How My Hubs Inspired Others

January 27, 2012

Although my title is slightly facetious, it is interesting to me that I can be of inspiration to other hubbers (authors).

A quick Google of today's trends or the home page of hubpages.com to see what people are talking about is just as easy for them to do as it is for me.

While I realize many topics are trendy, I write mostly in the Health topic and there are many timely issues from which one can choose. However, I do not appreciate it when I write something on Monday on a particular topic and another hubber writes on that same topic on Wednesday, using many of my key points and format that I have used. I do not believe it is coincidence.

I also do not believe it is coincidence that their hub is constructed in exactly the same format I used for my hub, i.e. Overview, signs and symptoms, treatment and tidbits regarding how it affects people (either in my life or the patient's).

I published my first hub nearly two years ago. That particular hub has had over 5,000 views and is easily picked up by many search engines, most likely because of the topic and the tags assigned to it. It has appeared in various incarnations on other sites, all carefully reworded so as to not raise the flag for duplicate content.

"I" recognize it as mostly my work, but the search engines and powers that be do not. When I have "flagged" another's content as duplicate and follow the steps forthwith, I have never heard anything back from my action.

I have even gone so far as to write the hubber (author) that even though hubpages.com and other plagarism checkers did not pick up that their content is remarkably like my content (usually theirs is reworded or uses short clipped sentences that "checkers" do not catch), that I DO KNOW and I AM LETTING YOU KNOW THAT I KNOW.

As an aside, I also write for two medical websites and have used some of the information from the answers to questions that patients write in about their various disorders and diseases. I have reworded the information so it does not infringe on the patient's privacy, nor reveal any identifying information, all in an effort to not get flagged as duplicate content. (Yes, you CAN plagarize yourself!)

In many instances, I have been flagged with duplicate content because I have published the content in some form elsewhere under my own name. But I wanted the information to get "out there" so how do I go about correcting the hub?

I was amazed that all I had to do was not only reword some of the sentences, but to make ample use of synonyms, shorten sentences and remove all notations of government agencies or studies that point to certain findings.

If it was that easy for me to do, then it will be infinitely easy for other authors to do. And they have.

In my opinion, there is not much in place to keep anyone from taking your work on the internet and personalize it as their own. For example, a sentence that reads "It is recommended that patients....." can easily be reworded to "I recommend that you ...." and it is now personalized so that the "checkers" do not pick it up as duplicate content.

A sentence that reads "The National Institute of Health conducted studies...." can easily be reworded to "Researchers have found in their studies...."

See how easy it is?

While I may enjoy the compliment, I am not amused when much of my content is reworded so that someone else can use my hard work at research for their own hub or website. I'd much rather you leave me a nice comment and vote on my hub.

Thank you for reading my rant. Please answer the poll and, by all means, leave me your comments. I really do want to know what you think. Or if you have had a similar incident, I'd love to hear how you handled it.

© Anne DiGeorge 2012