Disturbing Trend In Bearded Dragon Misinformation on Websites

Rise Of Incorrect, Potentially Harmful Bearded Dragon Misinformation

We’ve noticed over the past few months a disturbing trend in the search results for bearded dragon care information. In some ways it’s always been the case that incorrect information has been given out by websites telling people how to look after their bearded dragons.

In some cases these are simple disagreements about how to best care for your bearded dragon. But in some of the cases the information that is now being put at the top of Google search results is just plain wrong.

For example, we were, as part of our normal operations, checking to see where we ranked for bathing bearded dragons. We’ve never ranked particularly highly for that subject and we’re still not. Though I think we were on page 2 of Google. Whatever – it is what it is. But what we did notice was that the top ranking site was just full – and I mean full of complete nonsense.

It was advising people to bath their bearded dragons to keep them hydrated because they’ll absorb water through their skin and their vent. This has been proven false in at least two separate experiments that we are aware of. There’s probably others that have proven it false too. Bearded dragons DO NOT absorb water through their skin NOR their vent.

How are bearded dragon owners supposed to separate the real information from the misinformation when Google is putting the misinformation at the top.

Plagiarism Of Our Content

Now, we’re also noticing a HUGE number of sites ranking on the first page of Google for various keywords that have blatantly ripped off our content!! When we wrote our article about Is My Bearded Dragon Dying there were NO other articles around that answered the question. None. We looked. Which is why we wrote ours because we had experience in the subject.

Now when we look there are dozens. All have utilised some or most of our own article without even bothering to change the text!! Almost all of them were written within a week in January 2020. And all of them are on sites that have horrendous misinformation within. One of the sites has an article claiming to give advice on how to trim bearded dragon nails (which we wrote too) with an image of an Iguana. That same site has information regarding Juvenile Bearded Dragons, with the featured image being of a Chinese Water Dragon….

They’re clearly just jumping on the bandwagon hoping to capture some traffic and shove advertising in people’s faces without giving a crap about how the beardies are actually looked after.

Unfortunately there’s not a lot we can do about it – but we will do what we can. We at BeardedDragonsRock.com have owned and kept multiple bearded dragons. We’re also degree educated and know how to do scientific based research. And we care about bearded dragons. You can be sure our content came first, and that our content is well researched and will be updated if new evidence comes along. As for the other sites, try getting into an original niche fellas – you’re not welcome spreading your misinformation in this one!