This Duplicate Content Thing Is Getting Riduclous

1. 79

   rockinjoeposted 15 years ago

   I was just checking my stats when I noticed that a hub I published on 1-7-07 has been flagged and incurring a HP penalty for duplicate content.  It's my highest earning hub and HP giving me a penalty-and then asking me to wait 72 hours for a review on something I published a year ago is insane.
   
   I love publishing my stuff here, but something has to be done with this duplicate content nonsense. It's not fair to penalize me for something I didn't do.
   
   http://hubpages.com/hub/Never_Let_Your_ … upermarket

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   1. 61

      Cris Aposted 15 years agoin reply to this

      And the worse part is, they woudn't get back to you in 72 days as promised. One of my hubs was flagged and I duly submitted it for editing.  After a week, I resubmitted the hub and as of this writing, I have heard nothing as to what will happen next. So there.

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      1. 79

         rockinjoeposted 15 years agoin reply to this

         Well there is a 0% chance that I'm going to revise my own work because either someone stole my work or HP keeps a penalty on me for longer than 72 hours. I'd take my chances with my own blog before that would happen.

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      2. 70

         Maddie Ruudposted 15 years agoin reply to this

         rockinjoe:
         
         Submitting your hub for a dupe review will only get me to manually check whether or not there are, in fact, duplicates.  If there are duplicates, and the warning remains on your hub, you should email me with the URL of the hub, and I can tell you where the duplicates are so that you can file DMCA complaints with the perpetrators.  Where appropriate, I may also manually override the dupe checker, if my investigations indicate that your hub was published first, and ripped off by other people later.
         
         
         
         
         Cris A:
         
         None of your hubs have ever been flagged or moderated.  When you submit for a duplicate review, I do the manual check, but you are not notified--you either see the warning disappear, or it remains there.  If you believe that your work has been plagiarized, see my answer to rockinjoe above.

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         1. 61

            Cris Aposted 15 years agoin reply to this

            Hi Maddie - I just checked and the warning's still there. Shall I just wait for it to disappear? Thanks for addressing my concern and I hope I'm not inconveiencing you in any way.

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         2. 60

            darksideposted 15 years agoin reply to this

            When the warning remains there, can it be a worded in such a way so people know that it's a new message. Otherwise I know I'd be thinking that nothing has happened.

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   2. 57

      Mark Knowlesposted 15 years agoin reply to this

      Any HP penalty is not likely to affect your earnings. Any HP penalty will not affect your search engine rankings, nor will it affect the amount of outside hubpages traffic. You will probably see your eCPM go up, because any internal traffic is not likely to click on ads or spend money.

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      1. 74

         Shirley Andersonposted 15 years agoin reply to this

         As a matter of fact, my hub in question kept rising and my hubscore hit 100, so it didn't seem that there were any ill effects at all (happily).

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         1. 79

            rockinjoeposted 15 years agoin reply to this

            Thanks Shirley, I appreciate your reponse:)

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            1. 74

               Shirley Andersonposted 15 years agoin reply to this

               You're very welcome, hope it puts your mind at ease some. 

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      2. 79

         rockinjoeposted 15 years agoin reply to this

         Thanks Mark. So I'm assuming an HP penalty is no penalty at all? Thanks for the information. It's appreciated.

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2. 83

   Whitney05posted 15 years ago

   Have you tried to find where your work may have been copied elsewhere on the internet? If you can find the place(s) then you could contact the site owner and possibly have it removed.
   
   The HP team is busy, give them a little credit if it takes them a little while to get back to you.

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   1. 61

      Cris Aposted 15 years agoin reply to this

      Okay, I suppose i'll just wait and see then.  Thanks for the advice (and I meant 72 hours and not 72 days). 
      
      rockinjoe - hope things will be ironed out eventually. and keep your cool

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   2. 79

      rockinjoeposted 15 years agoin reply to this

      Hi Whitney05,
      Nope, not yet, but I'm going to find out. My problem is not with the thief, but with HP penalizing me for something I didn't do. And as far as the team being busy, I'm glad they are. That's a good thing. I'm also busy-and hopefully a valuable part of their business. We all are.

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      1. 83

         Whitney05posted 15 years agoin reply to this

         They're not penalizing you unless they removed your hub from existance. They're just warning you 'hey check out your hub bc we detect dupes.' It's like a friendly reminder.

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         1. 79

            rockinjoeposted 15 years agoin reply to this

            It doesn't sound like a friendly reminder. It's worded like an accusation.

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      2. 70

         Maddie Ruudposted 15 years agoin reply to this

         rockinjoe:
         
         Please see my response to you above.  The warnings and penalties are there for a reason--to protect the community from being inundated with spam--and there isn't a way for the automated system to magically intuit who copied what from whom.  This is why you need to follow up with me (a human) as I described above, and we can easily get this cleared up.
         
         
         
         Cris A:
         
         As I told rockinjoe, if you believe your work has been plagiarized, send the URL of the hub in question to me at team(at)hubpages(dot)com, I can take a look.

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         1. 79

            rockinjoeposted 15 years agoin reply to this

            Thanks Maddie.

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3. 74

   Shirley Andersonposted 15 years ago

   I got my first one the other night, but I had my review back the next day and the duplicate was off.  It was because I had the article elsewhere where I can't ever get it off, so I just changed some wording around and then the HP staff removed the flag.

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4. 67

   relacheposted 15 years ago

   I had a hub where the content was stolen recently, and by re-writing it, I got a huge influx of traffic (and some not-bad earnings too).
   
   The thread about that situation is here, http://hubpages.com/forum/topic/9512

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5. 61

   Cris Aposted 15 years ago

   Thanks Maddie!

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6. 79

   rockinjoeposted 15 years ago

   I got the Maddie Seal of Approval for the hub. It's all fixed. Thanks Maddie.

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7. 61

   Cris Aposted 15 years ago

   Oh I almost forgot, here's the URL http://hubpages.com/hub/movie-to-watch- … stman-1994   thanks for the assistance

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8. 60

   anne.mossposted 15 years ago

   In my almost ten years as an online publisher, I have rarely followed copiers with DMCA notices and all that. It simply wasn't worth my time to chase down the scum that lives off scraping legitimate sites. Almost always, their pages were buried in the search results and didn't effect my ranking - I would find out about them only when running checks, or following a note from a concerned site member.
   
   Fortunately, none of my hubs have been copied (yet?) but if it ever happens, I will more than likely not pursue the matter. I appreciate any "heads up" messages from the HP system or team, but I sincerely hope on form of penalty or any such thing takes place. Letting a hubber know about it is welcome. Punishing in any way or form (such as decreased hub score, nofollow tags, or disqualifying a hub) would, IMHO, be unfair.
   
   I understand that there is no way for the HP team to tell for sure who actually did write the content. I also understand that they do not want to attract spammers who scrape legitimate sites and post their content here on HP. Still, maybe there should also be some sort of established trust system? An established hubber with a certain score, or whatever, would be given different treatment then a newbie posting 10 hubs a day with content that triggers the duplicate content? Just thinking out loud here - and I'm sure the HP team has given it enough thought as well.
   
   I'll end with a question to Maddie or another official HP rep:
   If one's hub gets flagged for duplicate content - how does that affect the hub or hubber? Assuming they won't go ahead with a DMCA or any other action other than communicating with the staff here and making a claim - what happens to the hub?

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   1. 78

      Lissieposted 15 years agoin reply to this

      
      
      I'm not official but I know that I notice if a hub has been duplicated because the hubscore drops dramatically overnight - like from 90's to 70's.  It doesnt affect the google ranking at all, well I suppose there is a small effect if you were dropped from the best hub pages as a result but I normally find that the hubs which get the most G love don't have that high a score anyway.

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      1. 74

         Shirley Andersonposted 15 years agoin reply to this

         Honestly, it's the strangest thing, but my score kept climbing.  The duplicate flag was gone for 2 1/2 days and then last night it suddenly popped back on again.  I haven't changed a thing, I don't know what's up.

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9. 74

   Shirley Andersonposted 15 years ago

   Maddieeeeee, help!  Everything was wonderful and just now the duplicate flag popped back on.

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10. 78

    SweetiePieposted 15 years ago

    There was a hubber that left an odd and creepy message on one of my hubs.  It makes me wonder about the behavior of some people.

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    1. 74

       Shirley Andersonposted 15 years agoin reply to this

       Are you suggesting that maybe someone flagged it?  I hadn't considered that.

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11. 58

    bhogeposted 15 years ago

    Is there any ways to know who is flagged the hub?

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12. STAFF

    pauldeedsposted 15 years ago

    We've made some adjustments in the area of duplicate content recently.  For one, you can easily see which hubs may be being penalized on your my account page.  For another, we are making an effort not to penalize hubs that were original to HubPages when they were first published, but have been subsequently copied elsewhere.   Determining originality in an automated is not an easy thing to do but we think we have gotten better at it recently.  If one of your hubs is being penalized for duplicate content and the content is original to HubPages, you should email us at team@hubpages -- the "flag for review" link is no longer there.
    
    To be clear, duplicate content is not prohibited on HubPages -- it is just not rewarded and there are restrictions on outgoing links on duplicate content.  The score penalty for having a small percentage of your hubs identified as duplicate is not significant, and is probably not worth worrying too much about.  However, if a large percentage of the material in hubs you publish is not original to HubPages, you may see a significant impact to your Hub and Hubber scores.

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    1. 61

       countrywomenposted 15 years agoin reply to this

       In My Account I am not able to navigate to the part where I can see "which hubs may be being penalized"

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    2. 60

       anne.mossposted 15 years agoin reply to this

       Thank you for clarifying that Paul
       
       So far I never encountered any issue with duplicate content, and I hope I never will. If my hubs do get copies and it becomes an issue, I'll see what I can do about it.

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13. 74

    Shirley Andersonposted 15 years ago

    I only had the dup message show up on one, so it wasn't a huge deal to me except for my ego.  Anyway, I now have the "Certified Original" designation so I'm a happy camper and say, "Thank-you, HP staff!"

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14. 76

    sunforgedposted 15 years ago

    I continue to be impressed on how hands on the admin seems to be here at Hubpages, great job guys

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