Republishing stolen hubs

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   Thomas Swanposted 20 months ago

   If I want to unpublish a hub that I think could perform better on another site, how can I do that if the content has been stolen and appears somewhere else on the web? Wouldn't the search engines now see the stolen version as the oldest and penalize me as the thief? It's such a drag to chase up copyright thieves, so I would rather there was an easier way.

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   1. 78

      theraggededgeposted 20 months agoin reply to this

      Yes. It would be seen as copied. Unless you can get the stolen version taken down, I would leave it on HP.
      
      The best way to get content removed is to send a DMCA directly to the web host.
      
      The search engines would be the least of your problems. The other site may flag it as copied and you won't be able to publish anywhere apart from your own site. Even then you risk receiving a DMCA from the thief.

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      1. 78

         Thomas Swanposted 20 months agoin reply to this

         Thank you. I would be creating my own website with the articles on. There is no "niche" site for the topic in the Hubpages network so I think I can do better on my own. And I'm not going to pay Medium five bucks a month for the privilege of their platform.
         
         From what you've said, it looks like I'd have to get all copies taken down first if I don't want be penalized by search engines. I hope Hubpages lists all the thieves and not just some of them.

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2. 68

   eugbugposted 20 months ago

   I republished an article here that once had 1500 views per day and now it only gets about one or no views per day. As far as I can see, this Confuses Google. i/f an article is published on a different site, it may be different though.

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   1. 78

      Thomas Swanposted 20 months agoin reply to this

      That's interesting because it's probably not much different to editing an article. Google re-ranks it and, if that goes wrong, it's difficult to put it right. That's why I sometimes disagree with HP policy of doing major edits to high-performing hubs. The risk sometimes isn't worth it. A couple of times they did more harm than good. I suppose transferring my work to another site will have the same problem, but it doesn't even get half of 1500 views per day, so I'm inclined to try. Most of my earnings come from soccer hubs, which will stay here, although the latest algo change is hitting that too.

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         Kenna McHughposted 20 months agoin reply to this

         I agree. I want to leave the best-performing articles alone. "Why fix it if it ain't broke?"

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         1. 78

            Thomas Swanposted 20 months agoin reply to this

            When I asked that, the editor directed me to a webpage with an answer on it, but I wasn't bothered enough to look. It's not like I have a choice. I just hope they look at the empirical data and realize that it sometimes goes horribly wrong.
            
            I've submitted my DMCA takedowns now. Thankfully only about half a dozen were needed for hubs I'm considering unpublishing.

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      2. 68

         eugbugposted 20 months agoin reply to this

         The new, identical version of the article has a different URL and I was told on the Google Search forum that that's why there's confusion. Surely the algorithm can understand it just has a new URL? The old version is deindexed.

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         1. 78

            Thomas Swanposted 20 months agoin reply to this

            Google don't seem to care unless it makes them money. Probably why I have to chase down these thieves before unpublishing.

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