What reason would scrapers, and syndication sites outrank all of our content?

[upbuiltgames]

Typing in any of our titles for content, scrapers and content syndication sites all outrank us by quite a bit. What is the main reason for this usually? I started noticing this happening quite a bit this year, and think maybe it has to do with panda. Has anyone figured out the reasoning?

[wrttnwrd]

A few possibilities. We just went through this:

1. If your site recently got hacked and delivered malware, Google may temporarily remove your site or push it down in the rankings. Assuming you fixed it, you should recover fairly soon.
2. Do you rank #1 for your own brand name? If not, you may be under a Penguin or Panda penalty. Did you get a warning message from Google regarding unnatural links?
3. Is the content on your site unique? (aside from the scrapers) If it's not, that can cause what you're seeing.

[EGOL]

What is the main reason for this usually?

I don't think that there is really a main reason for this....   a couple things play in concert..

As with many sites that produce great content  my bet is that... Lots of people have grabbed your stuff and are using it.  They are using your titles and your brand and your words and your images to enrich a site that is monetized with ads or affiliate programs.   Some of these people are really smart about optimization.  Some of them have created sites that have become moderately powerful.

Perhaps this has not been theft.  Perhaps you gave your content away and now you are paying the price for creating duplicate content that is being used against you by smart people.

And, google says that they are "good at recognizing relevant content to return  to the searcher"... but they have not decided to put the resources into returning the original version - even after we tell them which version it is with rel=author as they requested.  They have simply not decided to put the resources into this- even though I am sure that some of them would like it to work that way.

There you have it.