Avoiding Duplicate Hub Content

While it was always frowned upon to have unoriginal Hub content on HubPages, with the arrival of Google's Panda update, it quickly became a huge liability. And since then enforcement of the rule about not having duplicated content has been rather strict, and it's going to stay that way.

However, despite a volley of complaints to the contrary, avoiding having one of your Hubs marked as being duplicated content isn't rocket science. With a minimum of forethought, it's easy to still quote and make reference to some other web document and still produce an original, quality Hub. Here are some tips and tricks for avoiding the duplicate trap...

A lot of authors on HubPages get very confused by the use of the terms "duplicated" versus "copied" when it comes to how they are used to explain two related but very different situations. Here's what they each mean:

When you see a Hub on the dashboard that says "duplicate" in red next to the title, that means that HubPages has determined that some of the written content of that Hub was previously published somewhere else first and thus it is not original to HubPages. Hubs marked duplicate are unpublished and must be reviewed manually by the moderators before they can be republished.

When you see a Hub on the dashboard that has a red copyright symbol (©) next to the title it means that HubPages is alerting you that your original HubPages content has been stolen/taken/reproduced on some other website. Your Hub isn't penalized by HubPages but it's in your best interests as a web author to go to the offending site and ask them to take down your work. If they don't honor that request, you should file a notice of infringement (NOI) according to guidelines established by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

When a Hub has been detected by the HubPages system as being duplicated, a notice will appear at the top of the Hub which can only be seen by the author. If you click on the light green link to get more information, here's what it says.

This Hub seems to contain text that also appears on another page and may be unpublished as a result. If you review the content so that it is unique to this Hub, it will automatically be rechecked for duplication.

The issue of duplicate content on HubPages is completely separate from issues of plagiarism or copyright. All that it means is that we found text very similar to what is contained in this Hub elsewhere on the Web. Promotional or affiliate links are strictly prohibited on Hubs identified as duplicate.

Please do not contact us to say that this is your original content that is published on another site. However if you believe that this content should not appear anywhere else on the Internet, please contact us. Include the URL or title of this Hub in your message.

The following types of material are things that tend to automatically trigger the duplicate filters and get Hubs marked as duplicates. In the forums you can find people swearing up one side of the categories and down the other that their Hubs are their original content and yet nearly every single one of those unhappy people eventually admit to having put something listed below in their Hub.

1. Quoted material, especially Bible quotes. Excessive quotation is probably the number one reason for Hubs being marked as duplicate. Quote as sparingly as possible, say no more than 10% quoted material in with your original text and you should be fine. Quoting from print books isn't necessarily "safe" because many books have now been scanned and can be searched online.
   
   
2. Song lyrics - follow the same suggestions as for any other type of quote.
   
   
3. Reviews or product specs copied from a product listing - If you don't use something or can't come up with your own reasons for recommending it, don't list it on your Hub.
   
   
4. Interviews - Unless you do the interview yourself directly with the person, presume that any prepared interview is something that is already being passed around in a press kit or exists online somewhere.
   
   
5. Something they once had published somewhere else but took down and moved to HubPages - this one is tricky as it is the author's original material, but search engines caches store copies for longer than you think, and you have to make sure your material wasn't plagiarized/copied before you decided to move it.

Here are some ways that people wind up duplicating content but not realizing they are doing it. With just a tiny bit of forethought, all these can be avoided.

1. Link descriptions - If you cut and paste content from outside sites to use as the descriptions when adding links, or just accept the self-generated ones when you link to other Hubs using a link capsule, this can all be viewed as duplicated. Writing your own descriptions will save you from that.
   
   
2. Reusing any text across a series of Hubs - Many Hub authors who wrote a story or informational series and re-used small paragraphs as a series intro got busted by this one. The same goes for people that cut-n-pasted statements about copyright at the bottom of each Hub. Remember: if you are copying and pasting across any number of Hubs, the filters are most likely going to nab you.