When People Steal Your YouTube Videos, Does it Damage Your Video SEO?

[wordplay]

A number of individuals have been putting my videos
on their own channels for their own purposes (and changing the information and links).

(Example of one of the videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XakDJMXHc1g)

The above video was showing on the front page of Google for a major keyword
phrase. But after others started taking the video, I noticed it dropped to the 2nd page.

I'm wondering if this was a coincidence, or if any of you have had a similar experience?

 

[Theo]

I've seen this happen as follows: they find the popular video, upload the copy, adding their affiliate links to whatever. Unless it's your own intellectual property, there is very little recourse.

 

[wordplay]

Thanks Theo, but have you found it affects your video SEO?

 

[draggar]

I had this happen to me when one of my videos went viral. It looked to me that YouTube also includes views, likes, shares, comments in their internal SEO rankings and most of the time the original has far more hits than the copies.

To compare, my video got over 2 million views in a short time and as far as I can tell, the most popular one that copied my video had fewer than 10,000 views.

I can't say if it does or doesn't but in my one experience, it didn't seem to have much of an effect.

 

[wordplay]

Thanks draggar, but my video only has 300 something views.

And when the thieves took it, their posts of it was ranking better (in YouTube search) than my original. Soon thereafter my Google front page ranking dropped to 2nd page.