The Mysteries of HubPages

With less than 33,000 views in the roughly 16 months I have written on HubPages, my experience is still lacking as to how, and perhaps why, everything works as it does.

Members write about the "mysteries" of how scores are calculated, what the score beside their photo represents, and why poems get scored at the bottom of the heap instead of being scored against other poems. Etc.

My most frustrating mystery is surely based on my pride being hurt by the scoring mystery.

I have had as many as 19 of 513 of my items scored with scores of 80 or more at one time. Today at 10:00 AM I had only one, leading me to suspect that on some future day (perhaps soon!) I may find none of those 19 once upon a time "winners" I was so proud of remain on the list of pieces while retaining a score of 80 or more.

As I didn't alter those 19 pieces of writing in any way that would have been likely to have dropped their worth, how and why did they slip from their exalted pinnacles and fall into mediocrity, while some pieces of writing retained the ongoing level of their under 80 scores?

Surely one of the incentives I find for writing and publishing on HubPages is my personal pursuit of excellence.

If I make the recognized effort to write well, how does that recognition of quality diminish simply with the passing of time?

I will venture a guess, and let other Hubbers speculate along with me.

If I write an article about the November 2012 national election, part of that article's score is likely based on timeliness and how many ads Google and the HubPages Team can associate with that article. As time passes and the election hype is over, the value of my article to HubPages decreases, and the "score" for the article presumably drops as the interest lags.

An article on what it was like to live on a Maine farm in the early 1930s is not likely to have suffered a lowered score on the basis of timeliness, but it has also dropped below its higher scores.

The "score" mystery remains.

As for the number beside my photo, I have had an article which scored 100 (briefly) but my photo-accompanying number this morning was apparently 88, though it is usually in the 90's. So a good guess about that number is that it is not a reflection of my highest scored Hub.

As to what the number actually represents: that mystery remains as well.

I have discovered that when I average writing "a Hub a day" (as I have frequently done, even for a month at a time) I get more views, apparently by virtue of my work regularly appearing before other Hubbers. When I take a break, even with over 500 Hubs, the viewings drop way off, in part because it appears my primary audience so far is those active Hubbers.

"Out of sight, out of mind." That saying seems to apply to why the daily viewings drop to the low double digits at such times.

These are the tantalizing "mysteries" I wrestle with. I am sure there are others equally baffling to other Hubbers, some of whom may well have resolved these that I ponder about.

If so, clue me in with a comment below. Okay?

_______

Copyright 2012 Demas W. Jasper All rights reserved.