Duplicate content penaly?

1. 58

   Mark Knowlesposted 16 years ago

   I am moving this question over here to ask for help from the hubpages team.
   
   2 of my hubs and some of hovalis' hubs seem to have had a penalty applied by google and have disappeared from the search rankings down to the last page.
   
   The conclusion we have come to is that they have been flagged for duplicate content because of the text in the amazon capsules. Have we come to the right conclusion and is there anything we can do about this?
   
   This is the original forum thread:
   
   http://hubpages.com/forum/topic/3851
   
   And dammit - I can't edit the spelling mistake in the title LOL

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2. 61

   Jason Menayanposted 16 years ago

   I answered this in the other thread. I don't think Amazon capsule items would count as duplicate content - Google is more clever than that, and besides, the vast majority of the content in the Hub is your own and clearly original.
   
   I would take a look at this:
   http://www.webworkshop.net/google_faq.h … aringpages
   
   Keep in mind that Google does testing, and it makes mistakes. Often, though, you just have to wait for it to correct itself since there's no one at Google you can contact for them to take a look.
   
   Glitches do occur at the page-level (and site level, for smaller sites) - I have seen this happen very often, and usually the page returns after a certain interval.

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3. 58

   Mark Knowlesposted 16 years ago

   Thanks Jason,
   
   I guess I will just have to wait this out. This has happened to two of my hubs at the same time. They have both been getting good traffic and now have disappeared from the search rankings almost completely and are getting almost zero traffic.
   
   I must admit it seems as though a penalty of some kind has been applied, but I don't see why that would be the case.
   
   Thanks for the link also. Interesting.

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4. STAFF

   pauldeedsposted 16 years ago

   Traffic has been bouncing around quite a bit the last couple weeks, so I think google may be testing some fairly significant algorithm changes.  That can lead to strange things happening for a while, but it usually sorts itself out.  Webmaster world is a good place to stay on top of whats happening with the search engines.
   
   http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/ [you may need a subscription]

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5. 59

   spudsposted 16 years ago

   No one really understands how Google works but Google. Yes pages in Google do come and go a little bit due to any number of factors. I wouldn't worry about it.

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   1. 58

      Mark Knowlesposted 16 years agoin reply to this

      Well, I usually don't worry about a little fluctuation, but going from 3,000 search engine visitors a month to zero in one day and then discovering that my hub is the last page in the results when I search for the title of the hub, yet on the first page of the results is another one of my hubs with a link to this one made me "assume," that there has been a penalty applied.
      
      I can see clearly that two of my hubs - both previously good earners have all of a sudden been removed from the rankings and deliberately hidden. This is the traffic for them:
      
      
      
      
      So. sorry spuds, but I am worried about it  because it has cut off a reasonably good source of income for no apparent reason. I don't watch the stats of all my hubs, but I do watch the income they produce and I had a noticeable, sudden drop in income and this is the reason why. I can see them moving to the second page or whatever, but this is an issue.
      
      Wouldn't you be worried if you all of a sudden noticed this on your own hubs ?
      
      Paul - thanks for the link. Interesting forum. I am not sure if there is a lot of help there because much of what they are talking about to get a ban like this lifted is beyond my control. I do not seem to have done anything that would warrant this penalty. I don't have a keyword stuffed footer, header or alt tags - or any of the other things they talk about as reasons that will get you penalized.
      
      kerryg mentioned that he had seen my page as being flagged for duplicate content based on the text in the amazon capsules, but I don't see what I can do about that either.
      
      I find it hard to believe that this is just a google algorithm change and it will sort itself out. Mainly because I don't see what is wrong with these hubs. Jason took a look at them and said he thought they were perfectly OK.
      
      Leaving aside the work I put into then, I find this extremely scary. Google decides how many visitors I get and therefore how much money I can earn. That's a rather tenuous position to be in - and this is the first time I have experienced the power of google - and they have taken an income stream from me. For no reason I can see.
      
      Any ideas - other than "Leaving links to the hub and mentioning it in forums and social bookmarking sites" would be much appreciated. I have always believed in organic growth with a little help and this has worked for me very well so far, but this is intolerable.
      
      As you are no doubt aware there was an attack on my hub score etc because I upset some spammer by getting them banned from hubpages and I wonder if this is part of that? Is that possible? Sorry for my ignorance on this.

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      1. 65

         Mishaposted 16 years agoin reply to this

         Mark, you keep ignoring the only thing that really works for Google - backlinks
         And no, your hubscore has no direct relation to to your place on Google. Hubscores of your hubs do affect it, but with a lag of at least several days or rather weeks. And how much affects depends on your backilinks, too

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         1. 58

            Mark Knowlesposted 16 years agoin reply to this

            I know my hubscore has no relation to the google traffic. But to be on the last page of the results for the title of the hub after 2 months of heavy traffic? Does that make sense?
            
            I did with these two hubs exactly the same as I do for all my hubs. Nothing different.
            
            And the case one has 63 inlinks according to yahoo.
            
            I cannot find it in google for a search for the title of the hub. That seems like a penalty rather than just natural to me. Especially as they were getting good traffic then one day - stopped.
            
            Why would my five best bluetooth headsets show up in the search but not this one?
            
            Oh, and the smoked trout creams now shows 87 inlinks (half of which are yours LOL) It now gets 3 visitors a day which is a 300% increase in traffic LOL

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6. STAFF

   pauldeedsposted 16 years ago

   Mysterious drops in traffic are not really that unusual, especially when google makes adjustments to their algorithm.   If you think it may be a duplicate content penalty caused by the amazon capsules, why don't you try checking the "do not display this capsule" box for the amazon capsules and see if it recovers?

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7. 58

   Mark Knowlesposted 16 years ago

   OK - I will try that too. This is the first time I have seen this. It is not just a drop in traffic - I cannot find them with any search other than for the url or the exact text of the hub. Grrrrrr

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8. 82

   jimmythejockposted 16 years ago

   Mark email me the link and I will post it on my 3 blogs, it may not be much but a couple of extra backlinks might help a little.....jimmy

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9. 58

   Mark Knowlesposted 16 years ago

   Thanks Jimmy.
   
   I will do that, but I think there is a problem with these hubs because one of my other hubs which has a link in it to the others comes up as the first result on the first page of google for a search of the title of the lost ones

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10. 65

    Mishaposted 16 years ago

    Glad to hear about trout traffic
    
    Where this traffic is coming from? Which keywords it uses? Answers to those questions will give you something to think of and act on.
    
    As for your iphones - yes, as long as you set yourself up to be dependent on Google, you are on its mercy
    
    Diversify
    
    Your iphone cases may come back later, or may not. Either way, for any kind of worthwhile keyword 60 or even 100 links with the majority of them being from one or two sites is really nothing to talk about. You are not doing business, you are gambling and praying. No wonder the unpredictability of your results.
    
    If you want to make money on the Internet during your current life, you have to learn how to do it. Writing a good content does not cut it alone. You need to promote your content - SEO and Social marketing being the two cornerstones to promotion. Like it or not, you have to learn both - or you will be starting similar threads for the rest of your internet life
    
    Hope I didn't sound like a condescending jerk You just seem to not paying attention if I dilute my advice with sentiments

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11. 58

    Mark Knowlesposted 16 years ago

    LOL
    
    Misha - I do listen to your advice on these things and I respect what you say:
    
    https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/a … amp;bwms=p
    
    But generating these inbound links yourself is only one way of doing it. Writing good quality, relevant information and doing a little promotion will also organically create these backlinks.
    
    Which I personally think is a better long-term strategy. The question is do I want to write great content and do a little promotional stuff, or write teaser content and do a lot of promotional stuff. Two different approaches to the same problem. I am a writer first, an internet marketer second.
    
    These iphone hubs are an anomaly, and this is the first time I have come across this problem. 90% of my other hubs rank on the first page of google for their title plus a variety of search terms - without thousands of self-generated backlinks.. For some reason, which Paul thinks is an issue with google's algorithm, these 2 have disappeared from the rankings in all search engines for all keywords. You will not be able to find either of them for any keyword - None. Nothing. Zip. Nada. This is a problem, but not because there are not enough backlinks to them.
    
    Fortunately, I have several income streams and the $200 a month I lose from these being gone is not a big deal
    
    And no, I do not think you are a condescending c*** LOL
    
    But this is one of the reasons I write at hubpages - so I don't have to do all the back work involved in ranking highly myself. At least a part of it is taken care of by hubpages' authority. So I can concentrate on writing and making a living. If it was just about creating backlinks - why on earth would I want to give them 40% of my income?
    
    But, I will say again - I very much respect your input and do listen to it. I have definitely learned from you - I also very much appreciate the time you have taken to point me in the right directions. Whether I follow some of it is a matter of time available. Not that I don't believe or agree with you.

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    1. 76

       Lissieposted 16 years agoin reply to this

       
       
       I agree Mark - the people are nice too! But honestly on HP I seem to get reasonable G traffic without a whole lot of back link building and you get indexed real fast! I've been playing at Squidoo - but they are disappointing - I have lens which has been up for 2 weeks now and it still hasn't been indexed by any of the major search engines!  Maybe its because I don't have a high "hubscore" over there  - but here it usually takes about 12 hours to get indexed - doesn't always stay high but you always get something!

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    2. 65

       Mishaposted 16 years agoin reply to this

       LOL I guess I was kinda too condescending anyway - sorry about that.
       
       Yeah, you have a decent quantity of links to your blog no doubt. Whether it is enough to rank well for your keywords - you know better
       
       And frankly speaking I was not an internet marketer either. You know that I'm about driving and trying to pass this passion to others - but after some time of struggling I found out that I need a vehicle for this. Or method, or way - whateva you call it. I had a site with a ton of good original content just sitting idle over there and doing nothing. I don't consider a few people a day being a decent traffic, so I set off to figure out how to get more.
       
       This is how I became an internet marketer. And you know what - I like it now. I am exploring the whole new fascinating world that I did not have a slight clue about - and I'm making some serious money in the process. It took me quite some time to get on track and weed out the crap that is out there, and now it is mostly fun not struggle
       
       Organic backlinks are definitely great, but unless you are writing some highly controversial hubs on a hot topic, those links take forever to build in any noticeable quantities. That's why I was talking about making money in your current life You can wait till the next reincarnation, of course - but then you will have a hard time proving that this particular Adsense account is yours, just from your previous life
       
       Iphones are not an anomaly btw, they are rather a rule. Google definitely is going through a major algo change right now, and many of my own pages are affected, too. This is not the first time when such things happen, you just need to give it some time to sort itself out. When dust settles, your hubs may be right back without any effort on your side. But may be not - and then you have to figure out what changed and what you need to change in your hubs to accommodate for it. Or just get a few hundred extra backlinks
       
       Speaking about backlinks - I'm afraid you rely too heavily on Hubpages. They are really great with all that authority and well thought out internal linking structure, and definitely leverage your marketing effort significantly. But you have to make that effort. Hubpages alone won't give you decent traffic. I noticed recently that Google started to discount internal links more heavily, and this really hurts those who rely solely on it.
       
       As for giving Hubpages 40% of my income - I may be in unique position, but my specific numbers on Hubpages are at least twice higher than on my own site, so it still makes sense for me. YMMV of course. But think about one more facet to this. For a given keyword you can't have more than two pages from one site in the search results. If you already have two from your site on the first page, adding a hub or two does not hurt in any way
       
       Oh yeah, and I'm glad you diversify - and did not have any doubt you do. This was more of a kidding around

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12. 86

    Marisa Wrightposted 16 years ago

    Misha, what percentage of your time is spent promoting and what percentage is spent actually writing?   I'm guessing promotion is the higher proportion?

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13. 65

    Mishaposted 16 years ago

    Marisa,
    
    I don't write at all, except for those forums and very few special cases. English is not my native language, and while I'm relatively good at it, I still make a lot of mistakes - and that turns customers away. I outsource writing. You can safely say that I spend almost all of my work time on marketing. However, I'm pretty much sure things would have been slightly different if I worked for Russian market. I would outsource less - but still outsource, and concentrate mostly on marketing.
    
    There are other tasks like customer support and quality monitoring that take time, so marketing does not take all 100% of it

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14. 86

    Marisa Wrightposted 16 years ago

    Thanks Misha, that's what I suspected.  I think it illustrates a dilemma for some of us.
    
    All kinds of people are attracted to article writing on the internet, for all kinds of reasons. If your reason is to make money (like some of our spammer friends) or to share a passion (like you), then the fact that you have to spend most of your time promoting and very little time writing isn't a problem.  Especially if you're passionate about one subject, because spending time on related forums and sites would be enjoyable in itself.
    
    Unfortunately a lot of us are attracted to writing because we like writing.  For us, all that other stuff is just a chore, especially if we're not writing about a major passion, so we're joining forums to promote and not really to share with like-minded people.  If I'm going to do something that's a chore, I may as well go out and get a real job which pays me 50 times as much per hour (which is what I've now done).

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15. 81

    embitcaposted 16 years ago

    Yep, I actually love to write, but there comes a point where that becomes a chore even when you enjoy it. I do extensive article marketing for my websites and at this point, while I still write most of my own stuff, I've started to outsource some of the article writing for niches that I just need maintenance on, to keep things fresh.
    
    But if you love to write and hate to promote, you can outsource the promotion while you continue to write. There's all kinds of people who will do the social bookmarking and forum postings and such for you. I usually hire someone to do directory submissions for me whnever I put up a new site. Of course, you'd need to oversee it and make sure you hire people you can trust, otherwise they'll be out their spamming on your behalf.

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16. 86

    Marisa Wrightposted 16 years ago

    How do you find people you can trust, that's the question?

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    1. 81

       embitcaposted 16 years agoin reply to this

       Hang out on affiliate marketing forums, look at people's feedback, get a sense of their personality as a poster and confirm with other people who have hired them that they deliver as promised.
       
       Or -- hire someone locally that you can meet face to face and just train them to do stuff like this for you.  I'm sure there are some high school and college students who wouldn't mind some pocket change for hanging out in a few forums.
       
       But really, there is no point in doing any of that, I think, if your primary motivation isn't to make money or, at the very least, persuade people about your passions and causes. If you are happy to work a job that pays you 50 times more and just want to write for fun, then you really don't need to be bothering with promotion and traffic concerns.
       
       For me, it was preferable to cut my income rather than stay at the job I didn't like so that's what I did. So while I enjoy writing, my primarily motivation isn't expressing myself, it's making money. Luckily, I really enjoy making money

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17. 69

    SparklingJewelposted 16 years ago

    Content on my hub previously published appears to have been duplicated by Alchemy369 less than an hour ago. Is there anyway to verify he copied...since they are quotes from the Dalai Lama?

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    1. 67

       relacheposted 16 years agoin reply to this

       Since those quotes from the Dalai Lama are actually all over the internet, 1) you aren't going to be able to prove that they were copied from you and 2) you're probably going to find your Hub incurs a duplicate content penalty.

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       1. 69

          SparklingJewelposted 16 years agoin reply to this

          Do I need to unpublish it so as not to have penalty affect my other work scores, etc...How does that work? What is the best thing for me to do?
          Thanks

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18. 47

    johnr54posted 16 years ago

    Back on the original topic of this thread, I had the same thing happen on one of my top producing hubs as well.  After the last time Google indexed the page, it disappeared (not just dropped in ranking) even though it's still in the index (if your search for the title in quotes it still can be found) and went from over 80 page views a day from Google to 0, zip, nada for the last several days.  But the Yahoo and MSN traffic have gone up slightly, but since the Google traffic disappeared, it dropped of the hot hubs pages (it had been running page 1 to 4 for several days), and so the Hub traffic dropped off as well.
    
    Checked with copyscape to see if it might have been scraped by someone, and the only thing it found was the title of the products being listed from Amazon.
    
    It's a little scary, it reminds me of the Squidoo slap some time back, where Google decided that Squidoo was too spammy, and hammered it in the rankings.
    
    

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    1. 0

       terrygposted 16 years agoin reply to this

       I tend to agree with this comment. The reason why may be revealed in this posting.
       
       http://www.francislee.com.au/search-rel … ve-it-155/
       
       That would explain why a dup content flag comes up with Amazon.

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       1. 70

          Inspirepubposted 16 years agoin reply to this

          I don't see the connection ... how does Amazon objecting to the Google Teleport taking people off its site connect with Google "delisting" Hubs? Or duplicate penalties, for that matter?
          
          I don't get it ....
          
          Jenny

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19. STAFF

    pauldeedsposted 16 years ago

    If you're HubScore is being significantly affected because of a duplicate content penalty, a warning will appear at the top of the hub (which is only viewable by the author).  If you don't see that warning, in terms of your HubPages score anyway, it isn't worth worrying about.
    
    With our algorithm we're willing to accept not penalizing a fair amount of duplicate content in exchange for minimizing the chance that we will falsely identify something that isn't as a duplicate.  Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft may not be so generous when determining search result ordering.

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    1. 69

       SparklingJewelposted 16 years agoin reply to this

       Thanks Paul

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