Introducing Idle Hubs

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STAFF
Paul Edmondsonposted 11 years ago
We really appreciated the feedback from the community and want to continue to incorporate feedback into this feature that will be released in informational mode today so people can see it in their my account.

The blog post announcing the feature is here http://blog.hubpages.com/2012/08/introducing-on-idle/

The learning center entry is here: http://hubpages.com/learningcenter/Feat … -Idle-Hubs We will update it with questions and clarifications from this thread.
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  ILoveChristmasposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  How will this affect new hubs that haven't had a chance to draw hundreds or thousands of views yet?
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  Julie DeNeenposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Well the hub I wrote today has the Zzz right next to it...which is hilarious cause it's only a day old!
  
  How the system determine the new hubs from the sleepy idle ones?
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  Little two twoposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  This is a feature that should be optional and or only an internal guideline. Quality writing is not being rewarded here, not at all. The only thing being rewarded regardless of quality of content, is page views. This in no shape way or form improves HP reputation, the quality of articles being submitted or improving the writers work/skills.
  
  I can write a hub on snooki and her lack of parenting, be crude and rude tabloid style and so long as it gets views, it is a HP high quality article.
  
  Not only are you no longer supporting me as a writer (blocking google from my articles based on some vague and hazy algorithm), you are opening a can of worms that just may ruin your reputation even more, when quality is equated with page views.
  
  Just my opinion. I am gonna take a few days to consider the value of continuing to write on a site that no longer supports me unless I am popular.
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  Bendo13posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  +1
  
  Seems like HubPages is turning into Squidoo, which I never liked.
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  EmpressFelicityposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  That's exactly what I was going to say.
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  derek gulbransonposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Actually by blocking Google from your substandard articles, HubPages is helping you. If Google finds substandard articles in your portfolio, your entire portfolio's search traffic will be adversely affected.
  
  This change is about automatically protecting the online Hubbers' profiles from being penalized by content that search engines consider sub-standard. Now Hubbers can write Hubs on whatever topic they choose and rest assured that they will not be sacrificing traffic because of it.
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  summerberrieposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Okay, I agree, but how can you make an accurate judgement on a hub that is only a couple of months old? Shouldn't you have some time frame like if the hub is not preforming after 6months or even a year?
  Over all I think it is a great feature...
  
  The hub which was zzed of mine that was featured as an example and praised in the apprentice program has the hightest hub score of all my hubs?
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  mistyhorizon2003posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  It should truly not be allowed to apply to any hub under 3 years old based on what HP have said about hubs 'ageing' in the past.
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  summerberrieposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I have to agree. Or at least one or two. Give it at least 6 months.
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  Bendo13posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I'd be A-OK with this new rule if it was only for 3 year old+ hubs.
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  mistyhorizon2003posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Exactly. This new system effectively halts ageing of hubs in their tracks before they have a chance to gain traffic naturally or get a good position in the Google search results. I am stunned that this flaw in the idea was not addressed before the system was implemented. Result, well, I have about 5 hubs now showing Z's that were only written in March and have no real ageing to speak of, (and won't get any now either).
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  janderson99posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I think that it is obvious that there is a 'quality' aspect as well as a 'traffic' one. The advice from Paul E is 'giving it a bit of an update will get it featured again'. That is, make a few random changes, add a poll, a table, a few pics, and extra para, and the software tool may allow it. All very obscure. The tail is wagging the dog here.
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  Pearldiverposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  + 100
  
  Absolutely!!
  
  While I appreciate that we should 'upgrade or freshen' our hubs (and I certainly do need to with some) I find that our net reputations can certainly be 'pruned' by these 'site enhancements' as they shift the overall 'value' of our efforts into 'less value' for us as Worker Bees to 'more value' and control of our efforts for the site.
  
  Any commercial Strategic Planner can see and predict the reasons why and predictable potential range of outcomes on offer with this current set of 'changes.' I'm afraid that what was previously somewhat rightfully promoted as personal branding and growth prudence, has been not so strategically thrown out in a planning meeting, to be 'replaced' by new babies and bathwater!
  
  Those of us who Write ONLY Quality and have taken 2 - 4 years to successfully build OUR Overall Google Presence should not be subjected to such action - Not only does it contradict ALL Previous Advice from HP Staff, but it Does Not truly represent the Real Situation with our search engine relationships... it only breaks down Our Overall Google Presence and provides HP with the ability to justify any 'sandboxing' of hubs and hubbers that don't (In Their Current View) fit their 'strategic' mix.
  
  Seems I'm certainly one of those 'sandy' characters....
  I don't believe I have EVER had such a Lowly Hubber Score of 89 which is currently publicly being promoted with Google as my current 'value' and 'STATUS!'
  OMG... even my 'Valuable Comments and Flagging' Accolade has been taken away Yet Again!! Surely I've contributed something positively to HP members with 7000 comments in the forums during my time???
  Many of my Best Poetry has been ZZed months ago and now is officially recognized as 'Budget' material This is all too funny.... budget e-books look the go for that ZED Stuff!
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  kenyanXstianposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I am personally quite disturbed by this development. Being new to HP, I wonder whether people like us will even get a chance to rise the ranks and be recognized. this has certainly dampened my morale and I only hope someone in HP will reconsider this.
  And can someone tell me, for those who have 1000 plus hubs, where will they get all the time to 'spruce up' their older hubs. It means then that instead of creating new informative hubs, they will have to use all their time enhancing the old ones every once or twice a month. Surely someone answer me! I thought HP said that hubbers should write hubs that can attract traffic regardless of how old they are??? What happened to that policy??
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  Rock_njposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  That's a good point. For productive Hubbers that have produced hundreds and even thousands of Hubs, trying to keep up with the Idle Hubs is a job in an of itself, which takes away from time that could be used creating new Hub content. At some point you have to make a choice: update Idle Hubs, create new Hubs and forget about those pesky Idle Hubs, or just go elsewhere to publish online.
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  janderson99posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Please define "substandard " articles for me and the relationship between article quality and traffic. The new hub hopper promotes 'quality' articles but ignores 'traffic potential'. The ZZZZ deindexes articles that get little traffic. The outcome of this is that HP will promote 'quality' articles that are destined to get no traffic and will be deindexed.
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  Norman Steinposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  This is what I'm wondering about. What is the criteria for a 'substandard' article??
  
  A good, well written informative article that offers the reader VALUE should never be de-indexed as the reader left the site happy about the content, even if there are just 2 or 3 reader a month.
  
  On the other hand a spammy article with no real information that ranks well and gets tons of search engine traffic because of good SEO and KW research will leave the reader with a bad taste in his/her mouth and will feel that HP isn't a good domain to visit.
  
  The question is, in HPs view, which is a quality article?
  
  Organic search engine traffic does NOT determine the quality of an article, it does determine the quality of SEO.
  
  So really, which is it. I can make spammy SEO rich hubs all day long that just piss off tons of readers to no end, but they'll never be Zzzz
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  Rock_njposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Good point. There are plenty of Hubs about "pop culture" that get a lot of traffic, but add little intellectual stimulus or gravitas to Hub Pages. On the other hand, well written Hubs that are intellectually engaging and cover topics that are more obscure in a well rounded way are very worthwhile to someone searching for a particular topic and raise Hub Page's profile as a source of information on the Internet, but may only get a handful of views per month or even per year, and will be thrown into the Idle Hubs jail by Hub Pages. That does not seem fair. It seems to discourage people from writing informative Hubs about obscure topics (which I like to do, as many obscure topics are not covered well on the Internet and need to be properly written about) and more Hubs about trendy pop culture subjects that are popular, but a dime a dozen. This could be a turning point for Hub Pages, and it might not be a turn for the better. I know some Hubbers are taking their business elsewhere due to this new policy.
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  Bard of Elyposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I have one such hub that comes to mind immediately. It is about my walk to Teno Alto with a friend who is a walking guide . Teno Alto is a very remote mountain village here. There are some great exclusive photos, plenty of text divided up into separate sections, and a video. Not many people go to Teno Alto that are on this island. No buses ever. You get there by car, by bike or on foot. It is very remote and I would have thought that was the interest value it has. Here it has been dumped into the Idle bin! I also did a long interview with the same friend who runs a business here for people who want to go walking the mountains and forests. That interview is classified as idle as well, as are most interviews I have done with relatively unknown people. Seems as if unless the interviewee is really famous then they won't get much traffic and will get put in the idle category here!
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  That Grrlposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I don't like this "feature". This is why I never stuck with writing for Squidoo. It should be up to me whether or not I update my articles, whether or not I link to them at Twitter, Scoop.it, Pinterest, etc.
  
  To say this is to help writers is misleading. If it were up to the writer I could believe that. I do not want my posts to be forced offline for Google and the general reading public coming to HubPages. I go out of my way to bring readers to my articles. I will NOT appreciate the fact that I have 160 posts published but only some actually visible.
  
  The joke is, I can post all of my own content to other sites. I work as a content curator and I write for other sites and blogs. I don't need to go out of my way to link to my own content. I just don't see that as anything but spammy. I'm not going to become a spammer just to keep my Hub articles from being put in mothballs by HubPages. If HubPages would rather not have my content I can remove it.
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  That Grrlposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  If you're writing posts and having them put on idle - aren't you just spinning your wheels and spending time writing content for nothing? Is there a point to writing that way? I thought the idea was to make money from our posts versus writing for nothing. You can write for nothing on all kinds of sites, including a site of your own.
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  ithabiseposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  But you could look at it another way, too. You're probably not making anything or anything worthwhile on those on idle now. So you're writing an enormous amount for so little that is undermining your entire portfolio in the watchdog's eyes. I agree that a time frame for hubs might be more fair, but I think we are getting a benefit more than something's being taken away from us. I just hope there is a clearer way on how to "wake up" our hubs.
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  Little two twoposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  But this is my point, my articles are not substandard. They are just of a topic that is not overly read or is for a small niche, example fishing. Sometimes I write to share something different or unique. Some get a couple of views a week. The bulk of my traffic is google, not hubpages. I unpublish my holiday hubs and those that get no traffic for months.
  
  Substandard articles have nothing to do with page views. Page views is more equated to a popularity contest, what hots and trendy in the moment, not level of quality.
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  derek gulbransonposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  All great feedback. Thanks. Very much echos conversations we have in the office and reassuring that issues seem largely around the sort of "gray area" seasonal or niche Hubs.
  
  Basically I think you could currently think of "substandard" in my comment above as whatever would cause your search traffic to be penalized. (If you've got a great name for it, I'm all ears ).Completely agree that this doesn't equal "substandard" from a quality perspective, and that's what makes this problem such a hard one to solve. What about seasonal or highly niche Hubs, poetry and fiction? Just because they aren't getting traffic doesn't mean they're not amazing. How do we make sure those Hubs get all the traffic they can? Is it really worth while to remove Hubs from the index?
  
  This release helps us gather critical data to help answer all of these questions, and we believe will help everyone's traffic in the short term. Gathering the needed data requires we make the change for all Hubs. We're definitely watching closely and continue to appreciate all the feedback in the forums.
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  aa liteposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  But just because they are not getting traffic, doesn't mean that they are being penalised by Google, it might just mean that they are not being searched for. This is especially true of seasonal hub. I have a hub about getting tickets for Wimbledon tennis, during two weeks in June it gets more traffic than all my other hubs put together, for the rest of the year it only gets the occasional glance. I don't' think Google thinks there is anything wrong with it, or that it penalises me for having it on my subdomain, it's just that it is only searched for during a short period of time. I am glad to say that that hub is still featured, I don't know whether that will last, but I think it illustrates well that not getting google traffic doesn't necessarily mean there is a penalty.
  The opposite could also be true, the topic of the hub might be too general, it might be competing in searches with very well established authority sites, google might like that hub just fine, it just likes a lot of other sites more, so it doesn't get traffic, but it doesn't carry a penalty.
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  Lauryallanposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I don't think it's just seasonal hubs.
  Previous advice given by many hubbers and hub staff is to write for events that haven't happened yet. I wrote a hub for something that will begin in the middle of September. It has zzz's next to it even though it is ranked in 3rd position on the front page of Google.
  Now you're saying I took all that time to write my articles and not only do I have to jump through the hoops to get ranked by Google, but that HP are now going to make the decision whether it should be allowed to be ranked by Google at all!! How does that even make sense?
  Surely Google knows what to rank and what not to rank. Why is HP now trying to decide for them? Does this mean there's going to be a new secret HP algo we all have to adapt to? Is this going to get to the point where HP tells us what to write so it will be allowed to be indexed by Google?
  Surely it's in the best interests of the writer to look after their own account. They wrote the articles. They know why they wrote them and what the goals of the article are.
  How can this go live on Wednesday when there are so many factors that haven't been taken into consideration? Once these articles are deindexed it losses it's position in Google. Since over 95% of my traffic comes from Google I can't see that working out well for me!!
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  Little two twoposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Thank you for the reply. While there is some comfort in knowing that Hubpages is testing and still gathering data on the effectiveness and use of this idea, it raises concerns as well. Concerns that no one really has a solid answer to.
  
  You (as in Hubpages, not you personally), say that hubpages will still promote them internally to help them get some traffic, generate inhouse discussions and hubpage comraderie ... yet they will not be a part of topics, discover more hubs and only find-able with a direct search or url. How are they to get back into good standing when there is no support for them other than me going begging to family and friends to get some clicks. I have already received an email from people in hubpages asking me to go view (not read or participate) all their hubs and they will return the favour.
  
  It is my stance that when you make such sweeping changes to the system over the course of a day or two and use terms like 'it appears to be', 'we are not sure', 'we have many of the same questions' ... that confidence in Hubpages ability to deliver a stable and open writing platform that is fair to all, begins to erode. While I am not rage quitting as that one mature hubpage expert accused those who had reservations about this change did, I am also not inclined to continue to write fresh and new material for the site, that may or may not support my work.
  
  And I think a better word to use than substandard is under performing.
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  SOEposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I strongly object to the idea of this not being an option that can be turned off. With all due respect, I have spent several years studying search ranking, seo, etc.. to determine the madness behind my methods. I understand that a lot of hubers may benefit from something like this, but for someone like me it can have adverse impacts, beside the feeling like control is being taken in a place where I specifically came for that kind of control. I know how to use Google Webmaster tools to get my pages de-indexed if I want to.
  
  I already have found several hubs of mine targeted for this de-indexing, which still get a nice handful of monthly views. Besides the views, my hubs provide a service which in some cases is not provided elsewhere, one of which is my Solar 2 guide (which has several of its pages idled), where I'm the only one to have written such a full guide for the game. In this case, I care FAR more that people can find it and make use of it, than any amount of money it makes.
  
  Second, and most importantly, is this whole system and the concept of it actually improving SEO, weighs VERY heavily on the idea that all hubbers cover a wide variety of topics with hubs that for the most part are highly independent and stand alone.
  
  My hubs do not function this way. I write only about video games and always make several hubs on each game, splitting several topics amongst them and linking between them appropriately, often building very intricate webs of articles. One key idea behind SEO is the breadth at which a topic is covered. If I start having pages of a multi hub guide de-indexed because they are not getting enough views, I will loose the benefit in ranking I receive from covering a variety of topics about the same subject, all intertwined, thereby actually hurting my ranking.
  
  In closing, and again with all due respect, I also believe if this "idle" hub. Shows up for this search "planetary soloist" on the front page of google, even without typing the game name, then I think it is ranking just fine, regardless if it only had 8 views this month.
  
  I appreciate the desire to help most people by making things easier, but turning a PC into a Mac doesen't help the guy who knows his PC, its just a hinderance.
  Options for the win.
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  That Grrlposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Sign up for another writing network like Ezine Articles and create a post about the same information/ topic. Link to your post on HubPages from there. That will give you one linkback.
  
  Join a forum relevant to your topic (Google Groups for example) and add the link to your post in your signature. Start posting in the forum. Try to make relevant, worthwhile posts. That will bring you another linkback.
  
  Comment on blogs which have posted something relevant to your topic and leave a link to your post in the comment you make. That gives you another linkback.
  
  Whether or not this is going to end up making HubPages seem like a site full of spammers will be interesting. It's one thing to encourage people to promote their content (that's a good thing) it's another thing to have the writers on HubPages pushed out of their comfort zone into the big world of the Internet where most of them don't usually wander around and understand. (That has been my observation after writing here a year).
  
  HubPages needs to create a very simple and very good guide to promoting content for HubPages writers who may have only gotten as far as checking email up to now.
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  Greensleeves Hubsposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Little Two Two, I've just briefly glanced at a few of your articles and the ones I've looked at certainly are not substandard in any way whatsoever. One of the problems here is that too many people are equating poor traffic with 'substandard' or 'poor quality' or 'underperforming' writing. They seem to think the only measure of worth is the number of visitors a hub gets (in financial terms maybe that's right, but not by any other criteria). They automatically make the assumption that if a hub has low traffic then there must be something wrong with it. There isn't, unless Hubpages is intended to be a site only for popular culture and mass market appeal articles. I hope that's not the case, because there are a huge number of informative and well written articles on HubPages, as well as minority interest creative writings, and I wouldn't want to see them disappear, or made invisible to google searchers.
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  Mark McCleanposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  @Little two two - you are spot on with your comment articulating there is a vast difference between "popular" and "quality" articles. I have read MANY popular articles whose quality surprises me. I thought the whole idea was to write informational articles that stand the test of time because their content is factual and helpful.
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  IzzyMposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I think you might be confusing what is popular on HP and what is popular on Google.
  
  As we never see other people's stats, we never know what is doing really well in the search engines, and that is the real judgement of our work.
  
  I have had featured hubs on HP and contest winning hubs that never see a Google view. My most popular hubs according to the search engines are never featured here, and are not popular amongst hubbers.
  
  The hubs that do best are long, well-written articles that answer readers' questions, and no-one is going to post to the forums what their most popular hub is, for fear of being copied.
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  Petra Vlahposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  What is popular on Google search made one of my hubs getting a lot more traffic than what I was expecting from a poem.
  The title is "The egg" and it is dedicated to Brancusi sculpture, but considering the popularity it enjoys, I am sure people were searching for "how to make an omelette"
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  Greensleeves Hubsposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Absolutely concur Little Two Two. quality should not be equated with page views. It seems there may be no place for specialist articles on HubPages in the future, but if that is the case, then I suspect many of Hubpages' best writers will pack up and go. Please don't go yet though. I am hoping and believing that the criticisms of this new idle hub policy will be taken on board and the policy will be amended. The HubPages staff seem a reasonable and thoughtful team from most of the things they say, and I hope they will respond in an understanding way.
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  Little two twoposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I am not sure which one of your replies I am quoting .. lol, long morning already.
  
  Thank you for the nice words about my hubs. I have come to see that when hubpages calls our work substandard, what they actually mean is under-performing (not quality wise either). Not that I was aware of or have seen any 'must have 100 views a week to keep your article indexed' type rule or 'article must make you (us) at least X amount of dollars monthly/weekly/daily to stay indexed' type of requirement.
  
  I am not sure who the brilliant hubpage "expert" was (who represents Hubpages whether they wanna admit it or not) went off with a childish rant about those of us who have concerns about this change calling us rage quitters (Thank god they are not in charge, uh!?) .... but I am not rage quitting. I have simply decided to not add fresh material until this little experiment of hubpages with MY hardwork is over with and I see the success or damage of it. Only thing I am doing is cleaning up, deleting, unpublishing and compiling the existing articles.
  
  I won't lie when I see terms like 'it appears to be', 'we are not sure', 'we have many of the same questions' ... I lose confidence in Hubpages.
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  WriteAngledposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  HP's own statistics page makes interesting reading:
  http://hubpages.com/stats/
  Less than a third of all hubs get ten or more views a month and only about 5% get 100 or more views a month.
  
  So this purge will either make the majority of hubs on the site invisible to search engines, or else it is not just a number-crunching exercise, but also a focused targeting of certain topics and categories.
  
  The fact some people are reporting hubs with views have been hit, while other hubs with less or no views have escaped makes me think that this is a further layer of censorship being added over and above outright unpublishing by moderators of hubs, which break the rules.
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  EmpressFelicityposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Yeah. You could have hit on something here.
  
  What it will do in practice is to "funnel" people into writing about everyday topics that they know are already popular, and make them shy away from the offbeat, speculative stuff. Sunforged already made that point however many pages ago but the question is, is this funneling an unintended consequence or a deliberate strategy to bring HP more in line with - say - eHow in terms of content?
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  jacharlessposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  In my opinion, yes, it is definitely a strategy -and possibly a good one.
  Given that Google is the main external source of Traffic and Revenue generation, it only makes sense they would do whatever is required to maintain front-page status. Internally, funnel topics for short and long term success, within a series of niche categories. This keeps HP Taxonomy fresh and vibrant. And funnel UGC to mirror those topics whereby increasing member recognition for top quality, topical-ready information, as well as, a more acute and possibly higher revenue response from visitors.
  
  In short:
  Externally: a more effective, [guaranteed] SERP
  Internally: more effective taxonomy, folksonomy, user interaction and revenue generation power.
  
  James.
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  EmpressFelicityposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Internally? I thought the idle hubs thing was all about making idle hubs invisible to Google?
  
  But then if Greensleeves Hubs' post is anything to go by, it is an internal thing as well.
  
  That sucks.
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  jacharlessposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Idle Hubs will also not be shown in HP focal lists or topic displays either, which would effect the internal Search, Taxonomy, Folksonomy and definitely the overall Hub Rank for that Category of topical articles.
  
  James.
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  Petra Vlahposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  So you are telling us that creative writing on HP is a waste of time and energy since it will not be promoted not even internally? How refreshing...
  
  HP never appreciated quality writing to begin with and if it is because creative writing does not make them much money, I could even understand, but to pretend that they are protecting our reputation by putting hubs on idle status, is just too much for me to stomach.
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  MyWebsposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  +1,000
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  mactaversposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  What happened to the numerous times that asked Hubbers to write quality content that readers would enjoy for years to come? If you write mostly on history, antiques, collections, literature or book reviews, I have news, that while sometimes I do update Hubs if I get interesting new information constantly rewriting isn't valid. Meanwhile Hubs continue to be published where the English, grammar and content is terrible, but wow, that doesn't seem to be an issue.
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  That Grrlposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Consider also the Hub writers who post their poetry and fiction. Those Hubs may not get high traffic but they have value. Or, does HubPages want to become something a small step up from a shopping site? Are only the posts which sell something and get traffic due to spam efforts, going to be allowed to show up?
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  MickiSposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Writers who post poetry and fiction are not really effected by this at all. They don't rely on search engines for their traffic: they rely on their HubPages and social media followers. The URLs to their Hubs still work, and their Hubs are still listed on their Profile pages.
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  That Grrlposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I don't agree. I've linked to poetry and fiction published on HubPages and been thanked for giving them the extra traffic. My link was outside of HubPages and yet was found and picked up and shared and read by other people, outside of HubPages.
  
  To say that fiction writers are not effected by having their posts unfindable by people not already at HubPages (with the correct link - because it won't be indexed for the HubPages search either) is a bit silly. Fiction writers like to be read and get feedback too.
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  aa liteposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Will the algorithm to determine whether hubs need to be put to sleep be re-run at regular intervals, or will it just be used on newly published hubs from now on? If my hubs (well almost all of them) survived this round, does that mean they are safe, or will they be tested again soon?
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  Bob Zermopposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Good question.
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  MickiSposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Yes, the algorithm runs on all Hubs to determine which need to be put into "idle." Once a Hub is idle, it can be re-run by the algorithm if you update it. All new Hubs will run through it.
  
  Hope that helps.
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  aa liteposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Sorry, I am still not clear. If a hub has gone through the algorithm once, and it was not made idle, will it then run through the algorithm again, say a month later, after the next Panda update? Or will it be assumed that if it passed once, it must be ok and it will be left alone.
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  Petra Vlahposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  MICKIS dear,
  how do you update a poem? Do you write it backward?
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  Writer Foxposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Just go in and add this sentence someplace at the bottom:
  
  "This is the new and improved version."
  
  That will flag HP that this has been recently updated.
  
  Then, go back into Edit and remove the line.
  
  Or, stop wasting time on HP altogether because good writers can't really handle this nonsense. It's annoying, distracting and a mega time-bandit.
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  MarleneBposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I don't even question what the HubPages staff does anymore. I have only been at this site for a little over a year and so far, the things HubPages has incorporated or dropped had made my life as a writer easier. Algorithms? I don't even care anymore. I made a decision to leave it up to the staff to make the right decisions. All I need to do is write. That's what I do best.
  
  If I see that things are not working out to my benefit, then and only then, I will move my "stuff" somewhere else. In the meantime, I like writing and I like leaving the technical stuff to the HP staff.
  
  Whether I understand the process or not, I see that HubPages is doing a stellar job. We are all making money and that's all that matters in the end. Right?
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  Lissieposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  
  Well I'm making maybe 10% of what I used to make here - and most of the damage has been done by HP not google
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  The Writers Dogposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I have just counted fifteen of my 22 posted Hubs as "Zzz-ed".
  
  Of these fifteen, I randomly Googled six of my Hubs.
  
  Of those six, four are ranked number 1 on Google Search, while two are ranked second on Google search.
  
  As I understand this "Zzz-ed" idea, these six random Hubs will be "disconnected" from Google Search results, costing me traffic and possible earnings from my highest ranking Hubs.
  
  Can this please be confirmed or denied, so I know whether it is worth keeping Hubs published, or just moving them to my own site where I will get traffic and income regardless?
  
  Thank you.
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  MyWebsposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  This is exactly what I'm afraid of. The majority of my hubs rank on page one of Google for multiple keywords. If they get Zzz'd and the 'no index' attribute applied then there goes all my hard work and traffic. Even if a person can get their hubs re-indexed it can take a looong time to climb back up the Google SERP's, if ever. In my experience it takes ten times longer to climb the SERP's than it does to fall down them.
  
  Luckily none of my hubs were Zzz'd, some which in all honesty should have been as they either rank poorly, are out of date, get little traffic or even all of the above.
  
  If HubPages is going to use a stupid algorithm to decide my fate here I have published my last ever hub here because of this insane change. As others have pointed out there are way too many gray areas with hubs. Why in the world would I want a nuclear bomb possibly applied to my hard work because of a stupid algo change that possibly got it wrong? I won't even take that chance going forward. If any of my hubs get Zzz'd going forward and it's not one of my under-performing hubs I'll just unpublish it and move it to my own website for good. If I have to start all over on Google I may as well do it in an environment that I control and not a stupid algo. As others do this HubPages will just be shooting their selves in the foot. This is total madness in my opinion.
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  Farmer Rachelposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I don't have ZZZs on any of my Hubs right now. (I'm not complaining.) I've only been writing on Hubpages for about a month, so I've barely begun to build my portfolio here. I only have 16 published Hubs. Will I begin to see ZZZs on my hubs, or do they need to "age" a little before their "quality" can be determined? Thanks!
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  Dale Hydeposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Sounds like a great idea. It will be interesting to see how this "tool" plays out over time. Right now, with the exception of the one hub published today, all of mine are "featured" so far, so that is encouraging!
  
  Now I don't know if my newly published hub has to be approved by HP to be submitted to the searches.... Nor do I worry. I submit my own work to the search engines using various Webmaster Tools.
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  MyWebsposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  What you don't seem to understand is that if HP applies the 'no index' attribute to your hub in the META tag, or using other methods, it won't matter that you submitted your hub to Google for indexing. When Google comes to crawl your hub and 'sees' the 'no index' attribute it will leave empty handed.
  
  So yea you can get Google to come have a look, but it won't matter at all!
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  Smokes Angelposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  this really makes me mad! I spent alot of time writing 70 hubs and 60 of them are on your idle hubs.... even though they do get traffic just not as much as you think they should... I am going to remove it all and move it elsewhere!
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  summerberrieposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Why not wait and see if the remaining ten begin to pick up traffic and in the mean time revamp the remaining....
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  topquarkposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Has the idle feature gone live now? My hub traffic has suddenly jumped up in the last 24 hours.
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  SylviaSkyposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I LIKE the idle feature. It drew my attention to a formerly popular hub with waning traffic. Checking it I found outdated links. Took me all morning to fix them, but I want to be known for excellent hubs.
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  SD Dickensposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I wrote a Hub that's a knitting pattern that I see is idle. I'm wondering if it's because it uses a lot of knitting abbreviations such a K1 for knit one? This Hub would appear to the non-human eye to be substandard in grammar but in knitting everyone uses and accepts these abbreviations. It is getting views, although not many, but I noticed someone linked it in their knitting blog and it's on Ravelry. Any answers here? How can I get it to wake up!
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  God made scienceposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I love the new feature. It's excellent.
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  lorddraven2000posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I think this will spark us to revisit our work and make it fresher and more relevent.
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  surf travelerposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  This is a great addition to HubPages. Well done. This should be very helpful in improving HubPages in search.
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  Norman Steinposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Some people have reported low/no traffic hubs not going idle yet others reporting hubs going idle that actually do get small amounts of traffic.
  
  At first I was puzzled about this, but I think I've figured it out..
  
  They must be using some formula that uses traffic stats/hubhopping ratings/reader thumbs up/down (I'm thinking lots of 'useful' thumbs downs is really bad)
  
  Actually I think the traffic part of this equation might have a very light effect, hubhopper and thumbs down ratings are probably what's driving the 'low quality' label.
  
  It might go something like this...
  Low rating + less than 5 hits a month = Zzz
  High rating + less than 5 hits a month = Ok
  Low or high rating + more than 6 hits a month = Ok
  
  Just a thought, and, if this is the case I'm ok with it. Well, almost ok, it still means low quality stuff that gets lots of traffic is ok.
  
  What do you guys think of this?
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  Ms Deeposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Dear HubPages,
  
  I really, really like how you have set up the new Featured and Idle Hubs tool! I can see that this has helped me as a hubber, already, to focus on updating certain hubs of mine. I think my traffic has also seen a little bump as a result of one or two being "idled" at a certain time. You have figured out an excellent way to apply the community feedback, I'm thiking. I am so appreciating this supportive feature!
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  shampa sadhyaposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I am sorry to say that HP staff are neglecting the genuine issue that an author is facing. It's the fifth day that my latest hub has not been indexed by Google. On 5th Sept I published a new article and it remained in the pending status for 24 hours. After 24 hours it showed the featured symbol but till now it has not got indexed by Google.
  
  Whenever I search for the article then it displays the links:
  
  1. My profile page
  
  2. The profile of the last hubber who commented
  
  3. Now, it is also displaying the link where I've posted my complain.
  
  I sent two emails regarding this problem on 'contact us' but did not receive any kind of help from the HP Staff. I felt bad as my hard work has went in vain. There is negligible visit at the particular article. Why am I suffering the loss of visit as well as the earning? Why HP staff is so indifferent towards the matter?
  
  Kindly answer my queries and show a little bit of concern towards the genuine problem of the authors. This time I hope to receive a satisfying mail.
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  Writer Foxposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Hi Shampa,
  
  Google hasn't crawled your new hub yet. Your profile page was last crawled on August 26. Google is displaying the results for your search query, giving you all that it can find in its index using the words in your search, i.e., from pages it has crawled and stored. From the search box, Google will not go to find new pages. Your hub URL, when typed into the browser address, is working so it seems to me that your hub is not being restricted in any way by HubPages at this time.
  
  Your new Hub may not be crawled by Google for several weeks. If HubPages has released its zZz lock down, then you just have to wait for Google to find your new page. If you can link to it from a blog or a website that Google crawls daily, it will help to speed up the process.
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  Angelo52posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I don't understand this new ZZZ lockdown feature. How can an artice that is ranked in the top ten by Hubpages ranking system then be placed into the ZZZ lockdown.
  
  So far all this has done is taken some articles out of the search engine listings that were being found - just not on Google. However, I was getting hits from Yahoo, Bing and others.
  
  I can understand this ZZZ system being applied to my lower ranked items but those in the top ten? Get real.
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paradigmsearchposted 11 years ago
I've got 6 ZZZ's. I agree that all 6 ZZZ's are correct. I will try to de-ZZZ all 6 before Wednesday!
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  MickiSposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Good luck!
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  paradigmsearchposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  QUESTION
  
  Ya know what? I'm going to take 3 of my ZZZ's and combine them into one of my related non-ZZZ's. Am I going to have duplication issues?
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  STAFF
  Paul Edmondsonposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Let us know if you hit an issue. In general, combining Hubs doesn't trip the dupe filter.
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  paradigmsearchposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  QUESTION
  
  Do I need to tell Google to de-index the 3 ZZZ, or is that already taken care of?
  
  Update: in other words, does a no-index flag also initiate a de-index?
  
  Update: The answer to this post is addressed at http://hubpages.com/forum/topic/102577? … ost2185417
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  paradigmsearchposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  ANSWER
  
  To save other people search time:
  
  From Google:
  
  "Removing a single URL
  
  In general, in order for your removal requests to be successful, the owner of the URL(s) in question—whether that's you, or someone else—must have indicated that it's okay to remove that content. For an individual URL, this can be indicated in any of three ways:
  block the page from crawling via a robots.txt file
  block the page from indexing via a noindex meta tag
  indicate that the page no longer exists by returning a 404 or 410 status code
  Before submitting a removal request, you can check whether the URL is correctly blocked:
  robots.txt: You can check whether the URL is correctly disallowed using either the Fetch as Googlebot or Test robots.txt features in Webmaster Tools.
  noindex meta tag: You can use Fetch as Googlebot to make sure the meta tag appears somewhere between the and tags. If you want to check a page you can't verify in Webmaster Tools, you can open the URL in a browser, go to View > Page source, and make sure you see the meta tag between the and tags.
  404 / 410 status code: You can use Fetch as Googlebot, or tools like Live HTTP Headers or web-sniffer.net to verify whether the URL is actually returning the correct code. Sometimes "deleted" pages may say "404" or "Not found" on the page, but actually return a 200 status code in the page header; so it's good to use a proper header-checking tool to double-check.
  If unwanted content has been removed from a page but the page hasn't been blocked in any of the above ways, you will not be able to completely remove that URL from our search results. This is most common when you don't own the site that's hosting that content. We cover what to do in this situation in a subsequent post. in Part II of our removals series.
  
  If a URL meets one of the above criteria, you can remove it by going to http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/removals, entering the URL that you want to remove, and selecting the "Webmaster has already blocked the page" option. Note that you should enter the URL where the content was hosted, not the URL of the Google search where it's appearing. For example, enter
  httpX://www.example.com/embarrassing-stuff.html
  not
  httpX://www.google.com/search?q=embarrassing+stuff
  
  This article has more details about making sure you're entering the proper URL. Remember that if you don't tell us the exact URL that's troubling you, we won't be able to remove the content you had in mind."
  
  Posted from: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot. … -urls.html
  
  Updates/additional notes:
  
  "Fetch" is under "Health".
  Unpublish does indeed return 404.
  The removal link provided by Google above does not work; you will find a working link under "Optimization".
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  That Grrlposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Trying to combine Hubs didn't work for me. I got duplication errors and could not publish any of the posts again until I had put them all back to their original state.
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  That Grrlposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Add one new link or take out one old link and you will have updated your ZZZ posts. It doesn't really mean anything. It's just a traffic thing, it has very little to do with the actual content of your post.
  
  Instead of updating or revamping your post get it linked to on another site. Go to sites like Scoop.it where you can suggest topical links and see if one of the content curators picks up your link. That will be enough to pull your post out of ZZZ.s.
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  That Grrlposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  The problem with trying to make HubPages writers spam their content is that Google will also notice that HubPages writers are spamming. This will not help the site or the writers here. Once you get a reputation for spam submissions you are stuck with it. I was a Dmoz editor for 10 years - I deleted a lot of garbage submissions from sities which are not around any more.
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STAFF
Paul Edmondsonposted 11 years ago
All new hubs are in a pending state for 24 hours while we process them. If you have one that is showing Zzz that is just over 24 hrs old, it should be out of the pending state. Add the URL and we'll take a look.

So new hubs get an opportunity to succeed, but the time varies a bit based on a few signals. It's important that new Hubs can do well.
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  kenyanXstianposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  And can someone tell me, for those who have 1000 plus hubs, where will they get all the time to 'spruce up' their older hubs. It means then that instead of creating new informative hubs, they will have to use all their time enhancing the old ones every once or twice a month. Surely someone answer me! I thought HP said that hubbers should write hubs that can attract traffic regardless of how old they are??? What happened to that policy??
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paradigmsearchposted 11 years ago
QUESTION!

Will links from non-ZZZ hubs to ZZZ hubs still work?
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  paradigmsearchposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Never mind. The LC says "with url" without qualification. Therefore, the answer is Yes.
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  MickiSposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  You are correct in answering your own question. ;-)
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  paradigmsearchposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I try...
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  bgpappaposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  This "feature" really kills the seasonable hubs. Sad.
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Uninvited Writerposted 11 years ago
Most of the hubs I have marked that way are Christmas hubs that will be starting to build up traffic again in the next few weeks. If they are not going to be searchable on Google I may as well delete them all.
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1. STAFF
  Paul Edmondsonposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  @inivited Writer - There are allowances for seasonal Hubs (see the LC entry). If you have an example of an Xmas Hub that you think should be doing well this season, please post a URL for me to take a look at.
  
  It's also very easy to keep them indexed with a bit of freshening up.
  
  I'd love to see examples for our engineers to look at.
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  Bendo13posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Hm... I'd send you links to all my seasonal/holiday hubs but, as a few of your employees know, I posted a hub every day last year for wacky holidays. These are all real holidays and they all seem to get traffic anywhere from a week or two in advance to a week after the holiday.
  
  So, are my 365 hubs, that many people seem to enjoy reading, going to be de-indexed and seen as worthless?
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  Bendo13posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I can't seem to find a way to link you to my article group anymore, but all of my holiday (seasonal) posts are grouped together into the "Celebrate Every Day" group, if you can take a look at them.
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  Charles Jamesposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Paul
  
  Can you give any indication yet whether Zz is working?
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  Mark Knowlesposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  See for yourself.
  
  http://www.quantcast.com/hubpages.com - no apparent improvement.
  
  Total and utter disaster as far as I am concerned. Didn't think things could get any worse - then they go and noindex 120 hubs on my personal account and I lose another chunk of traffic.
  
  Really have to wonder how many knee jerk, untested changes they plan to implement before admitting they have no idea what to do.
  
  My traffic is a total disaster. As is the traffic of many long-standing members. Made a hub about it recently:
  
  http://mark-knowles.hubpages.com/video/ … es-Traffic
  
  Latest stats:
  
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  Writer Foxposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Hi Mark,
  
  It's a problem alright. But, there's some serious stuff going on in my piece of the planet as Rosh Hashanah begins. Check out the story and see me in my newly issued gas mask:
  <link snipped - no promotional links>
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  Mark Knowlesposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Lost me. What does a bunch of religious nutcases bent on murdering each other have to do with this?
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  Shelly McRaeposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Perspective
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  Mark Knowlesposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I already despise religion and think it will end in disaster for all of us. Is that what you mean?
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  Bill Yovinoposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I'm with you, Mark.
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  Hollie Thomasposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  The video keeps freezing in the same place for me, I refreshed the page three separate times and each time it froze after showing M. Audet's stats. Just thought you might want to know.
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  Marcy Goodfleischposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  This is a great question - I have a few seasonal hubs, too. Any thoughts on how to revive them when the timing is right?
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  That Grrlposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I have a lot of seasonal Hubs. I hadn't even thought of that. I was looking forward to the traffic boost starting around October. So much for that.
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IzzyMposted 11 years ago
Well, this feature is going to save me a LOT of work, as I had planned to unpublish all my sleeping hubs one by one come the end of this month, as many have not had a view since my account was Panda'd over a year ago.

My only issue would be the same as Uninvited Writer wrote. What if my account became popular with Google again and my Christmas hubs fail simply because the search engines cannot see them?
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  MickiSposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  If you keep your Hubs updated, this shouldn't be a problem, IzzyM. We do account for seasonal Hubs. There's is more on this in the learning center entry.
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  MyWebsposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  So were are expected to update our seasonal hubs on a regular basis to try and avoid a deindexing done by a stupid algo or counter one? Can you not see something wrong with that advice?
  
  I have a seasonal hub on 'Halloween Safety Guide And Tips'. I have already added every tip under the sun that I can think of. What should I add in case it gets Zzz'd. This hub ranks on page one of Google and for a few weeks of the year gets a small but decent amount of traffic. Ironically I wrote this hub for the weekly hub topic thing knowing full well it was a seasonal hub.
  
  So one Zzz'd would most likely destroy my page one rankings that took about an year to establish.
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Rosie2010posted 11 years ago
I like this new feature. I have been updating and editing my hubs since my subdomain got slapped by the Penguin, so thanks for the zzzz's. I had neglected those two babies of mine. Putting non-performing hubs on idle mode is an excellent feature.
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Bob Zermopposted 11 years ago
I'm new to Hubpages - well, actually, I'm really not, but I haven't done too much on here yet. I haven't been posting in the past month or so, and with 25 hubs, I average about 15 views a day (Woohoo! ). Will my hubs be marked idle, and if they are, that would take them off Google search and other search engines, right?

Even without any SEO or social media marketing a few of my articles have made it to the 1st page of Google on a few select keywords, and I anticipate that as I add a new wave of articles and begin to experiment with social media I will increase my views. But the majority of my (admittedly very measly) pageviews are from search, and I won't be able to be on Hubpages regularly for periods like months at a time. Will that break get my now low traffic articles "idled"? My plan was to build up page views from search traffic when I don't have time for social media, and that wouldn't be possible without the search.

No blame on Hubpages if the answer is yes; of course do the best for the site. If that's the case, I'll likely just have to migrate into a site where I can work on SEO sporadically while still building and experimenting.

Thanks! - Bob
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  MickiSposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Bob, it should not be too much of a problem. You may see a few more on idle Hubs than a more established Hubber. However, keep updating them, share them with your friends, etc. I looked at your account and it looks like only 2 of your 25 Hubs are "on idle." Nice work.
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  Bendo13posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  It seems to me that this new "feature" is going to encourage people to self promote, which is what gets people into a lot of trouble with Google.
  
  Plus, this "robot sweep" model is already flawed... I have an article that got 4 views today, which has 3,427 views total, and it's not idle... but I have another article that also got 4 views today, which has 1,009 views total, and it IS idle but this article is 9 MONTHS YOUNGER than the other one!
  
  So, it's getting similar traffic when you compare it to a hub that is 9 months older than it, but yet it's made idle?
  
  You guys haven't even ironed out all the kinks in the new profiles, but you felt the need to toss this into the mix as well? ...which obviously is flawed.
  
  Heck, there's another article that got 4 views today, has 3,564 total views, and is made idle? ...whenever this hub is actually 7 months younger than the hub I mentioned above, that isn't idle?
  
  This hub has more overall traffic than a hub that is 7 months older than it, only one less view in the last month and your robot thinks it's old, outdated and worthless?
  
  Try, try again.
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  Bendo13posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I was about to ask if 1 single view from Google's search engine somehow made it worthy of not being idle... then I saw how many hubs I have with 0 views today that aren't idle. Some of them have not one single view in the past month and aren't idle, but yet the hub I was talking about above has had 92 views in the past month and is idle?
  
  I think you need to break out the iron.
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  Bob Zermopposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Well, the two that have been idled haven't been getting too much search traffic anyway, so that won't be an issue. The engineers seem to know what they're doing because the articles that haven't gotten too many views but have had a large majority of those views come from search are still featured. For now, I'll stick to my plan of beginning to experiment with social media (links to idled hubs aren't affected, right) and building traffic and SEO skills that way. Thanks for your help!
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Arlene V. Pomaposted 11 years ago
Looking forward to trying this new feature out. I am down to about 100 Hubs, and after getting them ready for my new profile, I've found that 100 or so is a good number of Hubs to keep track of. At least, for me. Putting the Zzz's on IDLE is a good reminder as well as helpful when it comes to tending to the online flock.
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janderson99posted 11 years ago
This hub has 9 views this week, 28 this month and 217 overall, was updated in February why is it ZZZZZZZ

http://janderson99.hubpages.com/hub/Bes … s-Programs
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1. STAFF
  Paul Edmondsonposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  That's an interesting Hub. I took a look at our internal data. Even in the idle state, it's not likely to see much of a change in traffic - so the vast majority of traffic will be retained. However, giving it a bit of an update will get it featured again.
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  janderson99posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  A very obscure reply - Why was it flagged when it has got traffic. What does 'giving it a bit of an update' mean - sounds a bit random. The tail is wagging the dog here!
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Julie DeNeenposted 11 years ago
One suggestion (just a little thing)- the yellow stars are hard to see. Maybe make the featured icon a bit bigger or brighter or a different color?
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  paradigmsearchposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I disagree. What the little yellow star really means is, "No news is good news." If it is made more prominent, then the real news is consequently less noticeable. That's my perception anyway...
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  MickiSposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  paradigmsearch nailed it, Julie. We intentionally made the green dot very subtle so that the "on idle" zzz's stand out more prominently.
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  Rochelle Frankposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Good suggestion!
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AudreyHowittposted 11 years ago
I only have poetry here on HP really, and most of my pieces have ZZs. Will HP do anything differently in this regard for poetry, since as a genre, it tends to be less active??? I just can't see constantly revising poems.
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1. STAFF
  Paul Edmondsonposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Not all types of content need to be updated nor is it a bad thing for them to be in an idle state. Folks can bookmark them, find them from your profile, and your followers can still engage with them.
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  AudreyHowittposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  So what is the down side for me if I leave the work on hubpages with this new change--I just want to see the situation clearly
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  MickiSposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I assume for poetry, that you do not rely on search engines to get your traffic. In which case, there is no change for you. Your poetry is still available at its URL and it can still be accessed from your user profile page.
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  AudreyHowittposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I assume that it correct --but I know that it is discouraging--and makes those of us who write creatively feel somewhat like second class citizens--I know that Helium separates the SEO articles from their creative ones--it helps keep more creatives involved in their process
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  Lissieposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  But it does at least mean that you can publish your material elsewhere e.g. an Amazon book or another website and you are not going to be pinged for duplicate content
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  mistyhorizon2003posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Another good point. It never occurred to me that I could now publish these articles on other sites AND leave them published here because they would not be seen as duplicate content. Of course HP may pick up on the fact it is duplicated even if Google don't (who apparently don't care anyway unless the content is duplicated on the SAME site, as opposed to it appearing on different sites). Now left with more options as to what to do with my newer hubs that have 'Z's by them, as well as those that are quality hubs, but don't have a high demand traffic-wise.
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  MickiSposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  That is correct, mistyhorizon2003. HubPages would still pick it up and flag it as duplicate content.
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  Paul Edmondsonposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  We tend to think of it as upside. Here you can keep your Hubs published, accessible, interact with the community and get a bit of insurance that they aren't hurting the rest of your Hubs.
  
  The downside is that all your Hubs won't be in Google, but that wasn't guaranteed before. We love the poets on HubPages and made decisions to keep poetry Hubs easily accessible from profiles (vs making it url only) and keep all the interactions with your followers the same.
  
  I don't think you'll notice any difference if all your Hubs are poems.
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  aa liteposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I don't really understand your thinking when you say "get a bit of insurance that they aren't hurting the rest of your hubs" . I'm not sure I can see were the assumption that poetry hubs would be considered 'low quality' by Google, comes from. They don't get much search traffic, because they are not the kind of thing that gets searched for, they presumably haven't been keyword researched. They are not getting Google traffic, because nobody Googles for them, not because Google considers them low quality.
  I think a more honest answer would be that poetry hubs are collateral damage in HP's attempts to de-index spammy and low quality content that reflects badly on the whole site. Since poetry does not get much search engine traffic anyway, it doesn't really make much difference if they are de-indexed or not (and if a poetry hub somehow does get reasonable Google traffic, I assume it will escape the euthenasia).
  
  I think what annoys people is the assumption that if a hub doesn't get Google traffic, it must must be low quality and cast a curse on the rest of the subdomain. There are a couple of scenarios in which perfectly good hubs will not get traffic from search engines.
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  MickiSposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  If you leave the work on HubPages in an idle state, you just won't get traffic from search engines.
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  Bendo13posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Are these "idle" hubs still going to be able to be found in HubPages search results?
  
  Like, if someone searches for something on this site... can they still find them in the search results or if they browse into the category that I have a hub posted?
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  AudreyHowittposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  That is an excellent question!
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  Paul Edmondsonposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Yes, they're in HubPages search results. They will not be on topic pages as those are in process in getting updated.
  
  They will still be on Hubber's profile pages and pushed to followers.
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  Bendo13posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Alright, I guess that's decent... at least they can still be discovered on here.
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  Bendo13posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  ...I also should have added...
  
  What about in the "Discover More Hubs" section at the bottom of similar hubs?
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  MickiSposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Hubs that are "Idle" can still be found in search results on HubPages. However, they are not displayed on other Hubs as part of the "Discover More Hubs."
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  janderson99posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Horray! Three Cheers!
  3000 Cheers if you get rid of the "Discover More Hubs." or make it truly relevant.
  
  By the way has the 'bad neighbours' list of 3 related hubbers been removed?? 3,000,000 cheers if it as!
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  Bendo13posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Looks like the related hubbers are still there, and you can even "blacklist" people if you like, so that they aren't included.
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  Terri Meredithposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I have to say, that feature really left a bad taste in my mouth. I feel like it plays to drama that is very unbecoming of adults who want people to hear what we have to say (why else do we write?). From my perspective, it's like a big stamp of approval for immature behavior, rather than promoting teamwork and camaraderie despite one's differences.
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  rebekahELLEposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I felt the same way when I saw that feature, but many were complaining about the others hubbers you might like. I wouldn't blacklist anyone. Whoever shows up on my profile makes no difference to me, and most likely, not the viewers I attract. If someone gets a view from a link on my profile, I don't mind.
  
  In response to James up there, I'm quite curious how Yieldbuild is sexy..
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  jacharlessposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Ahem,
  To me code is very sexy.
  The only thing I can say is sexy is as sexy does...
  James
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  MarleneBposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I think it is going to come down to how HubPages wants to be seen by Google. If HP wants to be seen as a" How-to" resource page, then creative content may suffer here. That's JUST MY OPINION. I don't know anything for sure. If that is the case, then writers who write creative works may see more success in starting or writing for a creative content website.
  
  This is a good time to discover the ultimate intent of the publisher for which we write... HubPages.
  
  I tend to write "How-to" content, so I am seeing success and I am pleased with the changes. On the oher hand, if I wrote, say, poetry, I might be afraid of my decrease in traffic (if HP is moving to a resource direction).
  
  I don't know anything... I'm just spouting off at the mouth, so please do not rely on my words as truth in any way, shape or form. I'm not HP, so I don't know for sure what is going on here.
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Glenn Stokposted 11 years ago
I really like this new feature. I’ve deleted 4 or 5 Hubs in the past two months and reworked many more to keep them working well. The idle icon makes it easy to spot the ones that need my attention.

I also like how the idle Hubs will be hidden from Google until we have time to improve them. This should definitely improve the ranking of our other hubs. I’ve read Google’s Webmaster Blogs where they make a big deal out of that.

I started working on a couple of my idle Hubs today and look forward monitoring the results.
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  blessedmommyposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I agree with Glenn. I was thinking about unpublishing a few hubs that aren't doing well with the hope of improving overall. I've already unpublished two of them. This feature will allow me to keep my lower ranked hubs published instead and to even improve them if I choose. Personally, I think it's a win win situation.
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Jean Bakulaposted 11 years ago
I just had one ZZZZ and it was one I was thinking of deleting anyway. I don't have too much trouble with deleting a hub that nobody is reading, though I can get sentimental now and then. Don't forget you can always rework a piece for a different site, or your own blog, if you need more motivation to overhaul it.
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paradigmsearchposted 11 years ago
Just an observation for staff.

I noticed that one of my hubs that was ZZZ, suddenly stopped being a ZZZ. I hadn't gone anywhere near it between the ZZZ and non-ZZZ stages.
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  cclitgirlposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Thanks for your posts above, paradigmsearch. Really helpful.
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MakinBaconposted 11 years ago
Is there a mechanism for letting HP know if a seasonal Hub that is idle can be disputed and reinstated. I have a very high quality hub that targets only about a three week period of the year, and which will receive little traffic otherwise.

I has been idled, and I want to know how to have it reinstated, or taken a look at for that purpose. The idle factor has to be the views, as the upcoming holiday season will be the first it is exposed to in the search engines, and it won't have a chance to receive the targeted market, as I published it right before summer in order to have it be old enough for the search engines to consider when the interest from the public will be the highest.

Most of my seasonal Hubs have been treated accurately, but this is one that is unusual and deserves to be given a chance, as the commentors on the article also said it was one of the best treating this particular subject matter they've ever seen.
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  Paul Edmondsonposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Hubs can always be updated to be featured again. Take it as an opportunity to make your Hub better. I think it will be really valuable to the community for people to update an Idle Hub and to share the results after the pending period.
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  tammyswallowposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I like this idea. I think it will help the outside communities from seeing Hubs as spam and I am sure this guarantee of quality will make it easier for the Admins to market Hubpages. I can see this opening up many doors for strong writers.
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  lrohnerposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I wish I could follow this logic, but sadly, I can't. This "On Idle" business has nothing to do with the quality of the hub. This is all about views. Theoretically, I could write a piece of complete and utter garbage that is spam at its best, but stays within the HP rules. If it gets traffic, it never gets put On Idle.
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  That Grrlposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Exactly. Being on idle has nothing to do with the content of your Hub post or when you last updated it. This is all a traffic and link thing. You could write about your own left toe and skip the punctuation. It would not make a difference to whether or not your post is put on idle. If you can get other sites or other Hub writers to link to your toe post it will show up as active. You could even write a second post about your other toe and link both of those posts together inside each other. That would keep them active and out of idle too.
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  tammyswallowposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I can see what you mean about that, but I think the definition of "quality" varies much from person to person. I think quality can be equated to the number of views you have. If you write the most awesome, polished, grammatically perfect hub, it isn't a "quality" hub if no one wants to read it.
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  That Grrlposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  To me a quality Hub/ article will be about punctuation, spelling, flow, etc. It won't be about traffic.
  
  I think quality and quantity are two different things. One is writing and the other is marketing.
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  Terri Meredithposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I'm with you TG! I've seen hubs on here that would have me blushing scarlet if my name were linked to it, so bad was the grammar, punctuation, and organization. I'm one of those people who will stop reading after two or three sentences if I'm required to decipher the intended message.
  
  One of the reasons I chose to write here on HP was because it seemed as if writers were truly encouraged to choose their own topics and all would be supported. I'm one of those people who knew absolutely nothing about SEO, so everything learned has taken a long time on my own. Considering that some of us also work long hours at an actual job site, we may not have all the hours for constant rewriting, etc.. Besides, who wants to spend hours rewriting in hopes of guessing the magic formula dictated by some vague alg?
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  That Grrlposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  One thing I can think which will help with seasonal Hubs is to link all your seasonal Hubs together yourself. Inside of each post build an index of related posts. I've been doing that with seasonal, arts, and crafts posts. Most of my interlinked posts do not have ZZZ even if they are Christmas related.
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  Petra Vlahposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  It may work with seasonal hubs, but does not seem to work with poetry. Most of my poems are linked to each other and most of them are idle together - I just hope they are having good dreams
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Arlene V. Pomaposted 11 years ago
LOL! I found only one Zzz, and I can see it just fine! Time to get busy on this Hub! Hope I haven't spoke too soon.
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lrohnerposted 11 years ago
I didn't have any hubs marked (I don't think), but I would really like to understand the process. Can you shed any light on the types of triggers that would get a hub marked? I ask because as Panda has gone through its iterations, I have hubs that have dipped and soared, and I would have been pretty ticked off if you had done anything to them to prevent search engines from finding them at any point during that process.
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  cclitgirlposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  lrohner - here's the learning center link. It explains the process of how it all works:
  http://hubpages.com/learningcenter/Feat … -Idle-Hubs
  At its most basic level, the featured hubs are up-to-date, are getting some traffic, they're not spam, and they're of good quality. Hubs that need updating, need a little tweaking, and the like will have ZZZ's next to them in your statistics tab.
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  lrohnerposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  410. That page doesn't exist.
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  cclitgirlposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Drat. Try this link. It might have "cut it off" up there...
  
  http://hubpages.com/learningcenter/Feat … -Idle-Hubs
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  TamCorposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I just checked, and out of the 77 hubs that I have published, 54 have the ZZZ's on them. I know I haven't been getting hits on them, so it doesn't surprise me. I get 15 to 25 hits a day now, since all this Panda stuff started--again, on 77 hubs. Now I will most likely get even less.
  
  My most popular hub is a seasonal hub that has had over 48,000 hits--half of the daily hits I get are from this. I Googled the title just now--exactly as I have it, and I could NOT even find it on the first 11 pages. A website that has my hub's link on it does show up first on the first page of Google, but the link goes to THEIR website first, then you have to hunt for my own link on it.
  
  My husband, who is also a hubber, has many more hubs than me, but also was hit with a lot of "ZZZ's".
  
  I think that we are both about done here--at least for the biggest part of our hubs--and that's sad, because we've been here for over 3 years. But it's time to go where we can actually make money again, since it's been over a year since we've gotten an Adsense payout, with both of our hub accounts combined. So tonight, I start unpublishing hubs, and looking for somewhere else to put most of them.
  
  Good luck to everyone else, though--I hope this new feature works out for you.
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  That Grrlposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  TamCor - Start your own site. Use categories to sort your content into topics. Submit the individual topics to Google and other link sites. Then find people to guest post in your topics and trade links with them too. You'll do fine. It will take some time to get established but your content should work that way.
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  TamCorposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Thank you! That's what my husband and I were discussing a little while ago. The problem is we know next to nothing about how to go about this, lol. The more I try to learn, the more confused I become!
  
  Where would you suggest that a beginner start? Wordpress? A blog? Or am I way off? I've already started unpublishing hubs, in preparation. Do I have to do anything else to them? I read earlier that you have to de-index them, but I didn't understand the instructions...ugh.
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  snakeslaneposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I hear you Tam Cor. I feel like I need a course in web site engineering 101. I am lost. Cheers.
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  annmackiemillerposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  if you figure it out let me know - I struggle to understand it all
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  That Grrlposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Save your Hub posts as plain text. Save the image files on the side. Then start an account for a blog on Blogger.com or if you want to get into web hosting, download WordPress.org and set it up on your own domain. Having a blog on your own domain is nice for various reasons, mainly you are your own boss. If you don't want to get a domain and hosting, start a blog on Blogger rather than WordPress.com.
  
  You can cut and paste your plain text into blog posts. Add the images once the text is there. Save/ publish each post. You can even set the date so they don't all show up in a clump on the same date. But, that's not vital.
  
  There are some great guides to starting a blog. CopyBlogger is a good site to start looking at.
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Michael Willisposted 11 years ago
I hope when you say you take into account "seasonal hubs" you do not only mean holidays such as Christmas, Halloween, etc. Sports hubs fall into this same category. If these type of hubs are deindexed in Google because of out-of-season to readers, this would be a mistake and harmful to these writers.
I am hitting my seasonal time for sports hubs and in the process of refreshing several of them. I have a few of older ones that may be dormat most of the year that will all of a sudden get traffic again due to the NFL season. If I lose any Google ranking, I may not get that back and you might as well say to delete them. The time frame in seasonal to get indexed again is too short.
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  summerberrieposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Good point.
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  Paul Edmondsonposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Seasonal is referring to the Hubs traffic pattern. So, you should be fine with football season. If not, like I mentioned in previous posts, give the Hub a bit of a refresh and you should be fine.
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  That Grrlposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Submit the links to your seasonal hubs to other sites, especially sites which curate content. Scoop.it is an easy one. Others, like Pinterest and Snip.it you will need to contact the individual editor/ content curator and ask them to link to your post. Usually they will be interested in a good, relevant post.
  
  If you haven't already, start your own account on Pinterest and the others. Link to your own content here on HubPages. DIY link building.
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Marcy Goodfleischposted 11 years ago
Question for Paul - Will this system filter out just plain bad writing? Pretty please?

Overall, I think it's a great idea - especially the part about improving our rankings in search engines by not indexing the poor performers.

Another question - supposed a snoozing hub suddenly stars getting traffic (how, I don't know, but the thought is nice) - will the Zzzzs go away and the hub get reindexed? I guess updating content would do the same thing. Just asking.

Another question - while I have your attention - (ha!) - are we allowed to know the approximate formula the system uses to snooze out a hub?

Maybe we can have a special section on the site, called Limbo. And for really bad hubs, we could have Purgatory. Just kidding. As I said, I think it's a great way to improve quality, at least from the search engine standpoint. I don't know how you get it operating in a way to de-index hubs, but that's great.
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  lrohnerposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  And yet all of my sites negate the hypothesis that low-traffic pages or pages that are not "fresh" can hurt a site. I have sites that have been untouched for years, and they're ranking just as high today as they did five years ago. Some SEO sites are guessing that "dead" pages might hurt a site, but it's only a guess. With all of the Panda iterations and Penguin filters going on, it is impossible to properly test anything and get solid results.
  
  And I forgot to mention....you're screwed if you had any links (organic or otherwise) to any of your "On Idle" pages. You're now losing all of their juice as well, which can hurt your subdomain. If any of the linking sites keep on top of broken links, you'll probably lose the links permanently, further reducing the chances of them ever getting taken out of the "idle" state.
  
  If you really want to know if this is the way to go, ask PCUnix. I'm sure he'd be happy to share his story.
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  MickiSposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  lrohner, you won't have broken links. The URLs for idle Hubs still work, so any other content (Hubs or otherwise) that link to them, the link will still work.
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  Paul Edmondsonposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  In the blog post we mention that this is a first of future improvements to come. As our quality signals get more accurate, we will consider incorporating them.
  
  There are already numerous filters in place to flag content for mods to review.
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ripplemakerposted 11 years ago
Out of the 111 hubs, I have 15 zzz's hehe Thank you Hubpages! Awesome feature...
And guess what? I see my traffic going up from the weekend. Higher than the usual after the Penguin update. Whhheeee..happy and excited with all your help!
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  Barbara Kayposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  ripplemaker, My traffic went up too, but the de-indexing doesn't go into effect until Wednesday. I had another hubber point this out to me. So sorry, that isn't what helped.
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  ripplemakerposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Hi Barbara, I just learned that too...oh well... never mind..I still choose to be happy Blessings.
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mistyhorizon2003posted 11 years ago
What happens to hubs like book reviews (of which I have three) that don’t get a lot of traffic, but are relevant for the occasional search made by someone looking for a book that contains the type of content these books contain, e.g. sailing, adventure, crime etc?

I am already not liking the sound of this latest change (yet again)!
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  MickiSposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  If they are relevant to a search, than they won't be idle.
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  mistyhorizon2003posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Even a search that is done on Google, not just within HP? Also on the basis they can be found on Google does that not mean they are not on 'idle' then? If this is the case why are the Z's still showing next to the hub and how do I get rid of them?
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  That Grrlposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  If they are idle, they are idle. They are de-indexed but not de-linked. This means the link still exists, it's just not going to be found unless someone has the direct link to it.
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  summerberrieposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Okay, so if I have a backlink to an idle(Zz) hub from another website then it will not show up as an 404 like an unpublished hub would? This is a pretty big concern for me. One of the hubs of mine put on idle has a nice natural backlink....would hate to loose it?
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  MickiSposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  No, it will not show up as a 404. The URL still works. It just will not be indexed by search engines (like Google) nor will it appear on other Hubs as part of the "Discover More Hubs" section.
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  summerberrieposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Perfect!
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  mistyhorizon2003posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  So basically they can't be found on Google period, and can only be found if the link is on another site?
  
  What a ridiculous situation for an article that is designed to promote a book that will never be a best seller, but will have a small percentage of the population come across it who are looking for books that include that kind of subject matter... 'face-palm'.
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  tussinposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  This doesn't seem to be a well-planned move. The problem with falsely equating traffic with quality is that you can't plan how Google's search results will change or what might become a trending topic in the future. A hub that HP falsely identifies as low-quality may be just what someone is searching for out there on the interwebs. Prematurely adding a no-index tag just shoots the author in the foot.
  
  Meanwhile, thousands of crap hubs written in broken English are alive and well on HP.
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  That Grrlposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  If you are promoting your own book set up a blog for just that on Blogger.com. Link to your review in the sidebar. Then write a few posts about the content/ topic of your book and post them in the blog. That will give you something which can get picked up in a search via Google. It will also bring your Hub post some linklove via Google.
  
  Blogger.com is a nice option because Google actually owns Blogger.com now.
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  mistyhorizon2003posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I know Google owns Blogger, and no these three books are not my own. But why should I have to do what you are suggesting when a perfectly good article/hub is already here? It is stupid beyond belief, in much the same way as HP de-indexing very young 'How to' type articles before they get a chance to gain any ranking in the Google search.
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Marcy Goodfleischposted 11 years ago
Another question - will there be a need to or a mechanism for preventing people from gaming the system? For example, suppose a hub really needs to be shelved, but a group of Hubbers in a social site creates a way to promote and get views for each other, regardless of true quality?
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summerberrieposted 11 years ago
This feature really helps to remove a lot of guess work. A great time saver. Thanks.

This also takes care of the problem of having poor quality hubs linked to the bottom feature of "discover more hubs"
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mistyhorizon2003posted 11 years ago
It is an even more ridiculous idea when you consider HP staff told us it can take up to three years for a hub to reach its full potential with Google, yet many of the hubs I have now suddenly got triple Z's by, are ones I only published back in March during a 30/30 challenge, so not only can they now never seriously gain ranking in Google as they won't show up, but they are totally reliant on HP traffic which is never going to be enough to make a difference.

This site becomes more bonkers by the day!!! I even got a hub unpublished today for linking to an article with malware content. Hilarious when you consider the link was to an article that was my own on another site, and that I had recently unpublished and de-indexed using the Google URL removal tool. Essentially the link was nothing more than a 'broken link', yet the moderator comment mentioned the site name and said it was due to malware!
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summerberrieposted 11 years ago
How will it effect trying to build organic backlinks. Some hubs may not get many views but have a couple of organic backlinks which help in the eyes of google. When I go about making the decision to unpublished I make sure it does not have a quality backlink. Does the algorithm take this into account?

Also, as Mistyhorizon points out some of the idle hubs have not been out there that long. Doesn't it take time and patience. One of my hubs was one that was featured for the apprenticeship program as an example to emulate that was put on idle....I only wrote it less than three months ago.....
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Glimmer Twin Fanposted 11 years ago
I've been on hubpages for about 2 1/2 months. I have no idea how many views constitutes good traffic. I am also not well versed yet on "marketing" my hubs yet. Are the start dates of hubbers taken into consideration? Thank you.
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paradigmsearchposted 11 years ago
From the HP blog: "Sometimes a couple of under-performing Hubs can hurt the reputation of your entire online portfolio in the eyes of search engines."

I've also seen that tidbit of information in the forums only about a 100 times...

But I just couldn't bring myself to kill some of my pets.

Well ZZZ has changed all that. The hubs of mine that were ZZZ'd I'd already poked with a stick (translation: tweaked, SEO'd, updated, upgraded) over a half dozen times. And yet they still just lay there. With more flies gathering by the day...

The executions have begun.
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  IzzyMposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Me too. I'd already tweaked and updated all of my hubs, and still Google stayed away. As I have no idea which ones are bringing my subdomain down, I am actually quite happy that HP have taken the decision to de-index them.
  As all my hubs are interlinked in one way or another, the return of traffic to my remaining hubs should also bring increased traffic to those that have been de-indexed.
  I may be alone here, but I think this is one of the best executive decisions HP have made since I joined the site.
  Fingers crossed it works!
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  summerberrieposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I like the feature a lot too IzzM. I hope my few questions do not convey the tone I dislike the feature. I really think it will help keep material on hubpages fresh and viable as a whole and as individual hubbers.
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  Marcy Goodfleischposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Same here - although we don't see the viewing stats for others' hubs, many of us have seen accounts here that are many years old and have maybe one or two hubs that don't appear to be getting much traffic (you can tell by the titles at times). I like the idea of getting clues as to what Google may or may not 'like' in my hubs - it shows me what I should be tweaking, improving or deleting and using elsewhere.
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  tammyswallowposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I agree with you too Izzy. When you look through the "Hub Hoppers" and see some of the first hubs, sale hubs, and terrible hubs in there, I think this could have great potential. We are all only as strong as our weakest links. No pun intended.
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  Peggy Wposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I tend to agree Izzy. Google has not liked me for some time even though I have been updating like crazy! So getting a few more hints from the people at HubPages (like this new information) might help. I just deleted 5 of my hubs but after reading more, I may just leave them in the ZZZ state so that they can still enjoy some HP traffic occasionally. I assume we still get the HP income...just not Google income if our hubs are sleeping. Correct?
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PaulGoodman67posted 11 years ago
It looks like a good move, I hope it helps the site overall. My special wishes to the person who came up with the "Zzzz" for idle hubs, made me laugh!
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  paradigmsearchposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  +1
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  MickiSposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  That was Derek. Paul and I came up with the "idle" name. Derek gave it the character.
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Arlene V. Pomaposted 11 years ago
Okay, so I went back to my only Zzz Hub and made some changes. Then I got sidetracked, so I hit, "done editing." I came back to do more possible editing and found the circular arrows replacing the Zzz. Will you keep bouncing the corrected Hub back to me to edit if it doesn't go through after the first edit? All I did was add a paragraph and get my Amazon items down to three (from a list of seven).
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  MickiSposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Yes, it will take 24-48 hours for our algorithms to run and assess the changes. The circular arrows indicate that its being processed.
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mactaversposted 11 years ago
I've re-read every post several times now. If Paul Edmonsone truly values Hub writers feedback, and the overwhelming comments are negative, does that mean that he intends to honor Hub writers and make this program an optional choice? Probably not. Also, if he valued writers feedback, why didn't he ask what writers thought first? What Paul should realize is that Hub Pages has some great writers who also should use this latest change in Hub Pages policy to look at alternate writing opportunities.
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  mistyhorizon2003posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Totally agree 100%. I am already planning which articles to move as I know many were only published in March and have great potential IF they are given the time they need to age. Some of my highest earning hubs didn't start to take off and really earn me money by getting traffic until they were over 2 years old. So far I have unpublished about four tonight, deleted three and have about another seven that I will be looking at unpublishing, de-indexing and moving to Wizzley if the 'Z's don't vanish pronto!
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  dmcgawposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Completely agree as well. The algorithm that is being used is pretty inaccurate. I have hubs that are fine but haven't had traffic in more than a month and I have hubs that get daily traffic but are snoozing. I've gone through a move like this with Bukisa and I can do it again here. Not wasting my time with a site that obviously doesn't care about it's writers.
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  PaulGoodman67posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  It won't work if it's optional. The problem is that there are lots (thousands?) of low quality hubs that are sitting around for months and years and have effectively been forgotten about by the owner. This didn't matter in the past, but now Google has made changes, and these sort of poor quality, forgotten hubs can bring the site down for all of us. The "Zzz" scheme is the equivalent of fining your neighbour if they let their lawn get overgrown with weeds - except in this case, they don't get fined, just made much less visible.
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  dmcgawposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  The very fact that you're basically saying that my lawn is overgrown with weeds is insulting. I've been a freelance writer for 8 years. I've been writing full time for 2 of those years. In the past year I have written for Pat Flynn and he's recommended me to many of his readers that need a writer. I refuse to believe that my content is even close to being "overgrown with weeds".
  
  As for this whole Google Penguin/Panda stuff, I thought this is why you moved everyone over to sub-domains? So that each person's subdomain would act as it's own site. That way one bad writer would not affect the other writers? And I haven't seen anything anywhere about articles that get less traffic affecting the rest of the site. Bad links, yes. Bad content, yes. But you all keep saying this is about quality of articles and that simply is not true. If there is something out there that says that articles that get minimal traffic can affect the rest of the site I'd like to see a link to it please.
  
  The ONLY thing that has been stressed with the Penguin/Panda updates by Matt Cutts is that you need to write GOOD content and you need to not appear to be working the system (like creating a bunch of spammy links). I think you're trying to work the hell out of the system and in the long run that is going to get a big bite mark in your pants.
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  PaulGoodman67posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Regarding your last paragraph - Matt Cutts has publically indicated that Google considers "freshness" as an important ranking factor nowadays. Read his blog, if you don't believe me.
  
  Sorry, if you feel insulted by my lawn mowing analogy, but I thought it was rather a good one...
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  dmcgawposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I think that pretty much every webmaster who reads his blog understands that as freshness of the site as a whole, not freshness of each individual article. If they were referring to each article every successful blog owner would be adding new content to the hundreds of blog post on his blog every day and that is not what they are doing.
  
  In the long run, I completely understand that this is a risk we take when we choose to publish our content on a site that belongs to someone else.
  
  It's your site to run. I have no say so I guess if I want a say I need to take my content somewhere where I do have a say.
  
  And yes, I (and many others I'm sure) are insulted. If you still think that is a good analogy you must still think my content is crap so I'll take it somewhere where it is not considered crap.
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  PaulGoodman67posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I'm just another humble hubber, expressing his opinion in a forum - a place where a variety of viewpoints are expressed, some of which might differ from your own. It never fails to impress me how hot under the collar some people get.
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  paradigmsearchposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I just thought of a pic I could post here that would cause a freaking firestorm. I shall not post it.
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  That Grrlposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Low quality has nothing to do with the Hubs being singled out for ZZZ. It is all about traffic, 100%. To say that the posts being pushed into idle are low quality is wrong.
  
  If HubPages wanted to get rid of deadwood, like posts from old accounts and posts which are substandard in reality - they could run a bot to pick them up and put them in idle based on punctuation errors, spelling mistakes, the use of ALL CAPS, etc. I worked at a web directory and we used this feature to pick out substandard websites listings. I was one of the people who went in and fixed them once they were picked out by the bot.
  
  Same for old accounts. It would be easy to mothball any account which has not been accessed in a year. But, that would mean HubPages would lose those posts from their active content. Some of them must be good enough to hang onto so this has never been done with old accounts.
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paradigmsearchposted 11 years ago
Here's a tidbit that seems to have escaped notice.

For a 24 hours period after being published for the first time or editing an On Idle Hub, a Hub’s status will be pending as our internal algorithm analyzes its content. After this 24 hour period has passed, your Hub will fall into one of the statuses described above.

At bottom of page, under "Pending"
http://hubpages.com/learningcenter/Feat … -Idle-Hubs

I figure by bringing this up now, it will cut down on the heart attacks Wednesday.

My interpretation of the above is that the hub will still immediately publish, but the search engines aren't going to see it for 24 hours. I could be wrong.
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  MickiSposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  You are correct Paradigmsearch. All new Hubs that are published are not indexed for 24 hours in order to give our spam and dupe checkers and such time to run. Preventing THAT stuff from getting indexed will do everyone's Hubs and traffic good.
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  2uesdayposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Good news - that might be a huge step forward in the prevention of spam and spun getting on here.
  
  However is the new system going to mean death to hubs by the type of person who writes and hopes for 'organic' traffic even if it is slow to build up? I thought that I had read that the sort of traffic you get building slowly from natural links and traffic was a good thing.
  
  I have not re-read everything here since I discovered it late yesterday. I am not sure if the idle status comes in after a lack of all traffic or just search traffic and also over what time period the assessment is made. (My guess that it is over 30 days or all time).
  
  I guess that I will have to re-read this thread later when I have more time.
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  That Grrlposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  The 24 hour rule for new posts is standard on many sites that use editors (humans or bots) to check new posts before they go live on the site. It is also good because the original writer has that time to read it again and catch typos. Taking a few hours away from your post and then going back to check it is a good thing. You need some distance for perspective.
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  Dale Hydeposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  As mentioned previously, I submit my own to WebMaster Tools.... the one published today was found by Google when I submitted it, and I then requested it be indexed.
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Arlene V. Pomaposted 11 years ago
Good point, mactavers. I just completed my new profile, and that alone was a huge step for me. All I really have to offer is my writing, and that's hardly enough on this site. What other changes do we have to look forward to? What will we be hit with next without any warning?
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  MarleneBposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Arlene, you are right to ask, "...without any warning?" I am a very laid back kind of person, but without any warning we were informed of these changes and now have to deal with them.
  
  It takes time out of our day to drop, stop, and deal with things. I feel fortunate that there is not much I have to deal with, but I would not be a happy camper if I came to work one day and all of a sudden saw a bunch of ZZZ's and learned THAT day what it all meant.
  
  A little communication goes a long way.
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LeanManposted 11 years ago
Just one question regarding copied content....

What happens if your hub is de-indexed by Google and a copy is out there, we then update to get re-indexed but there are copies of our hubs out there. What affect will this have? Does Google know that it indexed us before or is a re-indexed page a new page and thus a copy?
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  mistyhorizon2003posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  An excellent question.
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Becky Katzposted 11 years ago
I have a Veterans Day hub that you have zz'd. It is Nov. 11th. How do I get it reindexed? http://hub.me/abMTA
Additionally, none of my hubs are substandard, I find it objectionable to have them called that. I work hard to make them accurate with no misspelled words or grammar mistakes. I work hard to put pictures and other media with them that are relevant and interesting. Please see if you can come up with a different word to use, perhaps under-performing?
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  Bob Zermopposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I've got to agree with Becky here, but because the idled hubs are idled due to lack of search friendliness, perhaps we should call them THE SEARCHHATED!!! (caps and exclamation points not optional) Or a pun: the searchers! You know, like, for traffic... Yeah, bad puns, maybe someone else should give this shot.
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  janderson99posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Sleeping Dogs
  
  In Oz a 'dog' is a 'no hoper'
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  Bob Zermopposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Hahaha, yes!
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  Becky Katzposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Well, I changed the titles on two of my hubs and have had five visitors in the last 3 hours. I guess that is improvement.
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  waynetposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Or your own visits!?
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  Becky Katzposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I just made the one visit to read it and change the title. That leaves 3 visits unaccounted.
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  waynetposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Hubpages may be haunted then and a ghost has visited....let us pray ....lol
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  That Grrlposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Pretty sure your own visits are not counted. Posting to the forum probably brought people to your profile and some of your Hub posts.
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  mistyhorizon2003posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Sadly your own visits are counted, this has come up many times before.
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  Becky Katzposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Your own visits are definitely counted. They are counted when you comment on a comment from your feed as well.
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aravindb1982posted 11 years ago
I agree that this feature is good as 'info' for the writers. But the CHOICE OF IMPLEMENTING it should be left to the writer!!
What if the writer is writing on a niche topic which is also seasonal? What if the writer is using HubPages as a creative outlet alone?
I strongly feel that the writer must have the choice of delisting his/her hubs from Google indexiing to get greater traffic. The automated process should be for 'informational' purpose only and the change should not be stuffed down the throats of writers.
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  Bendo13posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Yeah, holidays were my niche last year... looks like 365 of my hubs are going to get Hub-Slapped with some Zzz's, even though they are really popular around the time of the holiday.
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  That Grrlposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  As the holiday comes up promote those posts outside of HubPages. Then wait a day to make some tiny change and repost the Hub. See if that works to bring seasonal posts back to life from idle.
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  Uninvited Writerposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  But, they can take months to get to full traffic potential. That is why people publish Christmas Hubs beginning in September. Plus, people start shopping or at least thinking of shopping at this time of year.
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  Bendo13posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Do you not see the flaws in your logic?
  
  I'm expected to self-promote a holiday hub every single day (I posted a hub every day last year for wacky holidays - hence the "365") and then to edit a hub every single day?
  
  Self-promotion is what Google has been punishing lately, so if I did that every single day my subdomain would suffer. That's besides the point that it would be a heck of a lot of work to do, whenever naturally they get traffic around the time of the holiday.
  
  I put a lot of work into the hubs last year (research, planning to have supplies, recording/editing/posting videos - every single day), and most of my following on here is because of those hubs. To ask someone to re-promote themselves every day of the year, and to tweak the hubs over and over again, is unnatural.
  
  Hence why all seasonal hubs should be left alone, if they perform in season.
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paradigmsearchposted 11 years ago
Well, HP. I effectively made all my ZZZ's go into effect today, instead of Wednesday. So I expect to see my traffic double by Friday.
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janderson99posted 11 years ago
I think this is a good idea as it will lift the standard of hubs that are indexed (I think I may have suggested this internal vs external approach), but it needs to be done fairly with clearly defined 'rules' with emphasis on the 'new stuff', new hubs, with more stringent and transparent moderation of new pages and new authors. It would be good to get detailed advice on the 'rules' or algorithms that are used especially regarding 'quality' and 'length of time' before a threshold level of traffic is assessed. Seems like there are a few bugs that need to be ironed out. Authors don't get any feedback on what they needs to fix, especially for hubs that are getting traffic. The advice that 'giving it a bit of an update will get it featured again' is a bit obscure and could mean authors waste a lot of time without knowing what to do. Some of my ZZZZ's were triggered by 'Tweaking the title'. Please provide a guide as to the criteria and rules used to apply the anaesthetic and how to wake em' up again. Removing dead wood is a good idea.
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  Bendo13posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Yeah, and I don't see how changing a title or popping in a poll or something is really going to change much in search engine terms, right away. I mean sure, it might... Google might like that something new was added, but without some heavy sharing by people other than yourself, it's not going to fly away in terms of traffic.
  
  For traffic to build naturally, usually, it takes time... looks like that window of time is being shortened.
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  mistyhorizon2003posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  In my case to about 4 months for at least 5 hubs that are new ones. No chance of Google rating them now unless I move them because they won't get to 'see' them. Crazy!
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  janderson99posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Tweaking the title, building a few links may generate renewed traffic, but this will take time (several weeks). We need to know how long before the Grim Reaper of ZZZ will return after the Prince's kiss awakens the Sleeping Hub Bub with an update. We need more info on this as well.
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  Jenn-Anneposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Agreed! I haven't had a chance to read everything in this thread yet, but I think it would be helpful to know the algorithm so we can better understand why hubs get Zzzed. For example, I have a hub that has NEVER gotten any search engine traffic EVER and it has NOT been Zzzed. It's about my first 10 weeks at Hubpages and frankly I never expected it to get search traffic - I wrote it more as a pay-it-forward kind of thing for new hubbers. I wouldn't care if it got Zzzed as long as other hubbers can search Hubpages and find it. Of my hubs that did get Zzzed, they are my oldest (a whopping three months old) and while reasonably well written, could use some formatting work. However, they could also be considered seasonal and I was curious whether search traffic would pick up this fall. Guess I'll have to work on them if I want to find out.
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Anamika Sposted 11 years ago
Awesome effort from the HubPages Team. You Guys rock!!! However, I was wondering if you could do something about the copied content as well. Copied content symbol is shown even after they have been taken down. Also most of the content copies are also not identified by the software here so the hubbers have to manually find if their work is stolen.
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  Bard of Elyposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Yes. I have noticed this too that after I have got copied content of mine removed from other sites the copyright infringement alerts still persist here.
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Shadesbreathposted 11 years ago
If I'm being honest, all but 3 of the 14 hubs I've had Z-ified deserved it. However, the three that didn't deserve it (yes, IMO, etc.) are arguably the best things I've ever written on HP.

I think this change does create a problem for prose, certainly, and humor, particularly humor that is not satirical and therefore able to capitalize on the relevant keywords upon which it craps.
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  Marcy Goodfleischposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Shades - would changing your titles increase traffic? I have to think traffic is the issue rather than quality, based on what you're saying.
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  Shadesbreathposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  It might increase traffic but what does it do to the joke or the work of art.
  
  For example, one of the ones that is deindexed that I think is very high quality is a spoof on Twilight. The title is: "The Dim Gray Time Right Before Sunset." Yes, in terms of search, there is no way anyone is going to find that. But to change that title destroys the whole point of the satire. The title (in context with the cover image) is a huge part of the joke, a commentary on the absurdity. To change it to a search driven title, I'd have to make it "Twilight Spoof" or something equally horrible.
  
  It may just be that creative writing doesn't fit at HP anymore. If so, it's really not a bad thing. I see lots of people putting up serialized novels on here, when they should be putting them out as ebooks.
  
  I still think HP could make bank with a creative writing sub-community. Un-indexed (private) stories where people workshop with one another and help polish stuff out, and then help them get novels done and out there. HP could get a techie person to convert files and post, and take a cut off the gold rush of indie books. Hubpages Creative: they could be the next smashwords or something. Not like they don't already have a stable full of writers.
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  Becky Katzposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  There are already people helping to do this. mckbirdbks and Sunnie Day have helped several publish ebooks. Several others edit for typos and incorrect words, myself included.
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  Shadesbreathposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  So there you have it, there's already a start at it right there. Again.
  
  However, it's but another start, like several starts that have started over the last four years. I think if HP formalized it and put some structure to it, then it wouldn't be so random and sporadic. Newcomers could have some faith in the HP brand name as it applies to creative writing, and in turn, as successes mounted, writers with proven track records—rather than declarations of expertise as happens so much now—could start to make a real difference for those who wanted to take a passion and a dream and turn it into reality but really don't know how.
  
  HP could become a destination for aspiring ebook authors. Right now, finding that particular community is random at best, despite so many writers on the site. To me it seems a wasted resource both for the writers that are all here, and for HP who could get a nice little piece from thousands of ebooks.
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  mistyhorizon2003posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  +1
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  Pearldiverposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  + 2
  
  However, I would add that a lot of Stolen Hubs from here were clearly 'recycled' as e-books elsewhere and it was not only HP that missed out on the bucks!
  
  To write well - one must pursue a great creative passion. That passion is not a commodity that is easily applied to and developed to be exclusively conducive to, the process of making money, which tends to enslave the vulnerability of such a passion. As you point out, there exists a void that undermines the true extent of the good intent of the parties. Tis a shame, as it takes a great passion to prevail in business and so often, failure comes from the inability of decision makers to understand the true extent of the respective passions that make up the total package!
  
  Perhaps something worth remembering:
  
  It also takes a great passion to care and more so, to reward that emotion with the true extent of respect that it passionately deserves!
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Will Apseposted 11 years ago
Well, I can't say I like the interference in my account but stuff needs to be done to stem the numbers of Panda casualties.

Some days it feels like the retreat from Moscow.
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  Bendo13posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  If this change brings my traffic back to pre-Panda levels I will donate half a month's earnings, to a charity of HubPages choice, on behalf of and in the name of HubPages.com. I'm talking half of my AdSense, HP Ads and Amazon earnings for a month.
  
  I really will too.
  So, here's hoping that for once a change to this site actually brings the traffic back.
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DigbyAdamsposted 11 years ago
From my perspective the algo seems to be very forgiving. My fairly new subdomain has never taken off and I've had terrible traffic for weeks. I thoroughly expected to find all my Hubs zzz'd. Only two were. It was reassuring to me that somehow I passed muster. I'm willing to learn to ways of doing things, if it will help me - and everyone else.
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  aa liteposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  same here
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Arlene V. Pomaposted 11 years ago
I just finished editing my only Zzz, so I'm curious to see what happens next.
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  paradigmsearchposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I took all mine out behind the barn and shot them.
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  janderson99posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I euphemised 30 of mine by cutting off life support after the Grim Reaper kindly put them to sleep. It takes 24 hours but 'no gain without pain'. Its Spring soon in Oz, just enough time to prune the roses.
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  paradigmsearchposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  600 is an excellent round number!
  
  I'm wondering if I will ever see 100 at this rate.
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  Kangaroo_Jaseposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  John,
  
  Its the 1st Sept 12, welcome to Spring mate!
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  summerberrieposted 11 years agoin reply to this
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  Writer Foxposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  It would be kinder to take them to the veterinarian and have them put to sleep.
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  MarleneBposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I had a couple of Zzz's. But I wasn't shocked. One was from a seasonal hub and the other was from a hub that I already knew was boring and questionable. My traffic has already kicked up, so I can't help but believe the HP staff has done something good for us. As writers, all we need to do is serve our readers by writing hubs they search for and want to read and we are set for life.
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Jean Bakulaposted 11 years ago
We still haven't all changed to the new profile page, which allows very little personal info and no links to our personal blogs. The new hopper is awful, though I see the old one is still available. Now we get hit with this. I only had one ZZZ, but age is important, it's taken me a year to see traffic on some hubs. I think I will be adding just enough content to finish a series I began, and stop adding content here. I'm guessing nobody at the administration knows what works or doesn't, and it's starting to look like they are just desperately changing things almost everyday. It's ridiculous. If I spend 2 days writing on other sites, there's always a new change here, of dubious value. I think we know when our hubs aren't getting any views. I do, and take them down, rewrite them, and put them elsewhere. It's getting overwhelming to keep changing stuff.
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  EmpressFelicityposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  All hail the permanent revolution *snort*
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tussinposted 11 years ago
Wouldn't Hubpages make more money if they just left these well-written but low-traffic pages indexed? Sure, these pages won't make much money for their individual authors, but think of the aggregate. There are thousands of decent hubs that receive only about one hit per week, and HP gets 40% of their earnings. If they aren't low-quality then how do they hurt the reputation of a domain or subdomain they're on?
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gamergirlposted 11 years ago
This knee-jerk reaction is pretty ridiculous. Between the HubPages group on Facebook, and the responses I've skimmed here, I'm sad with so many of you.

Lame content doesn't filter high on Google. We LIKE that it doesn't filter high on Google. If a Hub isn't getting traffic or whatever other factors send it into "idle," then that is generally speaking a GOOD thing. It means two things to someone like me:

1.) Time to edit, update, correct, and enhance the Hub.

2.) My poorest content will be shown to me, and I have a more focused target to improve upon.

People are talking about ragequitting, as they always have every time a new major change has come to HubPages. In the four years I've had an account here, even ***I*** have once ragequit.

So do it, ragequit, before you understand the full implications or effect of the change. Once you've cooled off, figured it out, and retaken your positive attitude, you'll be back and publishing again with renewed vigor. If not, then ALL your Hubs will go idle, making room in the topics lists for all the new Hubs that I plan on writing, and all the Hubs I'm editing and improving.
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  The Writers Dogposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  "Lame content doesn't filter high on Google. We LIKE that it doesn't filter high on Google."
  
  It does not appear to me that Google is the one with a problem here. When four of six randomly Googled Hubs come back ranked number one, yet all four have Zzz next to them, it is clear that this is a HubPages generated idea.
  
  Why not crack down on spam and spun Hubs, rather than attack those of us who put time and effort into the work we post here?
  
  Remember, HubPages needs people who write decent content. People who write decent content do not need HubPages.
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  IzzyMposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  If you put your exact hub title into Google, your hub should show as #1 or near it.
  
  I randomly checked a couple of your hub titles, and yes you are right, they show high in the search engines. I can see them being sleepers because how many people people actually search for "How To Fall Off A Log And Into A River"?, for example.
  It looks to be a well-written, quality article, but without searchers, it would be placed On Idle.
  
  This may well be one of your more popular hubs that is not placed on idle of course. I have no way of knowing.
  
  Many of my hubs cannot be found in Google even when using their exact titles. It stands out even more on long tail titles. This tells me that something is seriously wrong with my subdomain.
  
  I am not alone in this. From the looks of things, many of the "success stories" have the same problem, and none of us know which hubs are bringing our subdomains down.
  
  HP sees the whole site, not just those of us who post about our lack of traffic, and there must be a huge number of us in the same boat.
  
  I don't consider my hubs to be substandard, but there is something wrong with them, or some of them, in the eyes of Google.
  
  There is the possibility that we will all see huge increases in traffic when this change is implemented. I say "go for it". There is nothing to lose and everything to gain.
  
  If your hubs are put on idle you have nothing to lose either because they couldn't have been making you money, and after all, they are still published and available. If your subdomain picks up because of this change, your idle hubs could come alive again.
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  That Grrlposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  It's not about poor content as far as quality. But, I agree, it does show people what topics aren't getting far. If you make a list of the posts in ZZZ, skip the ones like seasonal things. Look at your list and watch for themes. I noticed all my posts about blogging are low performers here. People from outside of HubPages aren't coming to read them and people in HubPages aren't the people who are keeping and making blogs. That is something it took me awhile to understand. But, having them all in ZZZs has proved I was right about them. So, in that way, the ZZZs are useful. But, people have to actually do the math to make use of ZZZs. Most peoplw won't do that. They will rewrite the post, add links, check their spelling and publish it again, expecting that will be enough.
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waynetposted 11 years ago
Reduced views = lesser ad earnings site wide....time to wake up sheeple! the de-indexing of hubpages might aswell be broken links as Hubpage internal views are not what make up your earnings, it's the outside views.....I wonder what knob jocky thought this up? lol

Plus, who has time to edit a large amount of hubpages....grrrrrr cornflakes!
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1. 0
  The Writers Dogposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I have been here long enough to be able to hazard a guess!!
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2. 74
  MickiSposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  It will result in more views, waynet. Having just a handful of underperforming Hubs can bring down your entire sub-domain in the eyes of the search engines. By showing you as "idle," we are doing two things for you: 1) no-indexing Hubs that are likely to be pulling down traffic to your overall sub-domain and 2) by showing which of your Hubs is under-performing, we are giving you the opportunity to update, fix, etc. and get them performing again.
  
  In the end, the result will be more traffic. More Hubs does not = more traffic. It's just a fact.
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  frogdroppingposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Where is the data to support this claim?
  
  And what about those that write fiction and poetry? How do you update a finished poem or short story?
  
  Back up the last part especially please - In the end, the result will be more traffic. More Hubs does not = more traffic. It's just a fact
  
  If what you're claiming is true, then there is no point in HP encouraging hubbers to write more hubs because ... more hubs do not equal more traffic. It's a fact.
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  thisisoliposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Having a few low quality hubs may damage your overall traffic, but having a few 'under performing' hubs is not. If you want people to take action, leave a message on their dashboard, dont de-index hubs, which could have a huge impact on the future performance of that hub.
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Steve Lensmanposted 11 years ago
I'm quite chuffed actually, over 200 hubs and only one of them was lagging behind.

i think it's a good idea finding out which of our hubs are currently on life support and it's an incentive to update and redecorate old hubs.
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toknowinfoposted 11 years ago
Well, this whole thing should be interesting. Whatever happens, it will be a learning lesson, and will eventually lead to progress and improvement in the long run for us all.
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lrohnerposted 11 years ago
Lack of traffic or lack of rankings is not necessarily an indicator that Google is "penalizing" or "doesn't like" a hub, or that it's "lame" or "spam."

Let's say I have hubs that have lost traffic because Google, in its infinite wisdom, decided to rank an "authority" site above mine, even though said page on "authority" site has little to no information on the page about the subject at hand. Or suppose Google in its infinite wisdom opted to rank a plagiarized copy of my hub above the original because the other person opted to go out and build a gazillion links.

In both of these cases, there is absolutely nothing I can do short of going out and buying a whole bunch of links -- and that might not even help. But in both cases, my hub is not "penalized" nor is it looked down on by Google, nor is it hurting my subdomain or HP as a whole. If I'm satisfied with a dribble of traffic over time, what is the problem?

The type of algorithm you guys are building only really works if Google works properly, and we all know it doesn't.
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  Marseiposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I understand what the zzs are, but what do the arrows going in a circle signify? I'd also like to add that I haven't even been writing for six months and three of my hubs are idle. I read an article from Hub Pages about aging of hubs. Less than six months doesn't seem long enough. I'm just aggravated because they idled my favorite about the baby fawn. Grrrr! Does anyone know what the arrows in a circle are? And I agree that good writing is not necessarily popular writing, unfortunately. (Someone said that way back somewhere.) Some of my sillier and more inept hubs are popular and others that are serious and well-written are IDLE!!
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  Writer Foxposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Those arrows mean that HubPages hasn't evaluated your new Hub (or, updated Hub) yet. Might take 48 hours.
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  Patty Inglish, MSposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I've had some good results so far - One particular Hub I updated, after 48 hrs it was republished -- It had been at Hubscore 61 and went into the 90s in about 2.5 days. It will take some work to update a few dozen, but results are good imo.
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  EuroCafeAuLaitposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Thanks, Patty. If you got Zs I guess there is hope for the rest of us.
  I had a similar experience. My hub on Budgeting was always a slowpoke, but it has come back to life again and it a top scorer.
  While I was at it, I gave all my hubs a "Title Tuner" and they seem to be performing a bit better. The ZZ-TOp doesn't bother me - gives me a "to do" list of Hubs to update. As I develop as a writer, my abilities change so this gives me the impetus to go back and make them better.
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