Template to Stop Hubs being ZZZd

1. 53

   janderson99posted 11 years ago

   To meet the 'quality' standard to avoid hubs getting sleepy ZZZd just follow these rules:
   
   => A minimum of 1500 words of truly informative, well-written, useful content
   => A minimum of 5 relevant, high-resolution, properly-attributed photos (ideally your own)
   => 2 videos (ideally your own)
   => At least 1 Map
   => At least 1 Table Capsule
   => At least 1 Poll and/or Quiz Capsule
   => Ten relevant tags
   => A good customized summary
   => Attractive and logical formatting
   => incoming links from everyone, everywhere but not reciprocated nd no external.
   
   ++++  At least every 3 months
   => Add  at least 3 new text capsules with new content to your Hub
   => Add 2 extra original photos and 1 new video
   => Add an Extra Poll or Table
   
   If after 6 months the hub is ZZZd due to low traffic - give up! There's nothing more you can do! You're stupid! Delete the hub => Go straight to jail. Do not collect $200

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   1. 53

      janderson99posted 11 years agoin reply to this

      a good example 
      http://     pauledmondson.hubpages.com/video/How-to-Make-Soft-Boiled-Eggs

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   2. 81

      pstraubie48posted 11 years agoin reply to this

      Thanks for this information. I have read 500 words, I have read 900 words, now I am reading 1500 words...am a bit uncertain what to use for this. I can see how the other suggestions will be very helpful and I have taken down a number of old hubs that were published before I learned how to HP really works. That is good advice, if they don't work, remove them. THe pictures information is really good too but sometimes you can't publish fabulous pictures. In that case do you recommned using not so great photos that are original or all photos from online that we are allowed to use?

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   3. 88

      mistyhorizon2003posted 11 years agoin reply to this

      lol, or alternatively don't delete the hub and move it to a site which won't expect you to jump through so many ridiculous hoops and yet you will still earn money from the article in question

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2. 30

   Writer Foxposted 11 years ago

   Here's the real formula to z-proof a Hub:
   
   Write only 117 words and add two poor quality home photos.
   
   Don't believe me?  It apparently worked for Paul Edmondson on a 5-year-old Hub that was updated August 23:
   
   http://pauledmondson.hubpages.com/hub/D … s_and_Sons

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   1. 53

      janderson99posted 11 years agoin reply to this

      maybe there's an exemption

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3. 53

   janderson99posted 11 years ago

   The point is that HP has a theory that if you add all the stuff listed above the hub will attract traffic and they enforce it as a 'quality' test. Hours and hours of work with no expectation of getting any traffic if the title does not fill a vacant niche. The so called organic links strategy has been killed off by their own freshness test with hubs less than 6 month old getting ZZZd before they have had a chance to bloom. Its very tiresome and annoying especially when new ZZZs occur nearly every day. Death by a thousand cuts. The war against the willing, attacking those who have large subs.

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4. 30

   Writer Foxposted 11 years ago

   "Content created on HubPages peaks in traffic on average nearly three years after it’s created."
   – Paul Edmondson, as quoted in a TechCrunch.com article in late October, 2010

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   1. 70

      sunforgedposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      If that was ever true, it is moot now.
      
      The new baseline started post-Panda/Penguin, HP changes, subdomains and now Idle hubs. Many,many thousands of hubs have left recently.
      
      That 2010 observation has nothing to do with HP now

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5. 91

   Millionaire Tipsposted 11 years ago

   So far, I have found that my hubs that were idled, deserved it.  I look at it as being told by an editor, "this one isn't ready for publication."
   
   I have found that there were several reasons for my idling hubs, in no particular order:
   
   1.  Content that won't matter to Google - these are hubs that talked about other hubs.  HubPages specific content can be popular and continue to get internal traffic, but it does have to provide information that is not readily found elsewhere. Most of mine died after the initial read.
   
   2.  Content that is badly titled, and does not have proper SEO strategies.
   
   3.  Content that is too personal, and reads too much like a blog. I had written a couple of hubs that started with "how I...".  They were meant to be helpful, but I needed to reword them so the point of view was on the reader.
   
   4.  Hubs with "issues."  Sometimes I think I have written a perfectly good hub and publish it, but hadn't taken the time to read it through one last time. I think all of us have probably have done this at least once in a while.  Just reading it again will make it clear that it was not a quality article.
   
   5. For whatever reason the content is something that people don't care to search for.  I had book reviews for books that were not popular.  People don't care to read the book - they are not going to search for a book review for it.
   
   My point is that the formula for waking up the hubs doesn't have to do with a set formula of number of words or images.  The formula is that we should read our hubs and figure out how to make them better.  If we are not willing to read our own hubs, how can we expect others to do so?
   
   This is a slow process for me, and I am not finished, so I may find more reasons as I go along.  I have already put some out of their misery (and mine) by un-publishing them. No matter how good my book review is, if no one cares, it is going to keep going back to sleep.   I have fixed some, and will have to see if they remain awake.

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   1. 74

      brakel2posted 11 years agoin reply to this

      +1

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   2. 53

      janderson99posted 11 years agoin reply to this

      That's a very positive outlook. In my case most did not 'deserve it' apart from low traffic - they simply did not conform to the template above. I had one published in July that got ZZZ - total mystery.
      
      This is a good template example
      http://pauledmondson.hubpages.com/video … oiled-Eggs
      
      my hubs don't follow that model

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   3. 53

      janderson99posted 11 years agoin reply to this

      Just for fun try doing Google searches for various topics
      e.g.
      egg recipes hubpages
      chicken recipes hubpages
      child discpline hubpages
      getting organised hubpages
      
      whatever - the 'hubpages'  is required
      
      How many in the top five have all the stuff listed above?? Videos??
      Most of them don't, and many are very short with few images.
      So it would appear that what Google likes is not what HP likes. There is a strong message in this.
      To put hubs to sleep because they do not have all that stuff would appear to be HP shooting itself in the foot. IMO

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      1. 91

         Millionaire Tipsposted 11 years agoin reply to this

         Those are simply suggestions on what might make your hubs better.  I am telling you that adding stuff isn't what made my hubs better - sometimes they required rewriting and sometimes they needed deleting.  I am not going to add that kind of stuff or make the hub longer if I don't think that the change will make it better.

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         1. 53

            janderson99posted 11 years agoin reply to this

            BUT the emphasis in the learning center guide is on adding stuff
            "A Hub need not be permanently Idle - you can quite easily change its status back to Featured (and even better) by:
            
            •Updating the Hub with fresh content (Hubs sometimes fall into Idle status because they have not been updated in a long time and have grown stale)
            •Adding additional photos and media
            •Editing it and catching any typos you may have missed
            •Sharing it with your friends, asking for feedback, and updating it accordingly"
            
            While you may make it better from your own point of view, to get it 'featured' you have to do what the Grim Reaper wants - which is basically more stuff and a simple edit! There are no criteria specified and the reasons for ZZZ are not stated. So everyone has to work in the dark.
            
            The most likely reason why a hub was ZZZd less than 6 months old was ZZZd , apart from low traffic, is that it does not have enough stuff - adding stuff fixes it. Paul E and Simone's hubs are full of stuff. Clearly stuff matters to HP.

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   4. 86

      Marisa Wrightposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      The formula for waking up Hubs is to change something. Add one photo or change one sentence.  That's all it takes to wake up a Hub.
      
      Whether it's enough to keep it awake - that's another question.  So far, all the Hubs I've awakened by that method are still awake.
      
      Whether your Hubs could be improved - that's a completely different question and the decision is up to you.

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      1. 53

         janderson99posted 11 years agoin reply to this

         So Round One is designed to catch inactive authors that have a lot of low-traffic, low quality  hubs. If the author is awake and cares, they can make a simple tiny edit and they will get a reprieve for now.
         
         Round Two is likely to start soon and may be a lot tougher otherwise the reason for idling hubs to improve the quality of hubs seen by Google (traffic + quality) won't be achieved. Its 'death by a thousand cuts' as the criteria used by the test are not stated.

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         1. 53

            janderson99posted 11 years agoin reply to this

            The other aspect that is unclear is whether the same 'quality' test (ZZZ) is applied to a new hub during the review period. It would be nice to know that a hub that meets this initial test and is 'featured' that it will only get ZZZd if it does not get a minimum amount of traffic after 6 months or so. I suspect that the initial test is less stringent and HP relies upon low traffic or hub score to trigger post-publishing reviews, even in the first 6 months.
            I had one hub published in July 2012 that was ZZZd.

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6. 74

   Kangaroo_Jaseposted 11 years ago

   I have over 36 hubs on this account alone that don't follow this OP's rule set. Not one if them have been Zzz nor are likely to in the future.

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   1. 53

      janderson99posted 11 years agoin reply to this

      Do they all have an average of more than one hit every second day.
      Have you had a hub ZZZd that is less than 6 months old? If so why was it ZZZd?

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      1. 74

         Kangaroo_Jaseposted 11 years agoin reply to this

         Do they all have an average of more than one hit every second day. NO
         
         Have you had a hub ZZZd that is less than 6 months old? 13 Hubs out of 116 on one account
         
         If so why was it ZZZd? 90% of my Hubs that went into Zzz had spelling and/or grammar errors, were shorter than 235 words and did not have traffic from Google in over 9 months.

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         1. 53

            janderson99posted 11 years agoin reply to this

            Thanks for that. It confirms that there is a traffic test applied after 6-9 months, less than one hit for every two days. It also confirms that there is a quality test based a on various criteria such as spelling, word count, grammar. In my case external inks were targeted as well as 'saturated' topics. Just about any edit appears to work to restore articles to 'featured' currently, but I suspect it will get a lot tougher in the next phase. So its impossible to really work out what HP wants. While editing I have been added the extra stuff listed above in the hope of keeping the Grim Reaper at Bay - Cheers and best wishes
            Aa' lasser en lle coia orn n' omenta gurtha 
            - Elvish for "May the leaves of your life tree never turn brown"

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            1. 74

               Kangaroo_Jaseposted 11 years agoin reply to this

               John,
               
               It is hard outside of guessing what HP wants as quality info for their site from us writers. Except the only available public guide on this is the Learning Centre and the info provided there.
               
               HP will not tell us whats intrinsic with what I am calling their 'Polar Algo"(Penguin, Panda, you see the theme) outside of our own trial and error and best guess.

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               1. 53

                  janderson99posted 11 years agoin reply to this

                  A long time ago in and land far away, Paul E said HP was going to develop and algo that mirrored the Google Quality test which provides about 20% of where a page ranks in Google. I think the Idleness algo is derived from this. I don't understand why HP cannot list the criteria:
                  => at least 90 hits in the last 6 months
                  => at least one large pinable image
                  => at least 5 capsules and 5 variety of capsules
                  etc. or similar for a minimum standard.
                  
                  My gut feeling is that the hub review when a hub is first published is much less stringent than the Grim Reaper, which is triggered by low traffic - perhaps a low hub score after a month of so. The point being that HP does not want to kill off 'poor quality hubs' that get a lot of traffic. The Idleness test is essentially aimed at identifying poorly performing hubs based on what the algo determines to be issues - spelling, external links, lack of capsule diversity. The test is designed to dump them because they get no traffic or have little potential for traffic or they contain stuff that Google may not like.
                  
                  While the Stellar hubs and other advice essentially focuses of quality there is a flawed logic - 'the cream will float to the top'. Sorry it won't!!!
                  
                  The take home message from this in my opinion is to focus mostly on getting traffic by finding available niches and using carefully crafted titles and keywords. Don't spend too much time on them making them stellar at the start because only 20-30% will succeed in getting traffic. Instead add stuff to the good ones that show promise - adds freshness. Tweak the titles/keywords for moderate traffic ones to try to boost them. Dump the low traffic ones - the 'no hopers'. Let the Grim Reaper do its stuff by identifying low traffic ones and responding accordingly.
                  
                  The HP concept that the traffic for a low performing hub can be improved after several months, by adding more images, a poll, a table and a video is also flawed in my opinion, except in the sense of improving 'time on the page' and perhaps earnings - its only worth doing when you can tweak the title to get more traffic - other wise its a 'cargo cult' strategy
                  IMO
                  
                  Its all a game that's fun to play.

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7. 0

   DigbyAdamsposted 11 years ago

   My latest zzz'd hub was long, with original photos and and original take on the matter - and met most of your criteria. Not one product on it. I'd love to write more here. I'm just going to give it a while, until I see how things shake out. That zzz'd hub and almost no traffic make it hard to get excited about writing here.

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   1. 53

      janderson99posted 11 years agoin reply to this

      They are not my criteria, and the 'load the hub' with stuff approach is silly and doesn't correlate with hub position on the SERPS - but its being pushed as a template for 'featured' hubs. 'Yuck'!

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   2. 0

      diyomarpandanposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      Deleted
      1. 88

         mistyhorizon2003posted 11 years agoin reply to this

         Well I had several that got the 'Zzz' treatment that were under four months old. I simply moved them to Wizzley, and they are doing fine there. All the hubs were of high quality and full of useful information that did not need tweaking, (trust me on this I earn three figure sums every month here and have done for the last year plus). I just refused to fix something that wasn't broken and that was being judged by a computer program as opposed to an actual person.

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8. 0

   DigbyAdamsposted 11 years ago

   janderson99 - I think you speak wisely. The game really hasn't changed, it's the window dressing. So the strategy is go for traffic and $$$ with a reasonable hub that can be quickly written. Then if it gets traction gussy it up a bit to keep it. I might give this a go.

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9. 88

   mistyhorizon2003posted 11 years ago

   Although I feel strongly that it is important we use correct grammar and spelling, I am far from convinced the new HP Algorithm is clever enough to judge either, (grammatical errors would be particularly hard to detect, and spelling varies depending on if you are from the UK or the US.) I strongly suspect the idling feature is largely based on recent traffic, not on quality, mainly because these hubs are being judged en-mass by a computer program, not by people.
   
   As for adding a stack of polls, tables, quiz's etc to our hubs, I think this is truly pathetic if that is what HP is aiming for. I regularly surf the internet for information I need, and the top results over many pages rarely include any of those 'space fillers'. I think they make an article look tacky and cheap and they are generally unnecessary.

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   1. 53

      janderson99posted 11 years agoin reply to this

      I think there are humans involved - some of my ZZZ's had many spelling mistakes produced by a word processor glitch. The Grim Reaper does not like the links capsule pointing to one of your own external website. Its impossible really to tell because no information is given and a simple one or two word edit gets it featured again (how silly). I think the hub score may be involved - if you sort your stats by 'idle' the hubs are listed in reverse hub score order. Several of my ZZZs that were less than 6 months old has hubscores below 65. When these hubs got 'featured' the hubscore shot up to 70+. I think this may be the way you are given a reprieve and that the hub score will come down again if the edits and traffic don't improve. Adding one large extra image seems to boost the hubscore as well.  Adding lots of window dressing stuff also boosts the score. Also I had several ZZZ for hubs published since Feb 2012 and one published in July 2012 and HP has confirmed that there is a quality component. It would the tough if the low traffic test was triggered for a hub less than 8 weeks old. All speculation of course because HP won't give us the details even after an email. One of these was in a very popular topic and had a 'no-hoper' title - but had received Google traffic.

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      1. 88

         mistyhorizon2003posted 11 years agoin reply to this

         Really not convinced people are involved. The hubs I had 'Zeed' in about four cases were well punctuated, grammatically correct, perfectly spelled and had properly attributed pictures in them. The information in them was valid and based on my own knowledge of the subjects in question (I tend to try to write about what I know plenty about as opposed to just copying other people's research online as many do). These hubs were under four months old so had no time to age, they also included polls and videos (although I only did this to humour HP.) Seeing so much of the total dross on this site I cannot believe a human read any of those hubs and said 'yep, let's Zzz that one', it just doesn't add up. Apart from anything else how on earth can a tiny team of people find time to manually review the thousands of hubs that are no doubt being 'zeed' right now, it just wouldn't be time (or cost) effective!

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         1. 53

            janderson99posted 11 years agoin reply to this

            So I wonder why they were ZZZd? - what were the hubscores? Did they have traffic from Google? (say more than 3 hits per week). Were the titles tweaked for traffic - longtails or were they short commonly used phrases that were flogged to death. Were the titles in saturated topics (travel for me). Did you include a links capsule or link to one of your external sites?
            
            These issues appeared to be the reason for some of my ZZZs. I think the algo does a quick check and flags hubs for humans to check???? Who knows?
            
            All this is stabbing in the dark, made worse by any simple edit awakening them. My usual response was the check the title - do some more research and change it if the traffic was low. I added an extra pinable image below the first paragraph, repinned it and G+ again (the hubscore liked that), added a poll and added more links to related hubs and reciprocated some back the other way to try to get more traffic. I suspect the Grim Reaper will be back with sharper scythe next time!!!
            
            Most of this is experimental - I've managed to get the hub scores for all my hubs over 64 to see if that works - the hubs score loved the window dressing stuff. Many of my ZZZs were in the low 60's, except for hubs older than 6 months with less than 1 hit every 2 days average.

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            1. 88

               mistyhorizon2003posted 11 years agoin reply to this

               I have no idea why they were 'Zeed' either. I did not use links capsules in any of them, I can't really recall what the Hubscores were on them off the top of my head, but I am pretty certain they were all above 65 or possibly even 70, they weren't in particularly oversaturated topics (2 were book reviews of a decent length, and three were gardening articles covering things like how to sow seeds indoors and why you should grow your own vegetables etc). I did link to my my own gardening site in an 'in text' link on the gardening ones, but only within the maximum allowed. I have done this on other gardening hubs and they have not been 'Zeed' at all. The titles weren't particularly long, e.g. How to Sow Seeds Indoors and Why Grow Vegetables at Home? I honestly can't recall how much traffic they were getting, but they were getting views, and they are still getting views over on Wizzley.

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               1. 53

                  janderson99posted 11 years agoin reply to this

                  I've no idea then - its such as stupid process - any little edit will fix it but no specific feedback of what caused it and how to prevent it in the future. My only suggestion is the link to your own site. I had several ZZZs which appeared to be due to this, though I used the link capsule. Maybe HP is picking up 'self-promotion' using the old profile links.
                  Cheers,

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                  1. 86

                     Marisa Wrightposted 11 years agoin reply to this

                     I don't know why you find this surprising.  They're copying Squidoo, and Relache has said, all you have to do on Squidoo is edit the lens and republish it without changing anything.   I assume it has to do with the freshness factor, or perhaps they're just trying to ensure members stay actively engaged on the site.
                     
                     
                     
                     Nope.  I have links to my own sites on all my dance Hubs and none of them were ZZZ'd.

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10. 0

    DigbyAdamsposted 11 years ago

    I don't know, I was nominated and won 4 Hubnuggets when I first came, so I thought I was writing the correct way. The Hub in question had six original photos and was original in thought. But never took off. So I think janderson is right about quickly writing a "test" hub, seeing if G likes it, and then tweaking to keep it real and improve.
    
    I'm just having trouble getting my gumption up to write here until things settle down. I've written 17 Squidoo lenses and about 40 Wizzley Wizzles (I have a total of 160) to keep busy - and make some money. So far none of my Squidoo lenses have gong "WIP." The Squidoo version off ZZZd.
    
    But it's interesting to see how others are thinking.

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