HubPage URL Links to Site Selling Sex Book: Anyone Else?

1. 71

   Lorra Garrickposted 5 years ago

   I googled my name yesterday. Five results down is what appears to be my HP URL and link. But then after "Lorra Garrick on HubPages" it says, "How to Make Her  Your Girlfriend."
   
   Yesterday the link took me to a long advertisement for a book on how men can get any woman they want.
   
   Today it took me to a page in Spanish, and when I translated it, it was about electrical equipment.
   
   BOTH these sites trace back to TBS Magazine, which is the male version of "Cosmo."
   
   I can't be the only Hubber this has happened to. Go ahead, google YOUR name, and scroll down and see if there's what initially looks like your Hub link, but then it's actually not.  I have no idea how this happened. I've never visited those two sites ever, never heard of TBS Magazine or anything related, and my content is totally unrelated. How did this happen??? 
   
   I urge you to google your name. No reason to believe I'm the only one this happened to. Someone obviously hacked into HP. How else could this have happened? I sent HP a msg but have not yet heard back. I contacted the owner of TBS and it's in ticket status right now.

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   1. 93

      Shesabutterflyposted 5 years agoin reply to this

      I noticed this a few days ago when someone else made a comment about it. The only thing I can find is a bunch of old forum posts which shouldn't be public that link out to something completely unrelated to the forums or the content discussed on those pages. It's the 3rd link down for my name/hp.
      
      "Strange Maven source in article url's" is the initial forum post, but if you look under the title you see electropartes dot com >...>Official Hubpages Help > Official HubPages Help. Which is pretty concerning in itself. However, there are links to 4 other "forum posts" that link out to that site listed above. Which is a porn site to the best of my knowledge. I didn't stay to look around and don't plan on clicking on anymore links.
      
      This is on page 3 of Google. The following two are on page 4. Sure looks like something happened on the HP side of things...I didn't click on any of these links, but it's clear they are somehow using HP to try and garner some kind of clicks or something.
      
      Store(Sexual) is a common problem , penis surgeries - Storm Research
      stormresearch dot co dot uk › Reports... 6 years ago from North Carolina Thanks for your feedback, Shesabutterfly. ... This is used for a registered author who enrolls in the HubPages Earnings ...
      
      How to Exercise Your Dog - Shiba Shake
      shibashake dot com/dog/exercise-your-dog
      Shesabutterfly says. June 14, 2012 at 5:29 pm. You have ... Thanks Shesabutterfly. I love the coats on Cahahoula .... Also, welcome to HubPages! Doglover says.
      
      Store Muscle Gain Enhancement Pills & Supplements | is the birth ...
      travelon dot com dot pk/blogs/is-the-birth-control-patch-effective-right-away May 4, 2019 - Necessary Features Marketing Statistics Show Details HubPages Device .... ago from North Carolina Thanks for your feedback, Shesabutterfly.
      
      I'm more curious as to why someone would Google author names and HP. That's not generally how I would search for someone I was looking to read more content from. I would simply use the search bar within the niche site.
      
      Every author I google with hubpages has a link to the electropartes site. Very disturbing.

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      1. 71

         Lorra Garrickposted 5 years agoin reply to this

         Yes, it's electropartes. But I didn't know there were other bad site links as well. HP needs to have a talk with their IT team; it isn't doing its job.
         
         As for why someone would google an author name. First, the electropartes/HP result comes up if ONLY my name is googled. Next, someone who wants to google my (or anyone else's name) is not necessarily a Hub reader. They could be someone I met elsewhere, unrelated to Hub. My name is also associated with other valid sites, so from THERE, someone may want to google my name to find out more about me. And then they see that link to getting girlfriends...

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      2. 71

         Lorra Garrickposted 5 years agoin reply to this

         You also said that every HP author you've googled has a link to electropartes. I've been randomly googling ones with unusual names -- and only their names (more likely to show on first page for HP) and so far, all have normal HP URL's.  Do you by chance have a list of the HP authors you've found linking to electropartes? What really aggravates me is that I have not heard back from support despite sending two messages about this.

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         1. 93

            Shesabutterflyposted 5 years agoin reply to this

            Honestly I'm not surprised. It probably falls under websites stealing our content which they can't do anything about. Except this isn't stealing the whole content, just forum titles.
            
            I googled some of the more popular forum posters that I knew wouldn't be associated with crap like this.
            
            Eubug
            Lobobrandon
            Theraggededge
            Beth Eaglescliffe
            Promisem
            Poppyr
            AliciaC
            Janshares
            Paradigmsearch

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            1. 71

               Lorra Garrickposted 5 years agoin reply to this

               The bottom line is that I do not have a Hub URL to my Hub library. The only thing that shows in search results is the one to electropartes. I'm still waiting for the "team" to be alarmed enough by this to respond to me. How many Hubbers are there? Certainly I'm not the only one this hacking has occurred to.

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               1. 93

                  Shesabutterflyposted 5 years agoin reply to this

                  Hp articles generally don't show up on Google searches anymore. To get any decent traffic you need to get your articles moved to the niche sites.

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               2. 98

                  DrMark1961posted 5 years agoin reply to this

                  Hubpages is a business. Why do you think this should this be alarming? How is this affecting their profit?

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                  1. 71

                     Lorra Garrickposted 5 years agoin reply to this

                     If enough Hub authors' URL's are linked back to these shady sites...this would lower the credibility of HP, being that there's always people out there who jump to conclusions and make false assumptions. Had I known about this glitch ahead of time, I would have never signed on with HP. Perhaps other people, who were thinking of signing on as writers, somehow learned of this glitch beforehand.
                     
                     So for all we know, HP has a few hundred FEWER writers due to this seeming association with shady sites. Fewer writers = less profit. HP is VERY eager for writers, as evidenced by the orange "Write" that's on any page on this site. They are so eager for writers that anyone can publish anything, including how to cure cancer. There is a very weak filter for article credibility. This tells me that HP is starving for more writers. It's safe to assume that there are people who never signed on due to discovering that glitch, AND...those who discovered it AFTER they signed on, lost their motivation and abandoned HP altogether.
                     
                     In fact, I myself have lost steam over this issue. So YES, it will negatively affect their profit. What site owner wants their site to be associated with shady sites? Only one who's lost their marbles.

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                     1. 93

                        Shesabutterflyposted 5 years agoin reply to this

                        You have a lot to learn about HP. Hubpages lost a lot of credibility and page rank many years ago, which is why I said you need to get your articles on the niche sites.
                        
                        The niche sites (Owlcation, Delishably, Spinditty, etc) are where the money is. If you're not on the niche sites the chances of earning money are slim to none. Hp has become a holding ground for articles while they wait to move over. If your articles are left on HP you likely will not do well here.
                        
                        Things like this happen from time to time. It's not the first time and it likely won't be the last.

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                        1. 71

                           Lorra Garrickposted 5 years agoin reply to this

                           This thread is about my HP URL linking to shady sites, not how to make money here. HP, as I'm sure you know, doesn't allow more than one submission per 14 days to a niche site. At that rate, it'll be 35 MONTHS before I submit the last of my 70 articles. So even if every one gets accepted (in a perfect world), I'd have to wait three years for this to happen. But three years will pass anyways, so I may as well submit one article to a niche site every 14 days. In the meantime, the issue is this damn electropartes. This should NOT be happening. I don't want my name associated with some stupid book and TBS Magazine (the male version of "Cosmo"). I was hoping someone here could offer information on how to resolve this.

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                           1. 93

                              Shesabutterflyposted 5 years agoin reply to this

                              Yes I am very well aware. However, you are a very new member. All new articles should directly go straight to a niche site within 2 weeks of being written. If that is not happening it's likely your article is not good enough to be moved and you will need to work on them.
                              
                              Unfortunately, things like this happen quite often. It comes with writing online. Eventually it will disappear, but in the mean time there's not much you can do except try and report it. Although I'm not sure you will get anywhere with that. The site is well aware of what it did and doesn't care if we don't like it. HP is likely not going to do anything either as they don't have copyrights to forum titles/posts/links as that is our content as well. You could try a Google complaint, but I'm not sure that is going to go anywhere.
                              
                              Like I said, yes it's annoying and makes us upset, but it comes with writing online. Those of us that have been here for many years have seen things like this before. This isn't the first time and it definitely will not be the last. For some reason this seems to happen to HP content. It will eventually go away.

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                              1. 71

                                 Lorra Garrickposted 5 years agoin reply to this

                                 Sure hope so. I also published so many articles in such a short period of time that perhaps there's a backlog as far as whoever reviews them to see if they're niche-worthy (70+ articles in five weeks). Thanks for the info.

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                           2. 96

                              CYong74posted 5 years agoin reply to this

                              Lorra, I did what you described and your HP link is your HP profile, with the description being that of your ACE certification.
                              
                              Also, if new article are well done enough, they can be automatically transferred to the niche sites.

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               3. 95

                  viryaboposted 5 years agoin reply to this

                  You are not the only one. I got no response from @team about my complaints either so I just let it be. But I’m not happy about it.
                  If my friends or family want to check me out using my HP @, they are taken somewhere else.
                  Highly embarrassing!

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            2. 85

               Marketing Meritposted 5 years agoin reply to this

               You need to search using their 'real names' and not user names.
               I just quickly checked for Bev G (theraggededge), as I knew her name without looking. She does show in the search results, as do I, and probably everyone else.
               It appears they have scraped content from the forum. However, it is difficult to check as it is listed on Google under the electropartes site and then goes through a series of redirects.
               As the others have said Lorra, this is nothing to be alarmed about and sadly, happens all of the time. These sites do eventually get taken down, only to be replaced with new ones.
               It is unlikely that readers will search for "your name at Hubpages." That is what is known as a vanity search. Focus on the keywords that potential readers will be searching for to reach your articles.
               Good luck!

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               1. 96

                  CYong74posted 5 years agoin reply to this

                  I did search using her real name, and no, no electro parts site. Instead, I get a whole page of her other social media and publication links.
                  
                  It does come up for Lobobrandon, though. But the offending site is already reported as unsafe. It will probably go away after a while.

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                     Marketing Meritposted 5 years agoin reply to this

                     I took a screenshot and Bev is definitely there. It's not really relevant as to who is and who isn't there though, CYong. It's about allaying Lorra's fears and helping her understand that this is just one of the several downsides to publishing on the internet.
                     As you say, the site will disappear soon enough.

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                     1. 96

                        CYong74posted 5 years agoin reply to this

                        Marketing Merit, I wrote what I did earlier because it is obvious she isn't assured. Especially with this highlighting of veteran writers also being targeted.
                        
                        And so I addressed her original concern directly. At least from my end and at the moment, she isn't linked to a sex book. She will have to learn about the shadier part of Internet publishing if she wants to continue with this. But this isn't going to happen with everyone pouring declarations unfriendly to her ears when she is fraught.

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                  2. 71

                     Lorra Garrickposted 5 years agoin reply to this

                     Geek -- a search of "Lorra Garrick" just now brings up "Lorra Garrick at HubPages," but the link below that is still electropartes. However, somehow, the part about getting a girlfriend was removed. The link also goes to an electrical parts site in Spanish -- which is preferable to that sensationalized book on how a man can get any woman.

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               2. 71

                  Lorra Garrickposted 5 years agoin reply to this

                  Marketing Merit -- When I google ONLY my name, Lorra Garrick, it brings up the electropartes site. I'm not worried about people being unable to see my Hub posts. This is for ANY person googling my name and seeing the electropartes association. However, a few of you say this bad link will eventually disappear, so I'll keep my fingers crossed.

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               3. STAFF

                  Matt Wellsposted 5 years agoin reply to this

                  Unfortunately, having your content copied is something that cannot be prevented. As Marketing Merit said, the site that copied Hubber's profile information will be taken down eventually. To speed up this process, you can file a complaint with Google here.

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                  1. 95

                     Glenn Stokposted 5 years agoin reply to this

                     Matt, Thanks for posting that link to Google's complaint process. Unfortunately they say, "We may remove certain types of sensitive personal information from Google Search Results."
                     
                     Sensitive personal information excludes the use of our names. The problem is that these people are using our names in the title and making it look like we wrote the low quality, embarrassing, content on those pages. The title on those pages is always in the form, "Author Name at Hubpages."
                     
                     Filing a DMCA takedown notice is too time consuming since we each have dozens of these pages, and the effort might be in vain anyway since the host would probably not honor the request, as no content was plagiarized—just our name is used. 
                     
                     EDIT: Besides what I just said above, I went ahead and used the option to "Report other legal removal issue" at
                     https://support.google.com/legal/contac … &uraw=
                     
                     You can report up to 100 sites in one shot using that form. We'll see what happens.

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                     1. 92

                        Savio Dawsonposted 5 years agoin reply to this

                        I am having the same problem as all of you. I have used the link that Glenn has given and submitted my complaint.
                        
                        I think all of you should do it too.

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                        1. 71

                           Lorra Garrickposted 5 years agoin reply to this

                           I just submitted my complaint. It takes only minutes. If anyone's lurking who's been affected by "electropartes" or its alleged owner, Bobby Rio (of TSB Magazine) and author of "Unlock Your Legs," which my name was redirected to ----  PLEASE take five minutes to submit your complaint. I've made requests of Google in the past for different infringement violations, and it really works! At my request, Google has taken things down. Submitting the complaint will be well worth it.

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                        2. 92

                           Savio Dawsonposted 5 years agoin reply to this

                           Here is the response from Google. They are basically saying either we have to submit the site on Webmaster or get the site down by talking to the owner. Either way, here is the response:
                           
                           Thanks for reaching out to us.
                           We understand you are concerned about the content in question, but there is nothing that Google can do to remove content from third-party web pages. Google simply aggregates and organizes information published on the web; we don't control the content found in the pages you've specified. Even if we were able to eliminate the offending page from our index, it would still exist on the web. Every few weeks our robots crawl the web for content. If the site is available on the internet, we will likely pick it up and add it to our index again. Only the webmaster can, by including code that blocks our robots, prevent a page from appearing on Google. For more information, please read our Terms of Service.
                           
                           If the webmaster grants your request, or if you pursue legal action against this site that results in the removal of the offending material, our search results will display this change after we next crawl the site. If the webmaster makes these changes and you need us to expedite the removal of the cached copy, please submit your request using our webpage removal request tool.
                           
                           Regards,
                           The Google Team

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                           1. 95

                              Glenn Stokposted 5 years agoin reply to this

                              Savio, Yes, I received the same email from a Google. The fact of the matter is that Google has no ability to remove the content since they don’t have control of the server. We all know that, but I was hoping they would remove the reference from the SERPs. They won’t do that.
                              
                              I'm going to have to take the extra time to search out the hosting service and send a takedown request to them for each one.
                              
                              Problem is that they are adding up—several more every day. I think they have a bot creating these sites with our names to make HubPages look bad. That’s either going to put HubPages out of business, or will eventually stop if their plan fails.

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2. 90

   Will Apseposted 5 years ago

   If you search for Lobobrandon you get this as the sixth result:
   
   Finally!! 500 views in 24 hours
   electropartes.com.co › ... › HubPages, the Community › Community News
   lobobrandonposted 7 years ago. I've finally broken through the ice I guess. Just a minute back when the hub stats refreshed. I noticed that I finally made it to 500 ...
   
   If you look at a cached version of that page, you get this:
   http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/s … &gl=en
   
   In other words someone has copied and pasted a forum thread into the electropartes website then at a later date someone has redirected that page to hxxps://read.getsgirlfriend.com/?affid=elec
   
   Maybe a bit of hacking going on.

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3. 95

   viryaboposted 5 years ago

   Perhaps a LOT of hacking, I’d say.
   My HP author name links to:
   
   https://www. firefeedems. com/viryabo-on-hubpages-2.html
   
   http://www .hcdprojects .org/viryabo-on-hubpages.html
   
   http://www.newwedding ideas.net /winter-weddings/winter-weddings-viryabo-hubpages-2/
   
   ... and a couple more that I have absolutely no connection with. And I can’t even do anything about it!

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4. 90

   Will Apseposted 5 years ago

   There must be a lot of links aimed at that site to outrank so many other pages which bear the names of writers here.
   
   Maybe that should be "bare" lol.

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5. 96

   CYong74posted 5 years ago

   Lorra, this will go away after a while. Google also doesn't show the same results to everyone, geography being one influencing factor. So, at least, some parts of the world wouldn't see your name as the newest electroparts store.
   
   That said, I understand you may be concerned because you are building your personal profile as a trainer? And the people who would look for you are the ones near you? Unfortunately, the only thing to do is wait. Meanwhile, you can try filing that complaint to Google too. (Might as well do it for Bing too)

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6. 96

   Kierstin Gunsbergposted 5 years ago

   To me, this is just more proof that Google's recent SERPs suck and bring up more irrelevant information than applicable material on the first couple of pages. I have to dig to find what I want anymore.

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7. 80

   Brenda Arledgeposted 5 years ago

   Yes, when i just type in my name and click on my oicture from hubpages it tskes me to a link for how to get that hard to get gal...but if i type in my name like brenda...on hubpages and take thst link, it is fine.

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