Squidoo & Duplicate Content

1. 90

   lisavollrathposted 10 years ago

   Why those of us moving over from Squidoo should not try to transfer our lenses to HubPages manually:
   
   I just moved one of my recipes that's fairly new, and doesn't have a high search engine ranking, thinking I would use it as a way to become familiar with the HubPages tools. I deleted the Squidoo lens, published the new hub---and was promptly told that it is duplicate content.
   
   *sigh*

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   1. 84

      Marisa Wrightposted 10 years agoin reply to this

      There's a few things at play here, I think.
      
      One - as Relache says, if you move the lens manually, the HubPages' dupe content checker isn't clever enough to know it's from Squidoo.  It's checking Google and finding the same text somewhere else, so it's flagging it.     
      
      Waiting an hour or two won't solve that problem - you'll have to wait until the lens has disappeared from Google search results, which is an unpredictable length of time.  It just depends how long it takes for Google to go and crawl the page again, which may be a few hours or it could be several days.
      
      If you wait and let the system transfer them, that will all be taken care of and you won't have that problem.
      
      Two - Hubs don't get unpublished for having a low score.  They get unpublished for failing QAP, or because they're duplicate, or they're overly promotional.   If you published just the recipe, with no commentary, then it may have been considered too short.   
      
      HubPages has special "recipe" capsules which you can use - in fact you should, because they add Google's rich snippets markup to the Hub, telling Google it is a recipe. 
      
      Edit:  I can see the Hub is published now?

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      1. 90

         lisavollrathposted 10 years agoin reply to this

         Thanks. I already used all the recipe capsules, and even found a calculator so I could add nutritional information.
         
         I specifically chose this lens as my test because it doesn't show up in Google search results. I'm one of those people who can find anything online in under two minutes---and I couldn't find this recipe indexed anywhere. Regardless, Paul passed it through.
         
         An hour later, the hub had been unpublished, and there was a box at the top telling me it had scored too low, and had been unpublished. I added another photo, and expanded the text, and republished, but I'm sure when I wake up tomorrow, it will be unpublished again. It's just short of 500 words, and I really can't add any more text to a simple recipe.
         
         This is a real problem. The Squidoo recipe template lent itself to very brief text, and limited us to one photo. I'm gonna have a bunch of recipes that will have the same issues this one does---and I'm not really sure what to do about it.

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         1. 84

            Marisa Wrightposted 10 years agoin reply to this

            It will be interesting to see if it does get unpublished again.  If it's nearly 500 words then I can't see how it would be. 
            
            Recipes here do need to be accompanied by commentary, as you've done for that Hub.  Poetry gets an exemption for length - nothing else does!   The reason is simple:  it's known that Google doesn't like short posts, so HubPages doesn't want them.  As usual for them, they've erred w-a-a-a-a-y on the safe side!

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         2. 0

            bobtyndallposted 10 years agoin reply to this

            I have the same issue with regards to recipes. I am very familiar with recipes as I find them all over the net. For me a recipes should be short and to the point. An image, ingredients, directions and maybe a short description and nutritional value.
            I created a recipe hub and published it. When I look at it I see a list of similar hubs at the bottom. When I look at them I see some of the ugliest looking hubs I have ever seen. I saw one that had about 10 images and 20 instructions for a simple sandwich. If I was looking for a recipe and came across that one I would simply ignore it and move on.
            
            Look any where on the internet. 90 % of all recipes take up less than a page. people know how to cook. No one needs a 400 word article telling them how or about the recipe.
            
            Keep it simple. It looks much better.

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2. 68

   relacheposted 10 years ago

   Another reason you shouldn't try to move your own lenses is that Squidoo and HubPages are going to use redirects to tell Google where the pages have moved, which will preserve much of your link juice.  Move it yourself and you go back to square one on backlinks and relevancy.

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   1. 90

      lisavollrathposted 10 years agoin reply to this

      As I said, this lens was fairly new, and ranked pretty low, so it has no juice to lose. It's an autumn recipe I published over the summer, so it never really got much traffic. I don't really think I'm losing anything by moving it---and it did give me a chance to play with the tools here a bit.

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      1. STAFF

         pauldeedsposted 10 years agoin reply to this

         If the page was deleted from Squidoo before you published the Hub it should not have been identified as a duplicate.  Perhaps there is a bit of a delay on the Squidoo side when you delete a Lens before the page returns a 404?  Just in case, you might want to delete the old page and then wait an hour or two before publishing the Hub.
         
         One thing that can happen is that your original page was copied on a 3rd site.  When that happens, even if you delete the original it may still be identified as a duplicate.  I don't believe that's what happened here, but if you suspect that sort of situation you can contact us about it and ought to be able to help clear things up.
         
         Anyway, I republished that Hub for you.

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         1. 90

            lisavollrathposted 10 years agoin reply to this

            Thanks, Paul. I think the part I was missing was "and then wait an hour or two".

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         2. 90

            lisavollrathposted 10 years agoin reply to this

            Sadly, someone else came by and unpublished it, because it didn't have a high enough score? I'm not sure I understand this. It's just a simple recipe!

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         3. 84

            Marisa Wrightposted 10 years agoin reply to this

            Paul, we've always been told that if we want to republish something, it's not enough to wait until it's deleted from the old site - we must wait until that page clears Google's cache, because the dupe content checker works by checking Google. Has something special been set up so that doesn't apply for Squidoo, even when the content is moved manually?

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            1. STAFF

               pauldeedsposted 10 years agoin reply to this

               The way our dupe checker works changed about 6 months ago.  It only keeps a local cache of pages for a very short time, so you really don't need to wait any more.  Though, as I said before, there may be caches on the site you removed content from, so waiting an hour or two would still be prudent.

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3. 93

   AliciaCposted 10 years ago

   Your recipe looks nice! If the hub is unpublished again, perhaps you could add a brief description of the health and nutritional benefits of the cranberries. That would lengthen the hub and give readers some extra information.

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   1. 90

      lisavollrathposted 10 years agoin reply to this

      Thanks for the suggestion. I thought about this for a couple of days, and I feel uncomfortable padding my work with information on which I'm not an expert. I feel good about the recipe: I whipped it up in my own kitchen, and photographed it, and I know it works. But I'm not a nutritionist, so I can't really speak with authority on the value of eating cranberries. Does that make sense?

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      1. 84

         Marisa Wrightposted 10 years agoin reply to this

         It looks as though the Hub is still published so it doesn't sound as though that will be necessary.

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4. 68

   relacheposted 10 years ago

   In the announcement thread admin confirmed that allowing the automated move will preserve/save your original publication date.
   
   http://hubpages.com/forum/topic/123836? … ost2622604
   
   There's a huge reason not to move anything yourself.

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   1. 59

      Nancy Hardinposted 10 years agoin reply to this

      relache, that's exactly why I have not moved any of my content from Squidoo. We were told they would move them to our new HubPages account, intact, so that we could then rework them to fit HP's requirements. I have 353 coming over, not all of which will be viable on HP. Those I will put on my blog, and then rework what's left. We appreciate the chance to save some of our pages. Thanks to HP for giving us the opportunity.

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5. 82

   goatfuryposted 10 years ago

   I finally sucked it up and created a second Hubpages profile, just for the Squidoo lenses to transfer over.  Someone said I might be able to transfer them over to this profile eventually.  Anyone have any insight on how that might work?

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   1. 84

      Marisa Wrightposted 10 years agoin reply to this

      As far as I'm aware, the only way to do it is to cut and paste - so you'll lose your 301 redirect and original publication date anyway.

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