Duplicate content because of content scrapping - please help

[Tit]

We manage brands websites in a very competitive industry that have thousands of affiliate links

We see that more and more websites (mainly affiliates websites) are scrapping our brand websites content and it generate many duplicate content (but most of them link to us back with an affiliate link). Our brand websites still rank for any sentence in brackets you search in Google,

Will this duplicate content hurt our brand websites ?

If yes, should we take some preventive actions ? We are not able to add ongoing UGC or additional text to all our duplicate content and trying to stop those websites of stealing our content is like playing cat and mouse...

Thanks for your advices

[kchan]

Hello,

In general, I believe it won't.  Why? because since your website is the main source, the other affiliates are all linking to that particular product page.  As such, even if these affiliates are scrapping your descriptions, they are all still linking back to that page.  This would suggest to Google, you are the main source, thus you shouldn't get penalised.

Also, even if you change the description, new affiliates would still scrap the content.  However, I think once in a while provided if you have the resources, you should refresh your descriptions to keep the content fresh.

Hope this helps.