Someone Copying My Hub Title!

1. 81

   David 470posted 11 years ago

   I wrote a recently published hub and I checked the search engine results and I am on the first page, but at the very bottom.  When I looked at the top of the page I noticed someone had the same title as me and they are higher on the search engine page.
   
   What could be the main reason they are higher than me? They just posted the article/blog post a couple days ago, but mine is older.
   
   Is it still a good idea to post hubs on facebook -- could it increase my ranking? I feel like it's kind of strange to do so because I don't want my family friends seeing them. Perhaps I could make a facebook page specifically for a niche and add people who share similar interests?

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   1. 89

      mistyhorizon2003posted 11 years agoin reply to this

      It could well be the content, keywords etc contained in the article that made it rank above yours. It takes far more than a title and age to put an article higher in the search results than another article (which is probably a good thing).

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      1. 81

         David 470posted 11 years agoin reply to this

         I should have noted in my post. The article was only a little over 250 words where mine was over 500. It was just a short simple post of information. More like a blog post, really. He had several pictures, however.
         
         Could the article simply be higher ranking because it has been posted elsewhere? Or is it HubPages as a whole that is making hubs rank less?
         
         I honestly feel like this post nearly copied mine -- or it could be a coincidence.

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         1. 89

            mistyhorizon2003posted 11 years agoin reply to this

            Well the pictures could have helped, and a lot depends on what keywords he used in his 250 words versus what keywords you included in your 500+.  He may also have actively backlinked the article elsewhere which will improve its credibility in Google's eyes (especially as this would also increase his traffic). I do feel HP is ranked lower than other sites as far as Google is concerned, so this too could be going against you.
            
            Unless he directly copied your article virtually word for word it would be hard to say if it is a coincidence or not. Wish I could help more!

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            1. 81

               David 470posted 11 years agoin reply to this

               True. Pictures may have helped to an extent. I am mainly concerned because last year I was targeting similar keywords and had articles reach hundred of views and more fairly easily, but they were ranking better.
               
               And in a couple weeks, these keywords will be very important , but if my ranks on hubs are going to be low -- the quality of the content and length is irrelevant.

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   2. 61

      djdaniel150posted 11 years agoin reply to this

      They may be higher than you because of the quality of their content. I'm sure bad grammar of any kind will affect your grade when it comes to your hubs. Google checks pages it crawls for bad grammar as well as bad or broken code. Google will even remove pages from its index for being sloppy. I am not saying your work is sloppy either, since I haven't read it. I agree with the facebook thing. I don't want my whole family knowing every little thing I do. Maybe a separate page isn't so bad. On the other hand, facebook sucks as bad today as it did the day it was launched. So far, I've decided not to include their social networking buttons on my website, and opted for just using Google +. All those social networking apps actually drive very little if any traffic at all, and they take up space on pages. Let's face it, no one logging into their facebook account cares anything about a link they see posted, because there's 10,000 of them. Besides that, people don't go to facebook to read articles, it's a social networking site and nothing more. "Social!" This is the key word here. Search engines is where you need to find traffic, not social networking sites, they are generally worthless. Facebook will fail before it's all over with.

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   3. 59

      thephoenixlivesposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      If it was just posted, it is the freshness algorithm that Google runs, wait a week or so and it may drop a bit. I doubt it is the content and if the hub is over 2 weeks old it is likely the authority of the subdomain/account.

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2. 84

   drspanielposted 11 years ago

   If you do not wish for your family and friends to be seeing your Hubs, you could just make the posts inaccessible to them. There is a set of options that allows you to do this quite easily, but there is no reason for you to create a new account.

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   1. 81

      David 470posted 11 years agoin reply to this

      Yes, but it would be quite difficult to set the options every time especially considering there are dozens of people I would have to set.

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3. 79

   Uninvited Writerposted 11 years ago

   There are hundreds of articles online with the same title. You can't copyright a title. There are also many books with the same titles.

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4. 57

   Dame Scribeposted 11 years ago

   I have found some articles similar to mine with exact information, reworded, and yes, out page me on the ranks. They are far newer and also another content site. I'm wondering if other writers come to HP to 'rewrite' existing articles for themselves b/c HP has a good PR?

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   1. 61

      djdaniel150posted 11 years agoin reply to this

      Well Dame, the simple answer is yes, people have come to hubpages to publish stolen content! Its terrible, but wheres there's money, there's greed. There's a financial incentive here, so no doubt people have taken advantage of the situation before. If you find your content has been stolen, the next step is to figure out what search engines have indexed your content. Then file DMCA notices with those search engines to have the infringing content removed.

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