhat risky, no? It's a clear case of copyright theft, and would be trivial to sue unless they hit everything behind cutouts to the extent they weren't traceable.
One would think the owner of the cloned site would notice lower traffic, search, and notice the ad scam. This strategy sounds like it would take months to execute before the competing site died, if not longer.
Am I missing something? I've read lots of seo scams that seem very hard to undo. This one seems....slow, very avoidable, with large legal and reputational risks for the perpetrator.
No, but in a case with a clear paper trail it wouldn't be hard to send a very clearly worded cease and desist showing exactly what damages are expected and how easy it is to prove.
Depending on the size of the company would also be possible to raise a big PR fuss, get on top of Hacker News, etc.
Plus there is DMCA takedown, google's tools, etc. Those are trivial to use.
One would think the owner of the cloned site would notice lower traffic, search, and notice the ad scam. This strategy sounds like it would take months to execute before the competing site died, if not longer.
Am I missing something? I've read lots of seo scams that seem very hard to undo. This one seems....slow, very avoidable, with large legal and reputational risks for the perpetrator.