Evidence

A notice without evidence is usually not answered. Evidence is captured for each page before the notice is written, so that the record shows the page as it was when found, not as it happens to be when someone reads the complaint.

What is captured

• The page as it appeared. A screenshot taken at capture time.
• The passages that match. The text on the page that corresponds to your material, quoted so the two can be compared. Which text counts is defined by the evidence settings below.
• The query and the market. Which search produced the page, in which country, language and device — so the result can be reproduced.
• The time. When the capture was made.
• Both versions of the page. The page is opened the way a search crawler opens it and the way a visitor does. Where the two differ, the difference is recorded: this is the cloaking check.

Captures are stored on their own domain and linked from the notice, so the reader can open them without an account.

Evidence settings

In the project, under Notice settings.

Links to the original. Addresses of your own pages that carry the material — the pages an unauthorised copy would be copying. They are what the notice points to as the source.

Words for quoting. The words and phrases that identify your material: names, product terms, distinctive wording. When a page is captured, these are what is searched for and quoted. Suggestions are offered from your own pages; choose the ones that would not appear on an unrelated site, or the quotes will be noise.

These words are not search queries. Queries are what the system searches Google for; words for quoting are what it looks for on a page once found. They live on different tabs for that reason.

Evidence on or off. With evidence off, pages are recorded by position only and no notices are filed. Useful for a project that only watches.

When a page shows a reviewer nothing

Some pages show the search crawler your material and show a visitor something harmless. A notice about such a page, checked by a person opening the link, is closed as mistaken. Because both versions are captured at the same moment from the same address, the discrepancy itself goes into the notice, and a reader who sees the two side by side understands what happened.

What evidence does not do

It does not make the host remove the page; removal is their decision. It removes the most common reason for a notice to be ignored — that it could not be checked without work.