Sketchup ur Space & Sketchup 4 Architect stolen content
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Hey folks, you may have seen "Sketchup ur space" and "Sketchup 4 architect" posing around the internet with different SketchUp tutorials.
For a long time they incessantly bugged me (and others) about writing for them. I was contacted by email, my website, Facebook, LinkedIn, and more. I considered doing it until I looked into their website and general operation.
Their website looks to be from the late 90's, plastered in ads and coated with questionable grammar. Forgiving that, if you look further you will see that they really don't appear to have any understanding of SketchUp, or our community at all. They just aggregate content from other users. (More on that in a minute)
So, as many of you may know, I have a blog that covers digital fabrication and SketchUp. I also write professionally for magazines. When I write for a magazine, I get paid. When I write for the community I am happy to donate my time. When I asked what these guys paid for content, they refused to pay. I politely told them that I would be interested in working for free.
I thought that was going to be the end of it. Since then, they have taken to continuing to spam me. They've posted content on my Facebook pages without permission (links to their content)
The last straw for me was when they flat out stole articles from my blog. They took them word for word and reposted them to their site with no attribution. The worst part is that some of the posts were written by another member of the community. After repeated requests, phone calls and emails to them, they finally removed the content.
I am posting this here as a warning to folks out there in the community: These guys appear to have a lot of content from the community, I suspect a lot of it is stolen. They also have pictures of members represented as "contributors" to the community. I would question if these were used with permission or not.
Upon further Google sleuthing I discovered that these guys are run by this company: http://www.jobs2india.com/. This appears to be some sort of SEO (read: spam) company. It appears they are mining our community for traffic numbers so they can sell targeted ads, they aren't giving back at all.
So, go to their sites, check their feeds and make sure your content isn't being stolen. What you want to do about it is up to you, I don't think it's right.
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Agreed, they clearly have no idea what they are doing. Unfortunately that's part of what makes the internet great, anyone can post anything. I'm fine with ineptitude, I can ignore it. Just don't steal content.
Can you imagine what a first time SketchUp user things when they Google for help and they land on that page first? They probably think SketchUp is dodgy. I hope they're landing here first.
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Well Damnit... I let their head guy post their links on my sketchup facebook page. I've gotten on to him because most of their articles don't link to the content they are talking about. They put a url on the page, but no actual link. I'm fairly certain this Rajib Dey is the one running their show. I had thought they were a small drafting/3D company. But after closer inspection I believe you're right, They're SEO farming.
https://www.facebook.com/rajib.dey.982292
Although I have to say he posts tons of relevant links... I guess I see his incentive wasn't architectural knowledge.
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Rajib is the guy that seems to have been running it from day 1. There were/are a few other people who seem to be involved too.
They do post a lot of links, but they don't know what they are talking about, at all. It appears they are doing human powered spam to drive as much traffic to them as possible. I welcome them to come out and explain themselves, but somehow I don't think that will happen because they are a shady, fly by night SEO company.
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I have to agree... I should have paid closer attention. I've removed him from my page until such time as it's explained.
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One word. Dishonest.
Hassle us regularly.
Social media is the best way to raise awareness of their 'antics'
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As far as Facebook goes, can't you stop them from posting to your page? Unfriend them?
Seems like the same as what Google does. Google mines our info for targeting ads. I've been constantly bugged by Google and other internet "services" to list my business (so they can misrepresent it in some inept fashion) AND we all do have our personal and business info "stolen" to pad their sites.
What's on the web gets misappropriated regularly by Google and other web companies
But one expects more from a site posing as SketchUp source and it's too bad people will be mislead and others will not receive credit or payment for their contributions.
At least they did take something down after being bugged. I doubt you can get that far with most such spam operations.
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Probably the most effective thing you can do if your content has been stolen is to use the Google Disavow toolhttps://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/disavow-links-main.
This will tell Google that you do not condone or trust the domain that is linking to your website, and it will hurt their SEO rankings. The tool was created for situations like this and for people who link to your site with "negative SEO" tactics to try to bring your site down in rankings.
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Disavow Tool will not hurt their rank... It only attempts to save your rank from being affected by bad sites or your own spammy link campaign. Matt Cutts was very clear that the Disavow tool could not be used by others to hurt website ranking on a website. Although, he is a known liar...
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You can use the Google DCMA request to remove content from Google services that has breached your copyright or trademark. It won't remove their site or their content from their server, but Google may remove them from search.
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Great suggestions. I was luckily able to get them to honor my request to remove the content, but only after barraging them on just about every channel I could.
I suggest that if anyone finds stolen content to call them at 866 493 4944. I got them to answer once and it clearly forwards to a cell phone. The guy on the other end, who wouldn't identify himself (I was very polite) I can only assume was Rajib. On the phone he promised to remove the content, but then didn't follow through for about a week.
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@krisidious said:
Disavow Tool will not hurt their rank... It only attempts to save your rank from being affected by bad sites or your own spammy link campaign. Matt Cutts was very clear that the Disavow tool could not be used by others to hurt website ranking on a website. Although, he is a known liar...
I don't think it hurts their rank directly. It's more of a byproduct. I'm pretty sure Google takes outbound links into account when figuring out how relative your content is. So, when they link to all of our great content, they're telling Google, "Hey, my site is similar to all these other sites". By disavowing, you're taking that advantage away from them, therefore, hurting their rankings.
Also, I'd find it hard to believe that if a website is being disavowed from MULTIPLE sites, Google doesn't pick up on this pattern and hit them in the rankings. It seems like a great way for Google to crowd-source spam control. Of course, I could be wrong, but it seems logical to me.
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That's why we've made that specific point to Matt Cutts, he's the head of Search. It was posited to him that this would in turn be used as a weapon against a site's competitors.
He's assured us that being disavowed has no affect on rank...
http://www.audiencebloom.com/2014/04/google-disavowed-someone-wont-hurt-rankings/
http://searchengineland.com/matt-cutts-qa-how-to-use-google-link-disavow-tool-137664
However... Like I said. he's a known liar. He told us we could trade links with relevant sites. Then we get hammered for it. And yes, I agree, it's a treasure trove of data to ignore.
Links are votes... even bad links carry some weight, but good links inside text with relevant linking text are best. If a website like these links to you, disavowing the links will subtract the link weight they carry from your profile, not theirs. They will have to be penalized by the algorithm for being spammy.
The disavow tool's main purpose is to dig people out of their spammy graves. If you had a bad linking system, or you paid someone and they did some bad things. It helps you get your reputation back... They warn only to use it if you are absolutely sure as it can hurt your own rank.
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Ranked or not, let's make sure that everyone that reads this understands how these guys operate, and checks their websites for stolen content.
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Just so everyone knows, these guys just ripped off images from Matt Donley right from the main page of SketchUp.com.
If anyone needs help getting their stuff off of any of the sites they operate, I am willing to help.
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You should screen shot things like that...
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Eric, thanks for highlighting this. Really appalling way to do business. I'm going to check this out.
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Ok, they removed Matt's image, but now have one right off of the SketchUp home page. Hope they got permission.
Feel free to weigh in Sketchup Ur Space.
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I doubt they are here... Over at our BlackBook group we determined they are indeed only a SEO website traffic scheme. People are here to learn, they just use google alerts to post new links I'm sure.
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The unfortunate downside to posting about them here is that you have probably generated more hits for them than complaints. One of the cases where even bad publicity is good.
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