I'm going through some of my hubs and searching for a phrase, using quotes in the search.
Google repeatedly is showing the exact phraseology being used on multiple sites, but when I visit the page I am unable to find it; there are always dozens of other pages on the site and it would take hours and hours to find just on example on one site.
Is there any way to force the SE to go directly to the offending phrase rather than the landing page of the site?
(For those interested, I'm repeatedly finding that a "Dan Gordon", with nearly 300 sites, is scraping my material and putting entire hubs on his sites. No adsense and no textual links so I'm not sure why it's being done. It hasn't ranked above me, yet, but I still want it down. I just can't find much of it on his sites)
I tried copyscape, and it produced 10 sites. All from HP, all with the identical phrases that HP puts on the screen.
In any case, knowing the phrase isn't the problem - finding it in a 50 page site is. G says it's there, but doesn't show just where, and I'm leery of filing a DMCA for something that I can't find.
Just found 3 more from the same b******, too. Just can't find the exact location on the site where it's done.
Dan Gordon is the one who has my work on his sites, too. Unfortunately, after you report a site to Google once, you can't resubmit it. Some of his sites pop up in searches of exact text (in quotes) from my hubs. For a few days, it looked like they were taken down, and now it's not so.
I submitted a message to Google under their feedback link in Webmaster Tools - which probably won't go anywhere, but I don't know anywhere else to complain. And 'Dan Gordon' is probably a fake name.
I suppose I can see G not wanting to field 10 complaints from one person about one site. At this point I haven't found that, but have found multiple domains with the same "Dan Gordon" and the same scraped content.
I don't get why he's doing it, though. He has a bunch of links up but no adsense. Does he just need "filler" to make a page for the links? Just for SEO? His pages that I've seen don't rank anywhere at all for the keywords - no one will find them unless he's linking to them in a series of gateway articles.
I've read a forum post that said he was using the content to build Micro Niche Websites. I've no idea how that makes him money but I've found my Hub on Tower Bridge used as filler in the middle of sites about Mixed Martial Arts and Laundry products.
If he's following something like the Keyword Academy, it's common for them to recommend no advertising until you hit 100 unique visitors daily.
I think the idea is (a) not to scare off visitors by bombarding them with advertising and (b) not to get "smart priced" by Adsense.
Personally I think it's mad. There's lots of advertising you can use other than Adsense, and if you do it tastefully, it doesn't have to annoy readers. I know plenty of people who make income from their blogs long before they get to 100 daily visitors.
Yeah. Mine on wiring a light switch was on a page about attorneys. Nothing I saw was ever on topic, according to what else was on the page.
It's also at least some reason not to be TOO upset; he will never rank for my keywords. I hope.
I wouldn't count on that, Wilderness - the traffic for the main hub he scraped from my work dropped by at least 90 percent. The other hub dropped, too. Also, some of the search results for specific phrases in quotes have,shown his sites ranking above mine.
And so you promptly shoot down the poor, forlorn hope that what little traffic I see I might keep in spite of the thief. Thanks a lot Marcy!
Truthfully, it doesn't make much difference insofar as I will pursue this scumbag whether it does or not. I've been pretty lucky over the years and not had much stolen. Guess it's time to "pay my dues" and put some time into protecting my work.
Sorry to hear that you are being plagiarized or content being stolen. I have one hub that was spun about 10 times on 10 sites. It was spun so much by someone that really didn't proofread it or perhaps English was at best, a second language. One was spun so bad that it went from being a boring hub of mine about common household items, to something that read more like a harlequin romance novel / love letter, with some baseball terminology thrown in. It was almost so stupid, yet funny, I almost deleted my hub out of some kind of reverence for the spun article's goofiness.
Not to make light of the problem.
Making light of it or not, it made me laugh. I might have to delete mine, too, if I found something like that.
I wouldn't worry so much about content being stolen as google usually know where the original content came from. The only worry would be is if the person stealing your content changed their time line after posting it to show they wrote it before you did. If their site is being crawled every few hours and your hubpage is only being crawled every few days, then google will think the other site was the original content creators.
Here's a couple of things you can do to stop this. As soon as you write and publish your content, get it out there on as many social networks as possible, as quickly as possible, so people can read, share and link to it. That will get Google to crawl it much faster, and help back up any claims by you, if you wanted to file a DMCA notice against the thief with evidence.
If the site stealing your content is an automated spam machine, and crawling various places to fill their site with junk, file a spam report against that low quality site, and get them slapped into space.
You can find more information about this if you go to YouTube and watch some of Matt Cutts video's. He answers a lot of questions about your concerns.
And yet there are quite a few reports where hubbers have found copied material ranking better in the SERPs than their own original. Others have found their hubs dropping a few spots spots in the SERPs even though the duplicate is far down the list.
Whatever Matt Cutts says, google doesn't always put original ahead of copies and it does slap duplicate material irregardless if it is original or not.
You are right, Wilderness - the African 'job site' that copied one of my hubs only recently now has three links ranking above my original work. Infuriating.
As you said, Google doesn't filter for dates, etc. - and the problem we are seeing is widespread here. I've spent another several hours today tracking down copied content and filing DMCAs - very time consuming. And of course copies will pop up again before we know it.
I find it necessary to police my own work, although I have seldom done so in the past.
Within a month I will sign up with copyscape (or some other method) and use it monthly. From what I've seen it will cost me around $10 per month to check each one of my hubs; an acceptable business cost to me, and one I would hope to recoup with better traffic. Even if I don't recoup that cost, it is still worth it, IMHO, to keep the thieves away.
Wilderness - I haven't looked into copy scape yet - do you know whether you can use one 'subscription' for all your domains or subdomains? Or do you purchase them separately?
I'm not very familiar with it either, although I did look through their information. As I understand it you can have it look at any page you wish, and you can give it a list to check as well as individual URL's.
So, give it a list of all your HP material, plus your Lenses plus your blogs and it will check them all. I think.
I wouldn't recommend going for the subscription option. Instead, go for the "Premium" service, where you pay per use.
You enter the URL's you want checked on a list and you are charged per URL. You can export your Hubs as a .csv file (which will open as an Excel file), then cut and paste the URL's into Copyscape.
Copyscape saves the list so you can run it again as you need it.
That's the one I was thinking of as well, Marisa. Thanks.
So each hub would be submitted individually, at a per-use rate? Might be a good way to go.
However, several of us found sites that didn't appear to have our content, but showed up in searches. I reported everything that showed up in a search, and Google (finally) began deleting even those that didn't appear to have the content, because they were linking enterprises. I wonder if Copyscape would pick up those sites, too?
I believe you can submit hubs individually or a whole list that you can then save and re-do at a later time. That way you can submit each hub you have and re-run the group whenever you want to. And yes, on a per-page cost basis.
I have no idea about those I couldn't find my content on - it might be interesting to see if copyscape finds those, too. There were probably more of those (from our friend Gordon) than pages I found my content on.
Before joining hubpages I was on another site called expertscolumn. I wrote an article called "health benefits of pineapple fruit", which reached number one for quite a few keywords. A few weeks later after copy-pasting a few paragraphs into the search bar, I seen it churned out absolutely everywhere around the web.
I sent out email after email to as many as I could and had success in having the duplicate content removed from some sites. Some webmasters I contacted had no clue (or so they said) it was duplicated and blamed the people writing for them.
The article is still duplicated on other sites with no link back to me at all. Last time I looked, my article was still on page one of Google in third spot for its keywords. It only dropped to third spot after a site I got a backlink from went no-follow.
Do you have a little "find" thingy in your browser application that lets you search for a word or phrase on a page or in a document?
No. That's the kind of think I need, too. What browser are you using. I'm using FF, but don't see anything like that.
I'm using FF, and using a Mac.
If I go up to the 'edit' function-- there is a pull down menu. Select that and a little search box may appear at the bottom of the page you are on.. works for me.
LOL. I missed that. But did look around for an add on, finding references to cntrl F. Lo and behold, it brings up the same toolbar that the "find" button does.
So far, so good, but it only works on the page you're on. I apparently need something that works everywhere on the site as there are often a couple dozen pages to go through.
Thanks, Rochelle - that will be a big help even on the front page as they are often quite long and this guy's headings don't make much sense - I can't just scroll down looking for my title.
Yes, Control F works too-- I always forget about those.
Happy hunting!
Oh, there's nothing "happy" about it - it infuriates me to find stolen material. Part of the job, though, I guess. Sure wish G would get serious about helping with the problem too.
Thanks again, Rochelle - that's a nifty little tool.
wilderness, Dan Gordon of 2950 New Market Street, Ste 101- 241 New Market St, Bellingham, Washington, 98226 is a complete pain in the arse. Not only does he have 229 domains registered through Go Daddy but he also has others (I suspect 100s) that are registered through the domain privacy service Domains by Proxy (a Go Daddy company). So far this week I've sent him 3 DMCA complaints directly and another 2 which I've sent to Domains by Proxy and which have both turned out to registered to Dan the Man.
If there are any Hubbers from Bellingham, Washington out there please feel free to pop round and box his ears.
He may be targeting APs as I have heard of others with a Dan problem, although it may well be site wide.
I think Horatio might mean the AP program? Several of us have been abused by the same Dan Gordon. I'm sure others here have, too.
NOTE TO ADMINS: There are several threads about the same guy & the same issue. Do you have access to someone at Google who can look into this? Our formal complaints are going nowhere.
Marisa - sorry, meant those of us who have been in the Apprentice Program.
I think that HP should lend a hand and look into this since one person is hurting multiple HP authors. Good suggestion Marcy!
Sounds like the guy, all right. Lots of domains everywhere. I've sent him 4 requests today, but if (when) he doesn't respond maybe I'll just go to the host and google for all the others I'm sure I'll find.
Wonder what GoDaddy would have to say if they got a few hundred complaints all on the same guy but different domains?
And complaints of support. Let's create "HOW Movement II" and blast Go Daddy's site with a million emails.
Yeah - suite 101A. 2950 Newmarket street, suite 101 is the address of Pak mail - a mailbox service. Want to guess what the "A" stands for?
Just curious, have you managed to find any of the copied Hubs yet?
The reason I ask is, this has happened to me before and I've searched right through the site without success. I finally came to the conclusion that the site had deleted the copy for some reason, but that Google hadn't recrawled the site since the deletion.
Marisa - yes - I did find the exact text, several times. Just this morning, in fact. I've sent the jerk person emails, added the search results to my complaints to Google, etc. Many of the search results don't show the text, and I don't know enough about how it works to know whether there's hidden text or if it's just not updated in the search engines.
The guy has stolen massive amounts of stuff - and his sites are still there. Inbound several that are link farms - tons of words highlighted that link to other sites, but they're not related to the sites they're linking to (random words used for hyperlinks, all in my hub text).
I don't understand why they haven't just taken down his sites completely. It's a violation of the law, it violates writers, it games the system, and it should not be tolerated.
Marcy, all of Dan Gordon's sites that I've come across - including all of yours that appeared in the link you posted on Alison Graham's forum thread - are Wordpress blog sites not Google Blogger sites.
I found some on Blogger. I'm not clear what I should do? Do I complain to Wordpress? Google is the search engine. Confused.
You complain to Blogger
http://support.google.com/blogger/bin/a … wer=157218
If this Dan guy doesn't have Adsense, complain to GoDaddy for his GoDaddy hosted blogs:
"Go Daddy requests that the Complaining Party substantiate such claim by providing Go Daddy with the following information via email to CopyrightClaims@godaddy.com. The words "Copyright Claim" should appear in the subject line. A copyright claim can also be submitted by mail to: Copyright Agent, Go Daddy, 14455 N. Hayden Road, Suite 219, Scottsdale, AZ 85260
To be considered effective, a notification of a claimed copyright infringement must be provided to Go Daddy and must include the following information:
An electronic signature of the copyright owner, or a person authorized to act on behalf of the owner, of an exclusive copyright that has allegedly been infringed.
Identification of the copyrighted work claimed to have been infringed, or, if multiple copyrighted works at a single online site are covered by a single notification, a representative list of such works on that site.
Identification of the material that is claimed to be infringing or to be the subject of infringing activity and that is to be removed or access to which is to be disabled, and information reasonably sufficient to permit Go Daddy to locate the material.
Information reasonably sufficient to permit Go Daddy to contact the Complaining Party, such as an address, telephone number, and, if available, an electronic mail address at which the Complaining Party may be contacted.
A statement that the Complaining Party has a good faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law.
A statement that the information in the notification is accurate, and under penalty of perjury, that the Complaining Party is the owner, or is authorized to act on behalf of the owner, of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed."
Beautiful. Thanks, Marisa. Something tells me I'm going to be doing a few of these.
Interesting that the requirements, except for the subject line, are those listed in the learning center.
FYI - I found several dot coms registered to him. They were GoDaddy.
Yes - I've sent for demands today that they be taken down. I've also found at least 6 more that G says is a duplicate, that look like the same kind of work but that I cannot find the duplication on.
What I meant to say was, when you go to those sites where you can't see the copy, do you eventually find it if you trawl through the whole site? Or is it not there?
Sometimes I can find it when the "find" feature of FF doesn't work. There are some idiosyncrasies with that tool that I haven't quite mastered.
I searched several by eye, though, and found nothing and quite a few. Nor is just his sites; this morning I've searched for snippets of every hub I've got (174 of them!) and found several instances where G says there is a duplicate but it's simply not there. Mostly search engines, but sometimes other sites as well. Ask.com is a common one - G says they're showing it but they are not.
Like I said, I've come to the conclusion that the site has removed the article but Google hasn't recrawled it yet. Especially Ask.com - they're pretty quick at removing plagiarized content.
Have you considered using Copyscape? When you consider the time it saves, it's not that expensive.
Either copyscape or plagspotter. I've just spent the entire day so far searching for dupes; I'm all for something easier even if it costs me some. Part of the cost of doing business.
I think you're right about the re-crawling, too. I can't fathom what this yahoo is doing - the hubs just seem to be filler for a site he'll eventually do something else with.
I was surprised how cheap Copyscape worked out. I use the Premium version.
The annoying thing when I used it, was that it picked up on all the links on HubPages. I see from their new brochure that you can now exclude sites you know are OK, so that would make a big difference to the ease of use.
I really should run another check soon...
I saw that when I ran a "freebie"; all the instances were from HP putting their stuff on the hub. It would be nice to include HP (we all know there are thieves here, too) but if we can't, we can't.
How much is the Premium, Marisa, and how many checks can you make per month?
Premium is .05 cents per URL (but I think you already found that out) and you can do as many checks as you want. I only check every three months or so.
I wasn't quite sure from the directions, but can you input your profile and check everything in the subdomain with a single click or do you have to input in each hub separately?
Or if you tried that would it check everything in HP?!?!
You have to input each URL separately in the box - but then it will save the list so they're all there next time, and you just have to click a button.
I exported my Hub list as a csv, opened it in Excel, then cut and pasted the list of URL's.
Well, I guess that's not too bad. I'd have to figure out how to do the csv thing, but I can do that. Thanks, Marisa - guess I'm going to have to start paying a little to keep up with this garbage.
I've now filed on about 30 duplicates; hope that the 2 days work pays off at least a little bit.
My sympathies, wilderness. It took me flippin ages to file on duplicates. The copiers probably pinched the hubs in two seconds flat.
Less, I suspect. From the look of the sites he doesn't care what it is as long as it's words on the page. Just wants filler.
Probably all done by robot - click a button and it finds something and puts it on the page, goes back and finds more until he's got a few thousand words. Press "publish".
Suddenly, I feel really old. We didn't even have computers in our school......
I did! At least in college. And if you consider a mainframe taking up the space of a house, located hundreds miles away and with communication via a teletype and punched paper ribbon as being "in school".
We did have on electronic calculator on site though - a massive thing twice the size the size of a desktop computer. It even had a square root key - think of that! They kept it on the third floor of the science building and it was the only one in the whole university.
Times change, don't they? I'm getting to old to keep up with it all - you can only teach an old dog so many new tricks.
If hubs or parts of hubs are being stolen and posted, why isn't everyone getting the dreadful "duplicate content, rewrite/revise your content" email from hubpages? Why is it that when you happen to search, that's when you find all of this thievery going on? I'm confused.
Not only does HP not find anything like ALL the duplicates, it often misses them for considerable periods of time. You can't depend on HP to find thieves stealing your work.
If that happened we would have to take down our hubs the people that are doing this would not be punished at all.
Well, well.
I filed 2 DMCA's with this Dan Gordon, covering 4 of his pages. Just got a notice from him that the pages are down; 2 of them are actually gone. Two more are still up - will check again in the morning to give them a little time to actually disappear.
Have to wonder if he is a hubber or is watching the forums here and saw this thread. Anyone else have your stolen stuff disappear?
Dear Wilderness:
I read your complaint about Godaddy selling urls to the so-called "Jack Gordon" who is stealing copyrighted Hub Pages content and infringing Google Adsense terms and conditions.
Finding copied material is a major pain increasingly felt by more and more hubbers! What is the point in writing articles on Hub pages only to have them copied and pasted on someone else's website or blog and monetized for profit? It affects the overall incomes at Hub Pages. It hits the Hub Pages company's pockets too. And the urls for these offending sites and the copied and stolen content - are sold from GoDaddy? And Godaddy won't deal with the issue...? That right?...
So I tweeted this...
Text reads
" Why #GoDaddy has it in for #HubPages ? Sells urls for copied content & won't resolve complaints & Google Adsense issues http://bit.ly/UwIgNv "
Feel free to retweet it from my twitter ID. It basically is a true statement, according to you. So spread the word, and force those who are ultimately responsible - to deal with it. The link refers directly to this Forum thread. If enough people did this, it would eventually come up in Godaddy's Twitter stream. The emphasis put on the words with hashtags ensures they are noted by all.
And they won't like that one little bit. Neither will Google. (Oops I forgot to hash tag the Google Adsense words, boo hoo...) Handier still if your twitter feed runs across your Facebook main page like mine does...over 400 followers there, many use Hub Pages...
Or feel free to make your own tweets, in a similar fashion, and get Godaddy's and their customers attention... Must be lot's of them...
That's how you deal with it. Get them to deal with it.
You need to be very, very careful with your accusations. So far I have not sent a DMCA to GoDaddy at all - I cannot say they will do nothing. Of the 4 complaints sent to Dan Gordon, 3 have been removed.
It would probably be wiser to see if GoDaddy quickly resolves the stolen content and the tweet a praise of them - more results with the carrot than the stick.
I don't think people have only just started filing DMCA's with GoDaddy, so it's not true to say GoDaddy has refused to do anything about it.
What we need is a campaign with everyone sending DMCA's to GoDaddy to get their work taken down.
File DCMA's they do work. Ive had a blogger blog shut down due to a young person scrapping my Hubpages stuff. Got confirmation of shutdown from Google this morning.
Hey, I think I've got a couple of possible solutions for you.
First of all I'll suggest you to use http://www.plagspotter.com/ instead of CopyScape, I find this tool much better and suitable. Seems like Copyscape is now long time forgotten. I think PlagSpotter is capable to find the exact page you're looking for.
Another tip I would like to share is a one of the tricks in Google Search. Maybe you have heard about Advanced Search in Google, it's when you can use specific commands to point the search into right way. As for your particular situation you should try this:
1) go to Google
2) type 'site:example.com sought-for-text'
Don't use ' ' in your actual search; example.com = domain name on which you are trying to find your content; sought-for-text = a sentence of text you are looking for. It will force Google to look for your text only at this one particular site and not just everywhere on the Web.
Sorry for my bad English, but this should help. Will follow the topic in case you need another advice.
That looks very useful, and will be tried later this morning as I'm going to go through every hub I have in the next few days. Thanks.
The problem seems to be bigger than first thought, I have found at least one of my hubs copied word for word on several sites that deal with real state,veterinary, even one for "Ashton Kutcher".
The problem is that it does not show how to contact the sites and when you click on the "author" it goes to another site.
Here are some samples: (the links won't work to avoid giving them back-links)
macappstore.corpcode.info/category/app-store/
utah.feelgoodcap.com/for-rent/bouncing-an-exercise-in
kutcher.intuitiveenough.com/category/iowa/
Luis, you have to check for them via Whois.com. You can do it here;
http://www.whois.com/whois/
search for;
corpcode.com
feelgoodcap.com
intuitiveenough.com
They all come up. corpcode.info is registered to the above mentioned Dan Gordon. Use the email addresses mentioned in the Whois report to file the DMCA.
Good luck.
I've been using whois.com to find the author and host.
I pulled up your first link and it does indeed look very much like the same kind of crap I'm getting. Running it through whois shows that it is another "Dan Gordon" site through GoDaddy and with the same email I used to reach this character.
I have found places with my exact words and they even rank higher than my hub. I did send a DMCA to Google and this is what I got back. Hello,
Thanks for reaching out to us.
We have received your complaint dated 01/25/12. The allegedly infringing content located at http://kamel-forum.de/kamele/member is not associated with a Google product. Please contact the appropriate website administrator if you would like this content changed or removed.
If you are requesting the removal of non-Google hosted URLs from Google's search results, we ask that you use the appropriate form by selecting "Web Search" at google.
Regards,
The Google Team
I did use the appropriate form by selecting "Web Search but it didn't do any good, seems Google is not going to do anything about this. How come these guys don't get caught by panda.
On that website there is no place to complain.
This is because it is a Wordpress site, not a Google blogger one. Use Whois.com to look up the registrant and send the DMCA to the email address listed.
http://www.whois.com/whois/
enter kamel-forum.de and see what comes up.
Just got a response from GoDaddy and it seems that this "gentleman" is notorious for doing this. They will let me know about their investigation when it is done.
Please let us know, Luis. I'm going through my hubs and have found at least one more, but expect to find many.
If we can get enough people filing claims it just might be possible to shut him down completely, at least from GoDaddy. If I find as many as I expect I'll start another thread listing them and include a link to that thread in the DMCA with a request that all his domains be taken down. Get 50 or 100 hubs listed there, all being filed on, and GoDaddy just might do that.
It is a great suggestion: make a list of all copied hubs and send them to GoDaddy, Blogger, Google etc. This may be the way to go! Great suggestion Wilderness!
That's what I'm thinking, or at least put a link to that thread in the DMCA, asking that it be looked into. Maybe a comment that this guy is an obvious thief, the web doesn't need him and neither does GoDaddy.
I would love to drown GoDaddy in claims about him. So far I haven't seen anything from anywhere else but I've already got 4 more to file, plus the 4 from yesterday. You've got some, and so do others in this thread.
WTG, Luis. I see you posted some "links" in the other thread.
I looked at one, from proxydomains, but I'd lay my bottom dollar it is the same guy. Same MO and same GoDaddy. I've got a few of those as well I've got to file on; will post them there, too.
GoDaddy sent me an email. In a nut shell what they are saying is that they are not the hosting provider... never mind that these sites are hosted by Go Daddy.
"Support Staff Response
Dear Luis E Gonzalez,
Thank you for contacting the Copyright Claims Department.
We are not the hosting provider for this site. We have neither access to, nor jurisdiction over the content on this site.
The web hosting provider for this website is the company responsible for policing this content and is required to respond to Copyright complaints as outlined by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).
Additionally it might help to use an NSLookup tool that will allow you to see resolving IP address for these websites. An NSlookup tool can be found at http://www.kloth.net/services/nslookup.php. This tool will give you the resolving IP address which can then be compared to ARIN.net's (http://www.arin.net) IP allocation database. This will give you the relevant information for the true hosting provider. For your convenience I've included the resolving IP address."
So I come back from dinner and find this!
I pull up the arin dot net and plug the ip address into the whois search box in the upper right. It gives me a bunch of junk, including what may be the provider along with an email address to the "abuse" contact.
Back to work, but tomorrow. Enough for one day!
Well, I should be getting this same message any time now. I just filed a few complaints with them, too. Thanks for posting this, Luis and Wilderness.
I just used the method of putting a phrase from a hub into Google, within quotation marks. OMG. My entire hub text is copied word for word. Only the title has been removed. No pics or ads. It's on a site supposedly by two doctors from the universities of Idaho State and Oklahoma, posted January 18th. My hub has been doing well for months here and is page one of Google. I could spit!
Would people recommend filing a complaint with Google, or might it be worth contacting the authors in this case?
Authors, no, unless you mean who wrote the site.
Use "whois.com" to find an email address for the site and send them a DMCA, If that doesn't work (and it usually does the trick) send one to the host site. At least that's my method.
Fun, isn't it? So far this morning I've found 12 complete copies and 1 partial. One guy has written me back saying he knows it's plagiarized and he will take care of it in a couple of days when he gets back into town. If he knows it's stolen why is it on his site??
Thanks, wilderness, I'm reading up on how to do this. You must have had a busy day! Sorry to hear you're having this trouble.
If that guy could contact you to say he'll take them down, he must have access to a computer. So how come he doesn't take them down now? Aargh. There are some mean people out there.
There are mean people that will deliberately harm you and there are many, many more that simply don't care. Like this one.
He emailed me from his mobile; likely it would be a job to take down his page with only that. He can have his couple of days, particularly as that was the copy with only a couple of paragraphs. He says he will give me a backlink to the hub; with just a little of it copied that satisfies me.
I hope it works out well for you, wilderness. Have now found two more hubbers' work on the site with mine, ( emailed them,) also stuff from wordpress. There may be a Russian connection. It seems to be on a content site and I very much doubt the universities know about this. Guess these guys will also fall into the " don't care" category.
I hadn't tried looking for copied work before, so thanks for starting this thread.
There are several options. Personally, I don't email the author unless I feel there's a possibility they've used the article innocently. Some people do - they think HubPages is like ezineArticles. But if they've been doing it wholesale, it's very unlikely they don't know what they're doing.
If that's the case, then they probably will delete the Hub if you ask them, but that doesn't help the authors of any of the other stuff they've stolen.
So these days, I check if they are running Adsense ads. If they are, I click on the tiny tab on the bottom of the Adsense ad and report them straight to Adsense. That will scare them - and if enough authors report them, they'll lose their Adsense account and that will stop their thieving ways!
If they're not running Adsense ads, then report them to their hosting company.
I've started a new thread: http://hubpages.com/forum/topic/109262#post2325226
on this subject. Anyone having had this "Dan Gordon" steal material, please check it out.
Doing the Happy Hubber Hula today - just got word from Google that they're removing five URLs I reported.
It took a while, but I'm suspecting it was due to more than just copied work. The Person Whose Name Can't Be Spoken had used at least one hub to create a site with a ton of illegal back links. I hope Google was able to dig through the links and find other offenses; I'm sure there were dozens in the entire string of sites linked to the stolen text.
Also, it appears they're taking down the URLs that didn't show the text (visibly) but appeared in search results. The text in a hub I wrote about job interviews was used to create search results for a chiropractor, architect, family fun site & accountant, among others. Now, let's see if traffic gets restored.
Back to the Happy Dance . . .
Had to take a day off from this, but back again with a little more information.
Checking the sites of "Dan Gordon" in whois results in information whereby you can email Gordon with a request to take the material down; I've found that he is prompt in doing so with some of them but not all. Whois also indicates that it is via GoDaddy, but GoDaddy says that is not true and suggests the use of http://www.kloth.net/services/nslookup.php to look up the ip.
Unfortunately, that doesn't work well either; putting th ip from Kloth into http://whois.arin.net results in an indication that it is some kind of circular reference; an ip of 127.0.0.X that goes nowhere.
The solution is to ask the kloth service to look under "any" in the "query" field. That gives an ip that can then be put into whois.arin site and that actually returns a host. I've checked two so far and both times found an "abuse@" contact for filing with. One was with "myhosting.com" where I was able to live chat with a tech who verified the site is on their server, and said I can file with their abuse email.
I refuse to file with Gordon himself, feeling that in the long run it will do no good - he'll just find another hub to steal from. It does look like all his bogus sites are merely being used to backlink to legitimate sites (built by him for someone else?) and pretty much everything on them is stolen. My intent, then, is to find all the hosts he's using for my stuff and file with the host. Depending on how many sites are with a specific host I'll suggest they look at the thread where everyone has pasted their links to stolen material.
Wilderness - what happened to the thread you posted for people to post hubs copied by You Know Who? I'm not finding it - has it been taken down, or is it buried deeper than I looked?
Edit: Never mind - I found it. Didn't look far enough in the archives.
Filing claims with the various hosts as resulted in 14 of Gordon's sites being taken down, along with another 6 which may or may not have been his. Only one is left, and I notified the host it is still up. Interestingly, it's the same one Gordon said he took down but didn't and it has nothing buy my hub and some links on it.
Maybe Simone Smith could look further into this? Surely the HubPages staff can help out with widespread stealing of authors content, after all, it could affect HubPages itself in the future.
Unfortunately, no. HP does not own the hubs and has no right to file complaints because of that. Hubbers could, I suppose, designate HP as their agent, but that puts HP in a rather poor position should a liability issue come up and they would have to take particular care to verify each case of claimed duplication and which was the original. Better that the problem be left in the hands of the owner, or so it seems to me.
Bump - this thread might help some folks who are just now finding copied hubs.
To update on an earlier post, where I'd found a copied hub on a site connected to Oklahoma university......I managed to find contact details for one of the doctors named in the introduction, and emailed via the university to ask if the site was legitimate. She was shocked to discover it had been hacked, her own login was no longer valid. Multiple fraudulent pages were on display. The entire site had now been taken off. Result!
It may only be a mild annoyance to whoever hacked in, but I'm glad it's been dealt with.
It is possible that phrases you write in your hubs someone else wrote for their articles, pieces of writing... If it's just some phrases here and there it is fine. Of course if it is word for word paragraphs that are same as your hubs then you have a problem.
In my case, it's not just coincidental phrases, no matter what phrase I put in quotes, the same list of links was showing up. And, they included the title of my hub (not just results for the clip I searched with). Someone very clever set it all up. I have even wondered if it's a malicious prank, since there have been no ads on the things I found.
FYI - to anyone writing about employment, interviewing, resumes, etc:
A new site has popped up, based in Africa, and they're copying content word-for-word. They've stolen the same hub Dan Gordon copied. The site is called JobHouse (or maybe JobHouseGhana). If you're one of the Hubbers writing about employment, search for your hubs by taking a clip of text and putting it in quotes & see if you've been a victim, too.
Just found an artilce copied word for word on Blogger. Filed the legal report Blogger offers. Hope the account gets closed. They did have Ads, so maybe Google Adsense will be a loss for them as well.
The offender is SreejuOnline at blogspot.
Good luck. They closed 3 for me just the other day. Hopefully they will do the same for you.
Blogger has been good about taking down copied material. I have had several reported to Blogger the past couple of years and so far had good results.
Just read e-mail where Google has taken down the copied page of my work from the person on Blogger. ( I checked and it was gone!) Always had god luck going after "copiers" at Blogger/blogspot.
Good news! Glad it worked out as well as mine did. I've still got 3 to do when I can get around to it, but expect it to go smoothly.
When you say blogger, do you mean blogspot? I have a few copying my material.
One article of mine was stolen for a microsoft app description! Microsoft are asking me to prove when my article was published. How do I do this? The first published date isn't available on the article, only the last edited date. Help!
You might try a screenshot of a partial stats page. If necessary put the hub in a nearly empty group so it shows up at the top of the screen.
Failing that, HP can help here in providing a data.
Google shall list out the webpages on which those phrases occurred. Just use the search feature in your browser to detect their point of origin.
Once you have the proof of plagiarism, I suggest you file a DMCA request with Google and the hosting server, and take the domain down.
Copied content! Ready for this one! I just found a hub that had a link in it. The wording of the hub just gave me one of those feelings. So, I clicked on the link to open in a new window. The hub, is copied from the site which is to the link this person gave in their hub. The hub is totally copied and pasted from the site that their link takes you to.
Idled hubs. People get flagged for duplicate content. Yet this is blatant copy and paste from another site, and HP allows it.
HP allows it to be put up or allows it to stay up? Quite a difference there as I don't believe they check for duplication prior to publishing any hub. It would be nice if they could, but the cost is probably prohibitive.
I do assume you flagged it?
The one you mentioned in another thread has been taken down.
Of course I flagged it. I flag all of the nonsense. We have writers here, whether or not we all get along, that do good work, and it is not fair that our ships get sunk, while the junk and debris continues to float.
Well done. Google has said they are attacking the duplicate problem but I certainly haven't seen it and can't expect HP to check every hub every day or even the new ones at the rate they come in.
That leaves we hubbers and it does seem in our best interest to at least make the effort to flag the junk.
This is a site that helps to find copied photos.
http://tineye.com/
My very first hub to put in Google search is copied on goarticles.com. It is an article directory. It was my own personal story, and this has happened to me before. You might check it out for other stolen things.
It is right below mine with my author photo on my article..
Goarticles are very responsive and will take the article down quickly, but you must give them the link to your article. It's not reasonable to expect any site to take your word for it that an article is stolen - you have to prove it! And the only way to do that is to give them a link to your article.
If a site has already stolen one of your articles then they already know about your articles, so giving them a link is not a risk. In this particular case, it's no risk at all because Goarticles works rather like HubPages - it's not Goarticles which has stolen your article, it's an individual member of the site. Usually they will delete the article and ban the member for using plagiarized content.
Site of stolen article wants link to my article for proof. Should I just send DMCA to Google? I don't want links given out in email. I don't think that is part of any agreement.
It is most reasonable for them to want a link to your hub. Without it, you could be just anyone wanting a site taken down, and you are making a claim of duplication that you can't or won't back up. Google will require the same thing; a link to your hub where the material is copied from.
Unless the link you give them is used to copy it again (highly unlikely) it won't hurt anything to give it to them, whether by email or by a post on their site in the comments section or something.
I guess I am a skeptic. I thought the site might use the link to copy more articles. I knew they could look it up on Google with the information I gave them - name of article and site and user name. My photo is on the page from a search. Thanks for your opinion, and I will send the information to the site.
Good luck. I've had good results by working through the owner (hubpages, for instance if a hub has copied mine) but sometimes if the site owner has done it themselves they just ignore me.
However, going to the hosting company has, so far, worked every time. I haven't had to file with google, except in cases on blogger, at all.
If they have your photo in search, they might have tried to claim authorship somehow. I think google would be the best route to go down in this instance.
I've found my photos showing up in a search, in the section of the search results where google shows several photos, simply because it is in stolen material. I simply tracked down the thief and filed with their host; no more problem.
I've also seen 3 copies of my photo being show there, but tracking them down found them all on HP. In my hub, in the links HP provides at the bottom of other hubs, and in the "group" links HP puts at the bottom of other of my own hubs. The ways of Google are mysterious.
Thanks for help both of you. I can't remember when I have seen so many reports of stolen material. There are some sites that say they don't bother with the issue, as it is too much work. However, the problem is that we lose views and money to copied material on other sites. Wilderness, that is so weird about the photos. I hope your author photo issue is ok now. I know mine is ok for now.
I don't think the amount of stolen articles has changed, I think it's just that people are more aware of it now.
I was oblivious to it for a long time, and when I finally used Copyscape to check, I was totally shocked. It's one of the reasons I stopped writing on revenue-sharing sites. There are too many internet "gurus" teaching "get rich quick" courses, where they teach their students to use content from article sites to create fake blogs.
It's a tactic that worked before Panda, using articles from sites like GoArticles and EzineArticles, which were created specifically to supply such material (articles on those sites are licensed to allow copying). These days, Google is trying to penalize duplicate content, so the tactic doesn't work nearly as well, but the internet gurus aren't going to stop selling their advice to naive newbies. And now they're telling their students to take content from any site that produces a steady stream of new articles, not just the legal article sites. Hubpages is too obvious a target, so the steady flow of thefts is never going to stop.
I finally sent a link so hope they remove it. The people on our site are finding so many by putting phrases in search. One person said same article was copied 10 times. Do you put phrases in Google?. . Thanks for your lengthy explanation about what is happening. )
I do. Or at least did - after checking 175 hubs I will now take the advice of Marisa and sign up with copyscape. It's worth it to me to find those stolen hubs without taking 2 days to do so.
Yay, goarticles.com removed my copied article. We are all having success one at a time.
It can be done, can't it? Just takes a little effort and time. Thanks for the report - it always helps to hear of someone having success.
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