Topic is used as an ad
 

I don't know what to think. A few months ago I posted a thread regarding pain and discomfort in the neuromuscular forum. Imagine my shock when I found the entire thread used as an ad on-line. I know that we have no privacy but I'm a little offended that vBulletin could take the entire thread and post it as an advertisement. Bummer

I'm not really sure what you mean. Could you post a link, please?

Hi
who used it as an ad? The posts here are copyrighted and so if anyone used it they did so without permission.
Could you please link to the ad so that DocJohn can look into this.

thanks

How do I do that?

http://neurotalk.psychcentral.com/ar...p/t-49764.html

Duh Here it is.

If it is just indexed on the search engines then that is normal. this is a public forum and so search engines do crawl and index all posts here.

if it is being used by a company in an advertisement then they do not have the right to do so

I sent Doc a PM alerting him of this so he will get it when he checks in tomorrow

in the meantime, if you could copy and paste here what appears in your browser address field when you are on the page that has this copied, that would be very helpful so we can see just what you are referring to, or give us the search term you are using on MSN that leads to this copied info

I don't want to give them any more free publicity. I use MSN search and it came up. So this is normal? Can you tell from the link?

http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?c...ons+sheepskins

Oh well, what can you do.

Thanks much and good night.

if you are referring to this on that search page then yes, it is not an ad but routine indexing of posts by a search engine. The search engine "bots" crawled the thread and indexed the posts. they are appearing on a search for that company's products because those were mentioned in your posts.

So it doesnt appear to be an ad, but rather just an index on the search engine of your original post from this thread in which you refer to the company's product
http://neurotalk.psychcentral.com/thread49764.html

Susan, from reading your post on the link, it sounds like you've really been through a lot with your health. I'm so sorry. :hug:

hmmmm?
 

Back in my active days on BT... I was shocked to discover that my name when searched, was "borrowed" on many drug websites, and even some porn ones.

I reported it to JL there, but of course it went into the "round file".

I was told once that places take names with high Google visibility and snip them into their sites, so when people Googled me they were linked to disreputable places.
Most of them appear to be gone now, some with web-links domains gone. Fly by night spots...
At one time I was so angry about this, I had a disclaimer in my signature, but finally I removed it.

But I did find this one --and Chemar is on it too!
http://64.233.169.104/search?q=cache...nk&cd=13&gl=us

This appears to just be a copy of an OCD post.
I am not sure what this place is that copied a whole thread?

I haven't Googled myself in a while, so it was interesting to do that today! ;)

Hi mrsD

yup that is unauthorized copying. frequently those kinds of sites use them to keyword spam Google so as to get higher page ranking and then sell their (often unrelated) product.

I get that a lot with my business pages too and usually the sites themselves have no contact infor(as with the one you linked)
However, one can contact Google by reporting them and they will usually remove the site from their index and block future crawls of it

we will see what Doc feels about that one you linked, but the one reported by Curls isnt in that category...it is a legit indexed thread on MSN search

that is going to happen in threads that contain the same keywords that another site uses. especially commercial sites. it doesn't mean they are doing anything malicious or illegal, just trying to show up when people do a search.

the thread in question mentions the webiste and sheepskin. that really upped the chance of it showing up in a search.

Here's what that page is -- it's a search-engine friendly archive that the forum software automatically creates to help the search engines index our community here.

As you'll notice, we don't run ads on NeuroTalk. But we do on the archive pages, because they are rarely viewed by our members, and so don't interfere with anyone's aesthetic. These ads bring in a few dollars a day and help offset the server costs of running NT.

You'll find those pages indexed in search engines, as those are the pages some search engines prefer to index.

I hope this clears up the confusion.

DocJohn