I really think this Idled hubs idea is ridiculous

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  1. Bard of Ely profile image80
    Bard of Elyposted 11 years ago

    When it was first introduced I was annoyed by it but made an effort to tweak my hubs to get them out of Idle status. Now, a whole load have got zzs against them again and many of them are hubs that at one point were very successful and even now still have scores above 70 or higher.

    One of the hubs that was just given the zz treatment at one point last year had thousands of hits from Facebook in just days.

    Another was the first media coverage of the Tenerife winter drought. I was truly able to say I covered this matter first and "I told you so," with regard to what happened this year on Tenerife. If you Googled "Tenerife" and "Winter Drought" you found it.

    If HubPages doesn't want well written and thought out hubs on important matters then so be it! I will be moving all my Idled hubs to Wizzley from now on!

    If all that is important is what the controlled masses are looking for and commercial crap that gets traffic is regarded as of value, then why should I want to waste my time posting my work here? I use the term "controlled masses" because it is obvious that if subjects are not in the mainstream media then they don't get traffic. The winter drought here had to get really bad before anyone apart from me would talk about it in the news media. Eventually in late February a report I wrote went in the Tenerife News newspaper, although I had been on about this in early January.  I have witnesses on this island to the fact that I was the first journalist to write about this. But here it gets zz!

    If HubPages is looking to drive writers like me away it is doing a very good job!  I used to really like this site and feel proud of my work here but not any more!

    1. Marisa Wright profile image86
      Marisa Wrightposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      Yes, I've found that too.  Changing the title, or a couple of sentences, will bring a Hub out of idle - but it looks like that's not a solution, because it only works for a few weeks then you're back in idle again.

      So it looks like if a Hub is idled,you either have to give it a huge overhaul (which is hard because you're not sure what was "wrong" with it in the first place) - or move it elsewhere. 

      You've got a lot of material to move, so do try to set yourself some priorities.  The only articles worth moving to Wizzley, Infobarrel, Seekyt etc are the ones that did well when HubPages was doing well. When HubPages was at its peak, it attracted far more traffic than any rev-sharing site does now - if a Hub couldn't succeed then, it never will.

      What to do with Hubs that have never done well?   If they're on a relevant subject, move them to your blogs.  I'm not saying they'll make you money there, but they have more chance there amongst other similar posts, than they do on a rev-sharing site.

    2. Dale Hyde profile image79
      Dale Hydeposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      I have simply stopped publishing here.  Not sure just what choice I will make, but all my hubs are copied and stashed ready to go live somewhere at some point in time.  I am tired of tweaking, tweaking and tweaking.  I have posted this quite often over the past month or so.  Everytime I pop in to read the forums I see many authors that have excellent material abandoning HP.

      So.... you lose those that supply the product for higher views on what you already have here, then some of that product starts getting moved off site.... what do you gain, HP?  You gain a short life with Google, then you will be slammed for lack of quality content..... that content will reside on other sites.

      I have a Hub about the endtimes prophecies.... ummm...maybe it is referring to HP in those prophecies, lol.

      1. Marisa Wright profile image86
        Marisa Wrightposted 11 years agoin reply to this

        Dale, I doubt it's worth hoarding articles in the hope that some new white-knight revenue-sharing site will emerge.  Many people had great hopes for Wizzley at one time, but (although it's a perfectly good site) it's not setting the world on fire.  Squidoo does well, but they have Idle-style hoops to jump through, too (although they seem better-designed). 

        Articles which are in storage aren't working for you.  I would suggest leaving Hubs here unless and until they are idled, because (believe it or not) HP still earns better than many of the alternatives.  If a Hub gets idled, unpublish it.  Move it to your blog if it's relevant (no need to wait).   If it's not, give it time to clear the cache and put it up on another rev-sharing sites - spread your articles evenly around, rather than putting all your eggs in one basket, as a safeguard against future rule changes.

        1. janderson99 profile image55
          janderson99posted 11 years agoin reply to this

          There is one cruel twist to this. Many hubs are copied and published elsewhere by others, spun etc. You delete you hub, wait a while and try to publish it elsewhere. The new site won't publish it because it finds the duplicate copies, Google won't index it because its a duplicate. Sad!

          1. IzzyM profile image87
            IzzyMposted 11 years agoin reply to this

            Use the wayback machine - http://archive.org/web/web.php

            Even though your hub is deleted, when you file a DMCA, Google will accept the url from there.

          2. Huntgoddess profile image65
            Huntgoddessposted 11 years agoin reply to this

            That's horrible.

        2. Dale Hyde profile image79
          Dale Hydeposted 11 years agoin reply to this

          I am not hoarding. I simply have my material copied because for some reason I don't feel secure that I will always have access to it here.  My hubs are still published here.  However, I do have plans in motion and under consideration to move them elsewhere, be it another similar site or to my personal website(s), not to my blog.  Monitizing is a whole new game however on a personal website. There are several options.  One of my sites that I have, I have people actually paying me an annual fee for their ad to reside on certain pages that are related.  By incorporating my HP material onto my personal site, maybe I can generate more of that kind of revenue. I am looking at that option and other options as well.

          I don't plan on simply hoarding. as much of my material has proven over the years to be "needed" by certain individuals at certain times in their lives, mainly my spiritual material, so by hoarding, it would defeat the purpose of the original intent in the creating of them.

          You know, it is not all about earnings.  Sure, I like earnings and enjoy writing for earnings. But when I first started writing and became successful to the degree that I am, there was no financial gain in the plan...it was the simple sharing of knowledge.  With that in mind, when my material here goes "idle" according to the HP folks, people can not find that material in Google or other search engines.  That also defeats my purpose of publishing.

          I remember seeing someone share links and a "copy" of a supposed letter from Google giving guidelines about a deficient article or page and what corrections were needed for Google to consider indexing it again upon submittal.  Well, I have never received a letter like that in relation to any of my material here on HP, on my personal sites, blogs or other sites such as Witches' Voice that I share my material on.  So with Google not sending me such a letter, I don't understand HP taking over control and putting articles to sleep and "officially" killing them.  My idle hubs have always had some traffic...Some have rated high in searches...An article DOES NOT have to be highly viewed to rate high in a search.  I speak from years of online writing experience, not as a self-proclaimed SEO expert. (I have a hub about that as well, lol....)

          I am not sharing this to upset anyone, criticize anyone, or ridicule anyone. I am simply sharing my thoughts, intentions and experiences from years of writing online and having people...you know humans....not BOTS read my material and appreciate it.

          1. Marisa Wright profile image86
            Marisa Wrightposted 11 years agoin reply to this

            Exactly the point I'm trying to make - thank you!

            As for monetizing your own sites, I'm sure you're aware you can use Amazon exactly as you do here on HubPages.  You can also use eBay if you can get approved for your own account.  Besides that, I have far more success with affiliate networks like ShareASale, Linkshare, ClixGalore, Clickbank, Affiliate Future and Google Affiliate Network than Adsense or Amazon.  It's tough for me to find products relevant to dance so I have only one or two products from each, but they are all worth the effort because the commission is so much better.  If you Google ".....affiliate" for your chosen topic, you may unearth some direct affiliate schemes too.   Book Depository is one example of a good direct affiliate scheme - it offers better commission than Amazon on books, AND has a longer cookie, and offers free postage so customers are likely to buy.

            1. Dale Hyde profile image79
              Dale Hydeposted 11 years agoin reply to this

              Thanks for all of that! I will certainly research into those prospects. smile

          2. galleryofgrace profile image70
            galleryofgraceposted 11 years agoin reply to this

            Dale , do your feelings stem from a premonition?

            1. Dale Hyde profile image79
              Dale Hydeposted 11 years agoin reply to this

              I feel that at some point simply because of my way of thinking and my sharing of my thinking and reasoning here that I will not be able to log in here one day, galleryofgrace.

      2. IzzyM profile image87
        IzzyMposted 11 years agoin reply to this

        While I initially welcomed the move by Hubpages, because I had a slapped account, I tend to agree with you.

        I hoped that HP's algorithm that puts hubs to sleep would find those elusive hub/s that brought my account down. I assumed those hubs would be one or more of my sales hubs.

        What I did when I wrote sales hubs, was take a product and write something about its good points, maybe its bad points too, depending on the product.

        I wrote stuff that Amazon didn't already write - look around the web, everyone just copies what Amazon says.

        What I said was different, unique, but still not different enough, or so I thought when I got slapped.

        But then my traffic came back - after 13 months!

        Google sent traffic to all those hubs I thought dead, buried, not fit for purpose, but ignored my serious hubs, the ones that were well-researched, had loads of capsules, links, videos, maps, polls - in other words, the very hubs HP would have said were stellar hubs.

        The average Google searcher does not want all the bells and whistles.

        They want quick gratification. Write a short hub about something people are searching for, and you will be found. (BTW, I have ten subdomains, I know what I am talking about).

        So long as Google isn't slapping your subdomain at the time, a long hub is not necessarily a good one in Google's eyes.

        Even though it may be a GREAT hub.

        Google does not expect a lot from HP; sometimes more is less.

        But I am frightened now by the direction HP is taking.

        From paying for outside ratings of hubs, and let's not forget that no matter how well your hubs are rated, if Google doesn't send them traffic they will be idled -  to preventing new hubs from being indexed in a timely manner, I hear the death knell sounding.

        In the last few days, I have unpublished a LOT of hubs, and will continue doing this until my traffic returns to the hubs that are left.

        Then I will move them offsite and just leave a handful here.

        I have stood by HP through thick and thin, but the step too far for me was allowing some hubbers instant featuring, and not the rest of us.

        I want to write on a site where my content is wanted.

        1. Dale Hyde profile image79
          Dale Hydeposted 11 years agoin reply to this

          Izzy, you are a perfect example of what I was referring to about great authors with great material pulling their material, or product, that I referred to.  Without folks like you and your product, combined with similar of your quality, where does HP think they are going in the long-range future?  You have been here for over 3 years writing, I see your overall number is down on published hubs, but still you have close to 350 published at the moment.... overall.... I am simply stumped why HP has chosen to go the direction they are going to create, from what I see, an amass exodus by some of the best.

        2. molometer profile image80
          molometerposted 11 years agoin reply to this

          Hi Izzy,
          Just read your hub on how to wire a plug. Perfect in every way. Useful and informative. exactly what someone would be searching for.
          That is the kind of hub that should be getting masses of traffic. I would have thought.

          1. IzzyM profile image87
            IzzyMposted 11 years agoin reply to this

            I love you smile

            How sweet!

            By the way, that was an 'exclusive title' I grabbed. Not the sort of thing I would have thought of writing about, but easy-peasy as they go.

            BTW, it's had 26 views in total since it was published sad

            1. molometer profile image80
              molometerposted 11 years agoin reply to this

              You are more than welcome.

              I am slightly surprised that it has had so few views. mind you it is early days.
              A topic like this, is searched for a lot more, than people think, and it  will get many more views, as it matures.
              Like a good cheese. it takes time smile

      3. Xenonlit profile image60
        Xenonlitposted 11 years agoin reply to this

        I came here in the hope that the site would contribute something to make the articles visible, not cancel out my own marketing work. It's a bust.

      4. DreamerMeg profile image80
        DreamerMegposted 11 years agoin reply to this

        I agree. I had one of my hubs put into idle the other day. I changed one item in it and pinged it out to a few places. I also belong to a forum on which I am an active contributor (not hub pages) and where I am allowed a "sig". Added it to the sig and it is now out of idle. Worth a try?

      5. Shinkicker profile image51
        Shinkickerposted 11 years agoin reply to this

        I totally agree Bard of Ely. I've stopped writing creative Hubs and have now started churning out 'Listicles'. They bore me to write but that's what gets the hits from the great Google God.

        1. Bard of Ely profile image80
          Bard of Elyposted 11 years agoin reply to this

          Thanks for agreeing! I am probably too much of an artist to get this right and so I suffer accordingly!

      6. molometer profile image80
        molometerposted 11 years agoin reply to this

        I really don't get it either. According to the hub blog on the topic. There are both human and artificial intelligence factors involved in the assessment of whether a hub should be idle or not.

        I cannot imagine that there can be much human involvement, as there are just not enough hours in the day to check every hub.

        The day a piece of software can tell quality writing from dross, is the day when we may as well quit and let the bots write the hubs.

        I have had a few idle. I must admit that they just needed refreshing and a few new keywords. Fortunately I haven't written 400+ or a 1000+ hubs otherwise it would be a different story.

        I noticed that our success story hubber Mary Audet has gone from. I believe 700 odd hubs down to 400 or something last time I checked.

        How can someone like that get hammered? It is very confusing to say the least.

        Michael

        BTW I checked my hubs on Google Analytics and found that from the time that the idle thing came in. A robot txt stopped Google crawling all of my hubs. My traffic plummeted of course. I have fixed it. I think. We will have to see if the traffic picks up again.

      7. aa lite profile image84
        aa liteposted 11 years agoin reply to this

        Don't know if you've seen this yet but there is a lot of new? stuff (at least stuff I hadn't seen yet) about the quality assessment process (previously known as hub hopping) and featured hubs  http://hubpages.com/faq/#quality-assessment.  Apparently to stay featured you a hub needs to have good "reader engagement" rather than Google traffic.

    3. Rain Defence profile image80
      Rain Defenceposted 11 years ago

      It's for seo purposes. Lots of pages that are having no views drags the site down as a whole. It does suck balls if they're your articles, but it does make sense to deindex all of the pages that aren't performing from an seo point of view.

      1. Marisa Wright profile image86
        Marisa Wrightposted 11 years agoin reply to this

        I wish someone could point me to some evidence that's so.  There are plenty of people saying low quality pages will drag your site down, but I haven't been able to find a single internet guru who thinks low traffic pages are a problem.

        Until I start seeing Google, or people like SearchEngineLand &co, talking about low traffic pages, I'm not inclined to trust HubPages' advice on the matter.  They are website owners, not website experts.  Paul has said they're getting advice from experts but it's strange that they seem to be out on a limb with this one. 

        Happy to be proved wrong if anyone can provide links.

        1. janderson99 profile image55
          janderson99posted 11 years agoin reply to this

          Some examples for the quality debate => pages that get low traffic generally have low ranking (otherwise they would get traffic) => pulls down ranking of site overall:

          http://pauledmondson.hubpages.com/hub/W … -Providers
          Letter from Google
          “Dear site owner or webmaster of http://hubpages.com/,
          We've detected that some of your site's pages may be using techniques that are outside Google's Webmaster Guidelines.
          Specifically, we detected low-quality pages on your site which do not provide substantially unique content or added value. Examples could include thin affiliate pages, doorway pages, automatically generated content, or copied content. For more information about unique and compelling content, visit http://www.google.com/support/webmaster … wer=66361.
          We encourage you to make changes to your site so that it meets our quality guidelines. Once you've made these changes, please submit your site for reconsideration in Google's search results.
          If you have any questions about how to resolve this issue, please see our Webmaster Help Forum for support.
          Sincerely,
          Google Search Quality Team”

          http://webcontentblog.com/seo/google-fi … ith-panda/
          “Google Panda is an algorithm – a filter, really – that looks for content of little substance. When it finds sufficient low quality content, Google penalizes the whole site, reducing the site’s search results ranking.”

          http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot. … ality.html
          “One other specific piece of guidance we've offered is that low-quality content on some parts of a website can impact the whole site’s rankings, and thus removing low quality pages, merging or improving the content of individual shallow pages into more useful pages, or moving low quality pages to a different domain could eventually help the rankings of your higher-quality content.”

          1. Marisa Wright profile image86
            Marisa Wrightposted 11 years agoin reply to this

            I rest my case.  Every one of your examples relates to low quality pages, shallow content etc.  Nothing about low traffic. 

            You seem to be saying "low traffic must equal low ranking therefore must equal low quality".  I don't see that logic at all, and it's not supported by your examples as far as I can see.

            1. janderson99 profile image55
              janderson99posted 11 years agoin reply to this

              High ranked pages get traffic. Low ranked pages get none. Overall rank depends on the sum of the parts
              1+1+5+1+1+1 = 10
              5+4+5+6+4+6 = 30
              Google wants to make money => Sites that have more pages with traffic will get higher position in the SERPS. =>  It pays to dump low traffic pages.
              There are two parts to IDLE low traffic and low quality.
              HP wants a smaller number of pages idexed that have BOTH good traffic (or potential for traffic) AND Good Quality. Squidoo's page score partially depends on traffic => same model that works for them.
              Google never sees pages that get no traffic - the bot has no reason to visit => why have 'dead' pages on your site that don't boost rankings.
              HP wants to make money and so why include 'dead' hubs in the smaller pool of pages that get indexed.

              1. Marisa Wright profile image86
                Marisa Wrightposted 11 years agoin reply to this

                We're not talking about low rank, we're talking about low traffic.  Low traffic does not mean low ranking - a page can be ranked high for a topic that doesn't have high search volumes.

                Or are you suggesting that HubPages is basing the idle feature on low ranking?  I would have a lot less objection to that concept.

                I would also have less objection if NO traffic = idle.  A page with low traffic isn't dead.

                Tell me, do news sites no-follow all their archives? 

                We've been through all this before, and I stand by my case:   you, and HubPages, are taking the "low quality" argument and taking a further leap to low quality=low rank=low traffic.  If you can quote me any experts who are making the same leap, please point me in their direction - I'm ready to be convinced if the evidence is there.

                1. janderson99 profile image55
                  janderson99posted 11 years agoin reply to this

                  Its common sense. There are  two unrelated parts to this - not one
                  You want to go from 1000 pages to 100 that represents the cream of the crop. If they are the best of the best Google will regard the site as better.
                  => eliminate the low quality pages that will pull down the site => make sure the 100 have the best quality
                  => you have to earn your money from only 100 pages => get rid of any pages that get no traffic => make sure the 100 you select get traffic.
                  Quality+traffic => success

                  1. Hollie Thomas profile image61
                    Hollie Thomasposted 11 years agoin reply to this

                    It doesn't matter, because a hub topic that is not being searched for will never get traffic, irrespective of the quality. Low traffic does not always equate to low quality. Not everyone uses keywords, or researches them for that matter, so they can write a stellar piece but if it's not being searched for....it will eventually be idled by HP. I don't know whether Bard does any keyword research.

                  2. Marisa Wright profile image86
                    Marisa Wrightposted 11 years agoin reply to this

                    "Eliminate the low quality pages that will pull down the site" - I agree with that.

                    But I say (for the umpteenth time) low traffic does not equal low quality.  It may just indicate that you've written about a specialist subject that doesn't get much traffic.  It may even have a high conversion rate because there's not much competition on that subject.

                    If your logic is correct, then online newspapers should "idle" all their articles except for today's, because how much traffic does yesterday's news get?  So why don't they do that?

                    1. CMHypno profile image83
                      CMHypnoposted 11 years agoin reply to this

                      Marisa, I think that part of the problem is that HP no longer seems to be a site for writers. The old 'write about you want and get published' has gone out of the window, and many of the excellent writers who chose to write about their interests and hobbies, however obscure they may be, will have been put off by this 'idling' and 'pending' business. Bard's hubs are excellent and fulfill Google's criteria for matching what people searched for, so shouldn't be idled even if they only get a few hits a day.

                      I am fed up of the assumption that 'idled' hubs are automatically 'low quality' because they get little traffic.  Some of my history hubs and Ancient Egypt hubs were idled, because they don't attract huge amounts of traffic, but I knew they wouldn't before I wrote them.  They were written for people who want to to look in more depth at a certain event in history, rather than for a general overlook.  Surely HP should be encouraging writers who know their subject and want to write well researched, detailed articles?

                      I tend to think that in reality, 'low quality' banal crap is in fact encouraged as long as it gets traffic!

              2. Greekgeek profile image78
                Greekgeekposted 11 years agoin reply to this

                This isn't true.

                Say I have a random page called "25 funny things on Google maps." It's gotten 766 visitors in the last week. It's not a great quality page -- in fact, it's a shamelessly shallow page as far as content goes. But it's amusing.

                Say I also have a page on a specific Greek statue. It's only gotten 20 visits in the past week. Does that mean it's a lousy page compared to the "funny stuff" page? No, it means it's written for a more specialized audience. The content is much higher quality, of more value to the few people looking for it.

                Now suppose I've got a webpage on "oven rack hooks." Gosh, what an obscure topic. But it's got a how-to on how to create your own, my own photos, or links to them on Amazon. It's had only 20 visitors in the past week, but all those visitors like and are interested in what's on the page, and quite a good number of them buy something.

                As far as Google's concerned, that is the essence quality: it satisfies the needs of people searching for that particular topic, better than any other page on the web for that particular search query.

                Traffic has nothing to do with quality. If you look at Google's actual Quality Raters criteria, there are none for "how many people are searching for it?" or "how popular is the topic?" but rather, "does the page match a search query well, and satisfy the particular audience -- however many or few -- are looking for it?"

                By the way, for those fretting about Squidoo putting new content into WIP until it's ranked the next morning -- "WIP" does NOT add a "noindex" tag to new lenses. I've checked sourcecode to make sure. I can start getting search traffic to a new, so-called WIP lens on Squidoo within an hour of publishing, just by Tweeting it. All WIP does is tell you that it hasn't yet been plugged into Squidoo's topics directory or your profile...which happens the next morning.

                On Hubpages, I used to be able to get search traffic to a new hub within an hour or so, but since the "Pending" policy was implemented, it's taken about 3 weeks on the two new hubs I've published. I haven't published any since then, because I'm just not willing to wait that long.

                1. Dale Hyde profile image79
                  Dale Hydeposted 11 years agoin reply to this

                  I agree the wait is much to long and that is one of the main reasons I have not been publishing.  I do agree with your response where in its entirety. Well written and informative descriptions.

                2. Marisa Wright profile image86
                  Marisa Wrightposted 11 years agoin reply to this

                  +1

                3. janderson99 profile image55
                  janderson99posted 11 years agoin reply to this

                  The winner is - drum-roll!
                  '25 funny things on Google maps'
                  That's the one I would like on my website
                  People like it - people will link to it, tell their friends about it.
                  The users are happy - they love it!
                  Its brought visitors to my website, they will probably look at other pages as well. Traffic matters!

                4. molometer profile image80
                  molometerposted 11 years agoin reply to this

                  That is really odd, because I had traffic coming from Bing the very next day after I published a hub on 'sausage pasta'.
                  I thought, well that wasn't so bad, but to wait 3 weeks before you got traffic. That is just not cricket.
                  Did you check if you had a Robot.txt lurking around.
                  I found one and it coincided with the introduction of the idle thing and of course my traffic plummeted.
                  If these Robot.txt are telling Google not to crawl whole sections of hubpages, no wonder everyone is getting hit.

                  I did a fetch and all it returned was 25 hubs out of 88. So I submitted a site map. None of my hubs are idle and traffic is definitely not where it could be.

                  1. Dale Hyde profile image79
                    Dale Hydeposted 11 years agoin reply to this

                    I am not sure if we are talking along the same line, however, I just checked the crawl errors and found that starting approximately on 10/03/2012, I have a huge spike in crawl errors that is getting steeper and steeper.

                    Not sure how to create a site map for HP, however, to submit.

                    1. molometer profile image80
                      molometerposted 11 years agoin reply to this

                      Not all crawl errors are a problem. If you check them and follow them, you may find that they are 404 or 410 errors.
                      In other words your pages cannot be read by the crawl bots.
                      If you owned hubpages you could resolve 404 issues quite easily.

                      The pages are not deindexed but for have not been accessible by the crawl bots, which means the great Google has no idea what your page is about and so cannot rank it.
                      Therefore it will be ignored and languish in the equivalent of a digital limbo. It won't even reach the sandbox, which would at least give us a clue there is a problem.

                      Traffic will never come to a 404 page or will plummet if a page becomes 404 because the web pages cannot be found, unless you know the exact URL...hopeless, as no one will know your exact URL unless you tell them what it is.

                      Quite easy to do a site map. Check out webmasters, site maps.

    4. WriteAngled profile image74
      WriteAngledposted 11 years ago

      I started writing on Squidoo a couple of weeks ago and am finding it a lot more fun. The WIP only affects my lenses for a few hours overnight. Two out of my four lenses so far have been awarded a purple star. I feel that I am appreciated over there, and just tolerated over here.

      1. A Troubled Nurse profile image58
        A Troubled Nurseposted 11 years agoin reply to this

        "and just tolerated over here."

        What happened over here?

        1. aykianink profile image60
          aykianinkposted 11 years agoin reply to this

          Valid question.  I wondered the same.

    5. Bard of Ely profile image80
      Bard of Elyposted 11 years ago

      WriteAngled, I find the WIP system the same as this Idle one here and it has put me off Squidoo too!  It is ridiculous to have to keep tweaking articles just to keep them in line with these new requirements. I don't have the time or the inclination to be checking everyday to see whether HP or Squidoo have decided I don't have enough traffic for articles with nothing else wrong with them!

      It surprises me that more people don't find this annoying! We went years here without this and as far as I can see the results are no better now than before this system was brought in, and if anything are much worse!  I know that I make a fraction of what I was getting last year and if I tweak hubs so they are no longer idle it makes no difference!  From now on I am not bothering but am going to unpublish, delete and move elsewhere!

      1. recommend1 profile image59
        recommend1posted 11 years agoin reply to this

        Hi B of E, hope life in the sun is still generally good !

        Reading all the comments in this thread, and what I already know - low quality can only be determined by an actual reader, algorithms can only pick up:
        bad spelling
        bad grammar
        word count
        count keywords
        detect inward bound (genuine) links
        and count the hits on the page

        Google claim this determines quality not because it does, but because these are the only means it has.

        And if Google says "jump", then HP only asks "how high".

        So you can cure your cancer by eating some exotic roots from an Indian village - but if the article where (only) you found it is badly written and too short and has nobody else linking to it and no visitors,   Google can still only 'calculate' the non-content elements.

        Moving your stuff may be a good idea for many reasons, but this would not be one of them because everyone and every site is subject to Google-god.  Take an afternoon and don't open that wine and don't get out the lounger and go fix your sleeping hubs big_smile

      2. Huntgoddess profile image65
        Huntgoddessposted 11 years agoin reply to this

        Yes, I thought it was annoying, too, and kind of silly. Well, right now, HB has no requirement that a Hubber tweak to make the Hub "wake up", and I don't really  have time --- although I did it once, and it did actually seem to make a difference.

        In general, though, I kind of dislike the entire business of it. Seems kind of --- I don't know -- patronizing?

        1. Huntgoddess profile image65
          Huntgoddessposted 11 years agoin reply to this

          Sorry - meant to say, "HP" not "HB."

          DOH!

          < uh -- YES, UM --- speaking of what a "great writer" I am> LOL

    6. CloudExplorer profile image77
      CloudExplorerposted 11 years ago

      Hang in there budd, don't give up on hubpages, try "The Elements of a stellar hub" page, at the hubpages Learning Center.

      It worked wonders for me and many of my sleeping hubs after I optimized my hubs by following its instructions exactly, they are all gaining traffic and back on track, and so is my overall hubpages traffic, (Up 1000+, from being down 4,000 views per month)

      So I'm almost there where I was two months ago, thanks to following that pages tips, which is highly recommended to read for all hubbers. Good Luck!

    7. Sherry Hewins profile image93
      Sherry Hewinsposted 11 years ago

      I must say that I really don't understand the idle hubs thing at all. I see lots of good, and from my viewpoint, successful hubbers saying they have idle hubs. Some of the numbers they throw around about their hub's past performances are way beyond anything I've had so far.

      Even though my pageviews have dropped like a stone (after slowly crawling up over the past 10 months) I have never had a single idle hub. I have hubs that have low views, my lowest viewed hub had 4 views in the last 30 days. So what, I wonder, is the criteria for idling a hub?

      I'm not giving up on HubPages. I am not as excited and hopeful about it as I was a couple of months ago. I have actually unpublished some of my older hubs that have never done well here. Even if they are not idle, I figure maybe they will do better elsewhere. But overall, I'm trying to just stand my ground.

    8. psycheskinner profile image83
      psycheskinnerposted 11 years ago

      The main "quality" content sites need is traffic.  It is no accident that hubpages equates the two.

    9. IzzyM profile image87
      IzzyMposted 11 years ago

      Again.

      HP had a mass exodus already after Panda, from the guys who made this site work.

      I will be forever grateful to them, for their insights, for their suggestions and for their overall knowledge which they willingly shared.

      These guys know who they are, some of them are still here with a lesser portfolio, and a lesser forum presence.

      But they were right.

      Edit: this is in reply to Dale. and thanks for what you said smile

      1. janderson99 profile image55
        janderson99posted 11 years agoin reply to this

        About What?

        1. IzzyM profile image87
          IzzyMposted 11 years agoin reply to this

          About the advice they gave to HP, who we all thought were Google Gods, came from Google roots and who therefore knew the secret workings.

          Then we learned it was actually a music site, a big music site at the time, but ultimately a failed site.

          Those things happen.

          Why you asking me? I know nothing. But the same guys (and gals) who gave HP advice were also the biggest help to me ever as a newbie here on HP, looking for traffic.

          Under their advice I went from 10 views a month to 60k views a month.

          Someone got something right. They didn't have a Learning Center then.

          1. aykianink profile image60
            aykianinkposted 11 years agoin reply to this

            Still reading through this thread, so I'm not sure if someone else asked this but just in case:

            "Under their advice I went from 10 views a month to 60k views a month."

            Sure.  So, how did this happen?  What are the specifics?

        2. sunforged profile image71
          sunforgedposted 11 years agoin reply to this

          It is ridiculous. Short sighted and inelegant.

          I have at least one solid and experienced reason why:

          http://hubpages.com/forum/topic/102577? … ost2186487

          That was two months ago when they released the feature and asked for feedback:




          Since then Quantcast shows a declining graph at exactly the time it should be showing a rapidly increasing graph for the holidays

          http://www.nrf.com/modules.php?name=New … sp_id=1438

          perhaps more so this year, than ever before

          Look at last years trajectory and the year before during this crucial Holiday period. Something is going very wrong.

          I didn't intend to quote that initial sentence,

    10. Greekgeek profile image78
      Greekgeekposted 11 years ago

      Ugh. I would just like to note that the proofreader who audited my last post needs to be drawn, quartered, and dipped in Tabasco Sauce.

      Apologies for a mindboggling number of grammatical gaffes in a single post.

      (Perhaps I was unconsciously trying to illustrate the point that content can be useful, even if the quality isn't Pulitzer-prizewinning by any stretch of the imagination.)

    11. Bard of Ely profile image80
      Bard of Elyposted 11 years ago

      It seems to me that if people do not search for something, and why should they if it is hardly known about or featured elsewhere, then a hub about it is considered 'low quality'. This means it is not about your writing and hub construction that is at fault but how likely to get traffic it is that is all that is now thought of as important. This is no longer a place where the world can find out about unusual information but only about already popular subjects that are written about and featured elsewhere.
      Here is a prime example: I have a hub now idled about a complex of mounds near Guía de Isora that I believe were constructed by the Guanche people. They may be burial mounds. I have called them "mysterious mounds." They are my discovery. Thousands of people drive by the land they are on every day and pay no thought to what are at the side of the road. I am different. I paid attention the first time I saw them. I invited respected author Philip Coppens to see them. He has many books out and one on pyramids. He agreed with me that the constructions are very interesting and has written about them on his website and in a forthcoming book. I am credited as the person who discovered them.  There are a series of photos of these earthworks along with text for my hub. Now granted not many people will be searching for these mounds if no one is bothered about investigating them here  but that makes my article 'ground-breaking' and potentially the first source of news info online.
      Instead of being praised for contributing such an interesting hub I get it idled due to lack of traffic! You could make an important discovery for the world of science or invent something, announce it exclusively here in a well-written hub and get it idled for low traffic!
      Even the location where the mounds are is probably not much searched for. I have noted that in Tenerife it is the tourist locations that get the most traffic but a lot of the remote parts of the island do not do so well. In real life offline they do not get many people visiting them compared with heavily promoted tourist areas and so they get poor traffic online too. Example: Google "Taborno" and most of the results are in Spanish. Most tourists and English-speakers on this island have never been there and many have never heard of it. But it is a very beautiful mountain village surrounded by steep valleys and forested hillsides.
      Traffic equates with what the public are already told about it seems. If you write about stuff that most Internet users don't know about you get low traffic and here you now get penalised by having your writings idled!

      1. CMHypno profile image83
        CMHypnoposted 11 years agoin reply to this

        Well said Bard +1 - soon all anyone will have to read about on the web is how to lose weight by mulching your organic marrow on the latest ipad that was once owned by Paris Hilton!!!

        1. Bard of Ely profile image80
          Bard of Elyposted 11 years agoin reply to this

          Thank you! Yes, that just about sums it up! smile

          1. janderson99 profile image55
            janderson99posted 11 years agoin reply to this

            Can I suggest that you have fabulous and interesting articles, but your titles could be improved to attract more traffic

            for example this title could be greatly improved IMO

            What are the mysterious mounds in Tenerife's Guia de Isora?

            => Use Canary Islands - people are more familiar with that
            => Use pyramids instead of mounds  - pyramids has a wow factor
            => Mention Guanche people

            what about

            Mysterious Canary Island Pyramids - Who Made Them and Why?
            or
            Mysterious Canary Island Pyramids - Why did the Guanche Make them?


            "Canary Island Pyramids" is a competitive keyword phrase with low competition
            "Guanche pyramid" is another competitive keyword phrase with low competition
            "mysterious mounds" is not competitive and does not sound exciting or interesting to me.

            Try www.jaaxy.com for testing keywords and phrases

            Cheers,

            PS I would also suggest that you interlink your articles to get more traffic by adding 5 links to a text capsule headed "Related Links about ....". This means that users who find one of your articles will be encouraged to read similar ones => more traffic + increase authority and ranking for your pages.

            1. Bard of Ely profile image80
              Bard of Elyposted 11 years agoin reply to this

              I am sorry I didn't understand what you meant about links but I can see the sense in adding your own related links. I will have to do this. I am already doing so at Wizzley by using the sidebar.

    12. Rik Ravado profile image86
      Rik Ravadoposted 11 years ago

      I've always been a HubPages supporter and have stuck with is site through Panda and a 100 other changes.  However, it is difficult to remain optimistic about the future.  The staff communicate endlessly on trivial topics such as contests or cosmetic site changes but totally ignore threads like this. 

      It also amazes me that NING GLAM SOCIAL appears on the bottom of every page here and, in spite of speculative threads in the forums, the staff had made no response.  This could be very bad news for many of us - ie the whole character of the site may be about to change.   

      The staff appear to have totally lost touch with the writers on this site.  I can't see the business logic of their approach.  Surely the principle asset they had was the good will of a global group of great writers who worked together as a community?  Many of those great writers have gone and the longer they stay away the harder it will be to ever win ever them back.

      Sorry if I strayed off topic but idle hubs is one of many issues that isn't being addressed by the staff.  Why won't they listen and communicate? sad 

      Surely it would make good business sense for them to level with us about their future plans?

      1. Bard of Ely profile image80
        Bard of Elyposted 11 years agoin reply to this

        Rik, I agree with your views on all of that! There used to be a really good community spirit here between the hubbers and the staff too, and that was a big attraction of the site, but this has been on the decline over past months with lack of communication getting added to by staff addressing concerns such as this one.

      2. SimeyC profile image88
        SimeyCposted 11 years agoin reply to this

        Rik,

        If there is something going on with the NING thing then HP probably cannot discuss it due to contractual obligations etc.

        1. Rik Ravado profile image86
          Rik Ravadoposted 11 years agoin reply to this

          This is a fair point Simey. I am just suprised that the text is displayed at all if it is currently confidential.

          1. SimeyC profile image88
            SimeyCposted 11 years agoin reply to this

            Fair point too!

        2. A Troubled Nurse profile image58
          A Troubled Nurseposted 11 years agoin reply to this

          Will said, SimeyC. smile

          Perhaps they are not discussing it because it will not affect the writers? LOL!

          1. CMHypno profile image83
            CMHypnoposted 11 years agoin reply to this

            Are you a writer or just a sock looking for an argument?

            1. A Troubled Nurse profile image58
              A Troubled Nurseposted 11 years agoin reply to this

              Just a newbie trying to understand the forums. Thanks for the welcome. smile

              1. IzzyM profile image87
                IzzyMposted 11 years agoin reply to this

                If you really want to understand the forums, try reading them, then you won't need to come out with stupid questions like "What happened over here?".

                We have enough problems without socks on the forums.

                1. A Troubled Nurse profile image58
                  A Troubled Nurseposted 11 years agoin reply to this

                  Thanks for the kind greetings, IzzyM. smile

                  1. IzzyM profile image87
                    IzzyMposted 11 years agoin reply to this

                    You're welcome big_smile

              2. CMHypno profile image83
                CMHypnoposted 11 years agoin reply to this

                Really?  An unfortunate thread for a newbie to have stumbled into because all the issues being discussed are affecting the writers here, and many of us are very concerned and annoyed.  And one of the things that is really, really annoying people is that HP staff do not seem to be providing any input or answers.

                If this NING this is confidential, then all they have to do is pop up and say they can't discuss it.  Many of us have been here several years and put many hours in - this stuff matters to us!!!

    13. edelhaus profile image71
      edelhausposted 11 years ago

      I used to post all the time on HP and but that was a while ago.  In spite of having a high rating and have over 60 hubs that are well rated, I only make a few cents a day (if I'm lucky).  Now with this new, zzz thing I have to constantly go back and revise those hubs to keep them active??  No thanks.  That's just way too much work, for way too little money.  As of today, I have already begun the process of removing those "sleepy" hubs and putting them up on on blog.  No point in letting well researched, good writing - not to mention original photographs - go to waste.

      1. Bard of Ely profile image80
        Bard of Elyposted 11 years agoin reply to this

        That is more or less how I see it here too!

        1. Huntgoddess profile image65
          Huntgoddessposted 11 years agoin reply to this

          Yes, agreed!

      2. Dale Hyde profile image79
        Dale Hydeposted 11 years agoin reply to this

        I certainly do agree with your decision and action.  I am seeing that a lot of authors are making the same choice. I have visited dozens of profiles over the past 24 hours and have found some not even here anymore and many, many that have been here for years reducing the amount of material they have published here.

        As for staff addressing this thread there will be the excuse that they don't have time to read all the threads.  That is the routine and basic answer when someone finally gets their attention. I guarantee you they have read this thread and simply refuse to respond.

        As someone said, it appears the site is not for writers anymore, or the writer's interest.

        Edit: I just checked my stats page and now see that the amount of "idle" "Zzzzz" hubs has doubled since I started posting in this thread.  Why do I not find that "shocking?"

    14. Bard of Ely profile image80
      Bard of Elyposted 11 years ago

      Thanks for your suggestions but I regard that as false advertising seeing as they are not pyramids so that is misleading. I have changed the title before, several times actually. Canary Islands is also non-specific seeing as other constructions exist on other islands. I was hoping to locate where these are.

      I am finding that adding links in the past has caused me a lot of work removing them in future. As well as all the idled hubs I get daily alerts for links that aren't working. I naively thought the hub links suggestion tool was a good idea. It wasn't!

      Thanks for your advice though!

      1. Marisa Wright profile image86
        Marisa Wrightposted 11 years agoin reply to this

        He's talking about interlinking your OWN Hubs, not other people's.  That's important - you should do it at Wizzley and any other site, including your own blogs.  You can greatly improve your traffic by interlinking between articles on the same topic on different sites.  For instance, don't put all your Tenerife articles on Wizzley:  instead, post one  each on Seekyt, Infobarrel, Xobba and Zujava, each linking to one of the Tenerife articles on Wizzley, your blog, and randomly to one of the others.  Google loves things to be interconnected.  Of course, you have to respect any linking limits imposed by the site, and make sure the links are related.

        You say you're getting excited about Wizzley - for goodness sake, don't make the mistake of putting all your eggs in one basket again.  There's very little advantage to having a large body of work, or getting featured on the front page, on any of these other sites - remember, like HubPages, very few readers arrive at the front page and browse around. And the community is too small to be a source of income. 

        And don't tell me it's too hard to write at multiple sites - do you wanna make money or not?

        1. IzzyM profile image87
          IzzyMposted 11 years agoin reply to this

          And to add to what Marisa has said - have a read at these excellent hubs here about link wheels and how they work.

          You (Bard) have the ideal opportunity to build a great one!

          http://sunforged.hubpages.com/hub/The-U … -backlinks

          http://pcunix.hubpages.com/hub/SEO-Dece … ink-Wheels

          And me, too, of course, with those 100+ hubs I recently unpublished.

          1. Marisa Wright profile image86
            Marisa Wrightposted 11 years agoin reply to this

            Actually it was Izzy who put me on to the effectiveness of interlinking.   I've always done it to some extent, but it was only when Izzy started working on it - and saw the benefits -that I looked into it properly.

        2. Hollie Thomas profile image61
          Hollie Thomasposted 11 years agoin reply to this

          Bard, I'm also writing on Wizzley now, taking everything I've learnt here and applying it. My aim is to post 100 articles on Wizzley, then 100 articles on other sites, too. I will also continue to write on HP, but not under my main account which has been slapped, so to add additional hubs would be futile.  The internet continues to evolve and we have to evolve with it. I think that's what HP is trying to do, too. Although I agree, in a clumsy way.

          1. Marisa Wright profile image86
            Marisa Wrightposted 11 years agoin reply to this

            Hollie, at the risk of sounding like a broken record, do try to mix and match between sites rather than write 100 at Wizzley, go to the next site, write 100 there, and so on. 

            If you pick a topic, then write one article at x, one article at y, one article at z, it's much easier to interlink them at the same time, than to have to go back over and update later.  Plus it gives you some exposure on every site from early on, so you can see how they compare with each other.

            1. Hollie Thomas profile image61
              Hollie Thomasposted 11 years agoin reply to this

              That makes a lot of sense, Marissa. I've been a bit tunnel visioned to be honest because I'd decided invest more time and energy into sites like HP in an attempt to move away from my other work. I can see it would be a complete pain having to go back and interlink them all, very time consuming.  I have ten articles at Wizzley now, so I'm thinking about writing related material at Squidoo and others. Thanks, you've given me something to think about. smile

              1. Marisa Wright profile image86
                Marisa Wrightposted 11 years agoin reply to this

                Glad it made sense.  I must admit I'm good at giving that advice, but very bad at following it myself!!

    15. CMHypno profile image83
      CMHypnoposted 11 years ago

      Compared to what there used to be Dale, there are actually not very many forum threads running these days, so the staff cannot use that as an excuse.  You would think that when they depend on their writers for their income, that they would at least respond to their concerns.

      Even when they don't agree with the hubbers point or complaint, they should still listen and offer what help or rationale for their decisions that they can

    16. Bard of Ely profile image80
      Bard of Elyposted 11 years ago

      Marisa, the main reason I am adding most of my idled hubs to Wizzley is because I had this message from the site: "Your share of ad impressions has been raised to 55%..
      Go for Gold! Keep at it and look forward to your next raise after 100 quality articles."

      So, I thought it was logical to do that. Surely it makes good sense to increase my shares there?

      The other reason I am not adding articles to other sites is because I have done that in the past and got nothing happening at them at all or a very small amount of traffic. That is why I have stayed loyal here until recently. HubPages I used to be able to count on.  Seekyt, Xomba, and others have done nothing for me as far as I know.

      However, I thank you for your advice and will have a go at expanding my range again. I have plenty of idled hubs to choose from.

      1. Dale Hyde profile image79
        Dale Hydeposted 11 years agoin reply to this

        I am like you and your last sentence... "I have plenty of idled hubs to choose from".... I have a larger choice than when I first started following this thread and posting to it two days ago.. I started out with 4 idle and now I have 11.  I figure at  this rate I will soon hit 50% of my hubs here as idle.  Once done, I will organize them and send them elsewhere.  I will let them remain idle so they will "die" in the eyes of Google thanks to HP.  Then they will be resurrected elsewhere without the chains and ties of HP around them and not be held back and treated like something a two year old may have written.

        I will say this, in well over a decade of writing (not all online) I have never been "punished" for what I write or how I write it.  Not by other readers, other sites or Google.

        1. Bard of Ely profile image80
          Bard of Elyposted 11 years agoin reply to this

          Good luck with your writings when moved elsewhere, Dale! I can take a hint and know when my stuff isn't wanted but I am staying on and changing my approach here.

      2. Marisa Wright profile image86
        Marisa Wrightposted 11 years agoin reply to this

        Well, yes and no.  If you are getting views and therefore Adsense income, then increasing the percentage is worth doing.  If you don't get views there, then it doesn't make much difference whether you're getting 45% or 55%, does it? 

        What I'm trying to explain is that there is nothing magic about Wizzley. It's not the darling of Google like HubPages was in the old days.  Your articles have just as much (or as little) chance of making money on Wizzley as they do on Seekyt, Infobarrel or any of the others.   And they won't get much traffic anywhere if you don't learn how to create backlinks - which is what you can do,by spreading your articles around the various sites and linking them to each other, as I explained in my previous post. 

        And don't put the links in the sidebar - interweave them into the text of your Hub, adding them when they naturally fit (e.g. "as I wrote in my article about ...." or "you can read a more detailed explanation about ... here" etc)

        Given the number of Hubs you have and your prolific ability to write, I expect you could spread your articles around four or five sites and still manage to hit the 100 mark on Wizzley eventually.

        By the way, forget Xomba - they're very strict about linking.  Xobba is good though.

        1. Bard of Ely profile image80
          Bard of Elyposted 11 years agoin reply to this

          Marisa, before I started using Wizzley I had several people telling me what a great place it was and why I should go there so eventually I did. I had a few suggesting Squidoo and I was already signed up there so added some articles but after initial appreciation of the site I found it to be like here and that they take your lenses out and call them works in progress if you are not getting the traffic. That has dampened my opinion of that site. I find it annoying here and there that we are expected to keep everything tweaked or about newsworthy subjects or else our work is idled or made into a WIP.

          I am not used to this interlinking between these sites I admit so will have to try this. At Wizzley I noted that HubPage links were coming up as Invalid when I was copying and pasting hubs there so assumed they don't want links from a rival site but I don't know.

          You say "If you don't get views there, then it doesn't make much difference whether you're getting 45% or 55%, does it?" and I agree and would add that my main problem is I don't get enough traffic anywhere, although Myspace that I don't use any more comes up top of searches for Bard of Ely  which is crazy!  Why I don't know.

          1. Marisa Wright profile image86
            Marisa Wrightposted 11 years agoin reply to this

            I have to agree - I wrote a couple of articles for Squidoo last year, but haven't done any more for the same reason.   I don't want to take on another site where my articles need nursemaiding! 



            I've linked to Hubs from Wizzley so that's not the reason.  Are you trying to add your referral tracker?



            I can't answer that one - but I can tell you that links are important, and if you've never done any linking to any of your Hubs or blogs, then that's a major part of your problem.   

            By the way, there is a revenue-sharing site for travel articles - it's called Travellerspoint.   I did join at one point but made the mistake of starting a blog there instead of just contributing to the main site - and the blogs don't get any visitors.  I think you might do better contributing to the section about Tenerife on the main site.  You earn from Adsense.

            You might also like to look at Newsvine.  You earn from ad revenue there too, here's an article which explains:
            http://www.squidoo.com/guide-to-using-newsvine

            It wouldn't suit me because it's about news - but it might suit you for some topics.

            1. Bard of Ely profile image80
              Bard of Elyposted 11 years agoin reply to this

              No, not trying to add a referral tracker just copying and pasting the text and often it has HubPage links embedded in it. When this happen an alert comes up saying they are invalid and you cannot post the text until they are unlinked. I naturally assumed this was Wizzley stopping people posting links to one of their main rivals so have been leaving out any linking to HubPages thinking it wasn't wanted there. If HubPage links are allowed there and vice versa I can start adding them

              I did do a lot of link sharing with the easy sharing methods provided here and elsewhere where you simply click on the icon for the site and then submit your link. Choices have gone down to Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest here. There used to be Myspace and Reddit and others.  Why have they gone? I used to take my links from here and post them with a leader over at Shetoldme.  I posted links at Reddit and got banned but that was about two years back and I am allowed there again but have read that they don't like you posting your own links so I don't do it. There appears to be no definite agreement among freelancers on whether posting links at such sites is approved by Google or not but I have seen people advising that sites like Shetoldme are no longer a good place to post links.

              I don't understand what is going on very well but I do know there are a lot of different opinions on all this and a small fraction of people who manage to make decent money despite it all. I am happy with making a lot less than the experts do, but this year I haven't been making much anywhere, not that I was before but there is a big difference in what I was getting last year and what I do now from Adsense, Amazon and eBay.  Not so long back I could count on maybe $50 from eBay a month but not now and I haven't had a payment from them for a while.  I did recently get my first cheque for $100 from Amazon but sadly my bank here took a hefty chunk for accepting it and converting to euros. It was a help though all the same. This is why I am posting Amazon ads at Wizzley.

              Seeing as my Myspace site is always at the top of search results for me I am wondering if I should manually start posting all my links over there again?

              I am over at Travellerspoint now so thanks for this and it seems there are various ways of earning there if you are a full member so that means I have to add a lot there to make me one. Here's the info: http://www.travellerspoint.com/guide/Ab … e_Sharing/

              1. Marisa Wright profile image86
                Marisa Wrightposted 11 years agoin reply to this

                If you're just trying to paste the text with a link already embedded, it won't work. You have to paste the text, then create the hyperlink the same way you do on HubPages, by highlighting the text and using the chain icon.



                I'm not talking about linking on social sites.  That's good to do, but it's only part of the picture.  You need links from one site to another - and I don't just mean a blog full of links, as you did on your old blog.  Google doesn't like lists of links any more.  Instead, you need to think more like a spider, creating a web of links criss-crossing from one site to another.  Seize every opportunity to mention other Hubs, Wizzles, blog posts etc whenever it fits naturally in the text of an article.   Don't overdo it - you only need two or three in each article.



                Yes, that's one snag of Travellerspoint and one reason I haven't got into it.  However, I know you have a lot of Hubs on Tenerife so I thought you might have enough material to do well there.

                1. Bard of Ely profile image80
                  Bard of Elyposted 11 years agoin reply to this

                  I am still confused because other non HubPage links copied and pasted appear to work at Wizzley. If it is OK to have HubPage links there that is great news but as I have said I didn't want to get into trouble there for adding them.
                  I have of course realised I can now take all my idled Tenerife hubs and shift them to Travellerspoint. I can't say I like this having stuff all over the place because it is hard to keep track of or remember where you posted stuff. I like to be able to say I have a hub on (insert subject) and refer someone I am talking to to it. Now I will have to say "I wrote about that somewhere on the Internet, let me think... now where did I post it?" These accounts have been collections and showcases of my work. If I start putting my Tenerife hubs on Wizzley, Travellerspoint, my blog, PubWages and others it becomes much more complex and confusing! That was the whole idea of Tenerife Islander to keep all my Tenerife writings there. Sadly under this new system a lot are getting idled.

                  1. IzzyM profile image87
                    IzzyMposted 11 years agoin reply to this

                    Time to keep a spreadsheet, Bard.

                    Still not much use if you are out and about and discussing your writings in a pub.

                    You could always dedicate a blogspot blog or something similar to write an "index" (if you like) of all your work.

                    Put all your links there with a short description of each and group them all to make navigation easy.

                    Then you can share all of your links at once by giving the url of the index out to friends/employers.

                    If you don't monetize the blog, I doubt Google would pay much interest if it's overly promotional for them.

                    Mind you, I am coming across sites more and more on the front page of the SERPS that are nothing but a list of links and adverts. Most annoying!

                    1. Bard of Ely profile image80
                      Bard of Elyposted 11 years agoin reply to this

                      Yes, what is going on? I too have seen really bad sites doing well in search results!

                  2. Marisa Wright profile image86
                    Marisa Wrightposted 11 years agoin reply to this

                    I can categorically say you won't get in trouble, because I have HubPages links there without a problem.



                    Well, that's why I said, take turns to write articles on each of the sites. It's easier to interlink if you write one article on Seekyt, then write the next one on Infobarrel and link to the one at Seekyt, then write another at Xobba and link to the two others, and so on.

                    As Izzy says, people who do it systematically keep track by using a spreadsheet. 

                    But I suspected you'd have trouble with the idea which is partly why I suggested Travellerspoint.   I have no idea how good it is from an earnings perspective, but it does sound like becoming a Tenerife expert there might work, links or no links - so if the spider's web makes you uncomfortable, that might be the place to focus on first.

                    1. Bard of Ely profile image80
                      Bard of Elyposted 11 years agoin reply to this

                      Thanks for your advice again, Marisa! It is very good news for me that I can put HubPage links at Wizzley. I will do this in moderation in future. I will move some Tenerife stuff to Travellerspoint.

        2. IzzyM profile image87
          IzzyMposted 11 years agoin reply to this

          I believe when you add in-text links that you want the hyperlinked word or phrase to relate directly to the site you want to link to.

          Avoid hyperlinking words like "here" or "article", instead use keywords relating to the linked article.

          For example, on a hub about cat health, you might want to link it to your article about kittens.

          So somewhere in your hub you may have a reference to kittens (if not, add one in), or maybe sick kittens, growing kittens, nursing kittens etc and it is those words which make the best hyperlink.

          Google notices not only links, but the keywords used to send traffic.

          http://www.searchengineguide.com/jill-w … anking.php

          1. Bard of Ely profile image80
            Bard of Elyposted 11 years agoin reply to this

            Thanks for this info, Izzy!

            1. IzzyM profile image87
              IzzyMposted 11 years agoin reply to this

              I'm not Marisa, Bard.

              I can't dance!

              1. Bard of Ely profile image80
                Bard of Elyposted 11 years agoin reply to this

                Oops, I am trying to answer too many posts!

    17. CloudExplorer profile image77
      CloudExplorerposted 11 years ago

      I'm actually going to refocus my attention on using Youtube, and Eblogger, now that I have all this hubpages knowledge of SEO, and content curation under my digital belt.

      The time is now to take the web by super storm! Hehe!!! & boy did I kick up a great deal of potential in my very first year as a hubber here, I cannot waste any time on anything negative though like taking losses of web traffic, which mine dropped 4,000 views in a single month. (On the bright side though, Web traffic has picked back up for me lately in the last 2 weeks or so, so Bard there is hope bro!)

      The idle hubs thingy helped me to fix many of my terribly written hubs as well so for some of us its really a good thing I do believe.

      There's no turning back for me, I will still write hubs like a mad man too LOL, because its so fun to write these hubs, and its so challenging to fight the down turns of hub traffic as well. Good Luck bro!

    18. Dale Hyde profile image79
      Dale Hydeposted 11 years ago

      I have started making the slow transistion.... I am starting to unpublish "idle" hubs and move them.

      1. Bard of Ely profile image80
        Bard of Elyposted 11 years agoin reply to this

        I find every day more get Idled so it is easy to find which ones to remove. I have three accounts here and the others are getting the zz treatments too so I have plenty of choice of subject matter, almost too much - I am overwhelmed with things to do and hubs to move.

        1. Dale Hyde profile image79
          Dale Hydeposted 11 years agoin reply to this

          I managed to unpublish and move 11 today.  Now I will go back and take out all links to HubPages that are contained within the article.  I will replace them with links from elsewhere.  I am not going to be driving any views to HP so they can make money after killing my material here, lol.  I am a rather hard-headed and stubborn Virgo. smile

          The best way is to simply start slow and do a few, Bard....don't let it overwhelm you.  That is why I started today as HP is idling my hubs on an average of 2 to 3 a day.  Sort of amazing the the majority are Pagan related, and one about Chief Two Trees was always strong in views and there simply was not very much out there about him...speaking of which, I need to check my profile and see how this has effected my profile here.....

          1. Bard of Ely profile image80
            Bard of Elyposted 11 years agoin reply to this

            I just had a well-written hub about druid King Arthur Pendragon idled so I know what you mean about pagan hubs getting hit!

            1. Dale Hyde profile image79
              Dale Hydeposted 11 years agoin reply to this

              I just completed the last steps on those hubs removed. The final step was going to Webmaster Tools and requesting that the HP URL for those hubs, individually, be deleted from Google search and cache.

              Once I get confirmation that this is complete, then I will submit the new URLs to Google Webmaster tools and have the "articles" indexed where they reside now.

    19. Marcy Goodfleisch profile image84
      Marcy Goodfleischposted 11 years ago

      Question - for anyone who might know: Are profile pages indexed in Google, or factored in when they rank a site?

      The reason I'm asking is there are a ton of absolutely empty profiles on this site - some dating back to several years ago. It appears some were once writers & emptied out their hubs but kept their accounts. If these are at all factored in, they truly are pulling us down. I flagged a suspicious 'fan mail' post recently and then checked out the profile & the person was only hours old here, but mysteriously had several followers who, it turned out, had empty profiles (no bio, no hub, nothing).

      I wonder if those pages count?  If you add that to the large number of bad hubs accrued over the years, and then add in the poor-quality stuff still coming through the gate, I can see there are major challenges in bringing the site up to the overall standards Google wants (as best can be interpreted).

      With hundreds of thousands of pages here (Hubbers, too), there's no way to do that other than creating a system to crunch data that appears (key word - appears) to affect traffic.  And traffic might be one factor.  I'm not saying it's fair or the best solution - I've had good hubs idled, too. I honestly don't know how it should be addressed.

      Anyone know whether profiles are considered 'pages' for Google purposes?

      1. ktrapp profile image92
        ktrappposted 11 years agoin reply to this

        Yes, profile pages are indexed in Google. If I do a search on your name in Google, your profile HP page shows up second in my results.

        If you ever want to determine if a page is "noindex" (like idle hubs), view the page's source code in your browser and do a search for the term noindex.

        For example, if you use Firefox, go to the Firefox menu and click "web developer" and then select "view source." Then do a search for noindex (Ctrl F to get a search box on Windows or I believe Cmd F on a Mac).

        For Internet Explorer 9, click on the gear and then select "F12 developer tools" and the html source for the web page you are currently on will open at the bottom of the screen. It contains a search box where you can then search for noindex.

        1. Bard of Ely profile image80
          Bard of Elyposted 11 years agoin reply to this

          Thank you for the info!

        2. IzzyM profile image87
          IzzyMposted 11 years agoin reply to this

          Right, so that is one part of Marcy's post answered.

          Profile pages are indexed.

          But I got the feeling Marcy was really asking is "are those pages harmful to the rest of the site?" when they are from hubbers who have left or who use their profile as a 'landing page', if you like, to promote other, possibly spam accounts.

          1. Marcy Goodfleisch profile image84
            Marcy Goodfleischposted 11 years agoin reply to this

            Izzy - yes, that's exactly what I'm asking.  However, it may be that HP has somehow idled those obsolete profiles.  I'm not sure how to figure that out.  It's my understanding you can still get an idled page to pop up on G if you enter the URL.  I think HP said it's going to take a few weeks for idled hubs (or pages?) to be de-indexed? 

            Thanks for clarifying my question, Izzy!

        3. Marcy Goodfleisch profile image84
          Marcy Goodfleischposted 11 years agoin reply to this

          Thanks, Ktrapp!  Hmmm - does anyone besides me wonder if that could be an issue? 

          Many thanks for the excellent and detailed info!

      2. Bard of Ely profile image80
        Bard of Elyposted 11 years agoin reply to this

        Good question and very valid points and I don't know!

    20. Johnrr631992 profile image84
      Johnrr631992posted 11 years ago

      I figured I would chime in on this topic. When the idea was first introduced I was slightly happy because they said that idled hubs would allow your other hubs to flourish. Well, I have not seen this. I see my views go up as I write more work, as the time needs it, but I don't see the idle process assisting me at all, and to be honest, some of my Hubs, are only meant for certain times of the year, which those views will go up and down as people search for them, but at the same time I do not like the idea.

      At the same time, I will not remove my hubs from being published because that defeats my initial purpose of coming here to make money. While I am not happy my views are down to around 2,300 per day, I still think that is much better than where I was a year ago with 40 views a day, and think that overall its still better than nothing.

      While I do see a perfectly valid point to be angry and upset for removing or idling your hard work, I can understand why HubPages did do this. Also I would like to add that by idling my Hubs, it brings that to my attention that I should fix them even if it means adding new tags, changing the title, to bring in more views.

      Either way, HubPages continue to give me more money than I would see on other sites, and while there are things I both like, and dislike, I will not go to another site, will not take my Hubs down, and will not stop writing for here. This site was never meant for you to make a full time living, hence why you give HubPages 40% or your earnings. If you are mad about lack of views, or lack of money then try starting your own blog, or writing for somewhere else, but writing here for me is more of a community effort, and a spare time thing to help pay for little necessities with the monthly payments they make to me.

      Like I said, I am both agreeing and disagreeing, while I dislike the feature, I do not see a point in getting up and moving all my stuff somewhere else, nor do I intend on quitting. I think that HubPages provides a good search ranking for good writers, and I think it is worth sticking around for.

      1. Dale Hyde profile image79
        Dale Hydeposted 11 years agoin reply to this

        Good luck on your thinking and thoughts, lol.  It must be us bad writers that are posting here.

      2. Bard of Ely profile image80
        Bard of Elyposted 11 years agoin reply to this

        The point in moving articles is simply this: they are as good as dead if not active here or posted elsewhere.  What is the point in having written articles that no one can read or find? I take a pride in my work and seek to communicate!

    21. LuisEGonzalez profile image78
      LuisEGonzalezposted 11 years ago

      I understand the purpose but it can get annoying to be tweaking hubs day in and day out......there must be a better way...........hmm

      1. Bard of Ely profile image80
        Bard of Elyposted 11 years agoin reply to this

        Yes, I agree!

      2. Marcy Goodfleisch profile image84
        Marcy Goodfleischposted 11 years agoin reply to this

        Luis - I agree there may be easier ways to do this. I do understand the need to take global corrective measures on the site and to automate them. But, the writers here on the forum aren't (generally) the problem. Yet we are the ones spending a lot of energy tweaking and editing hubs, second guessing, and trying to battle a quality issue that's out of our control.  Writers who have left bad content here and then moved on probably don't even check their accounts, much less try to improve their work.

        Meanwhile, a core cluster of writers who are serious about HP spends many hours shifting content, scratching heads, analyzing and not seeing results from our efforts.

        I do firmly believe HP is working hard to find a doable way to address the big picture. But there are thousands of pages here that could be the problem.

        1. Bard of Ely profile image80
          Bard of Elyposted 11 years agoin reply to this

          Marcy, I think you are right that the bad accounts here with terrible quality hubs are bringing down the whole site. It is a pity those responsible cannot be found out and sent a warning to sort out their sites here or they will be removed. I don't know how you would go about judging the quality of such sites but Wizzley do not allow all work to get published so they have a means of checking and approving or not what work goes on the site.

          1. Marcy Goodfleisch profile image84
            Marcy Goodfleischposted 11 years agoin reply to this

            Bard - just for grins (or maybe groans, as it turns out) I got on the hopper after posting earlier. I prefer the Classic hopper, because we can leave comments.  Within just a few hubs, I found a hub about two paragraphs long (no photos) filled with spelling errors, and basically just a blog-diary of 'here's all about me.'. The entire text (mercifully brief) was drivel about getting up, smoking a cigarette, taking a nap and going to see a friend.

            Of course I flagged it.  Then I went to the profile, because I have often found entire collections of bad hubs from one person.  Interestingly, the Hubber wasn't new; the account had been created 17 months ago.  No profile, Hubber score of 6 (yes s-I-x), and no hubs.  This was just seconds after I flagged a hub by that person.  I'm not sure if the hub was already nuked, not or what the deal was. It appears he (I decded it was a he based on the hub content) was on the site 17 hours earlier. Posting his diary blog, after his nap.

            So - this person with no profile text, a Hubber score of six and no hubs is part of the content Google churns to rank HP?

            1. Bard of Ely profile image80
              Bard of Elyposted 11 years agoin reply to this

              This does explain where the problem started then and has carried on. We need all this rubbish off HubPages.

              1. TIMETRAVELER2 profile image84
                TIMETRAVELER2posted 11 years agoin reply to this

                The way to do that is to for all of us to take the time to read and then flag those hubs that are substandard.  If we don't do this, we are slitting our own throats.  With many thousands of articles being published daily, 21 people simply cannot keep up with all of them.  This is why we need to pitch in to help clean up this site.

                1. Bard of Ely profile image80
                  Bard of Elyposted 11 years agoin reply to this

                  Yes, this is true. The staff of this place cannot be expected to monitor for quality control all the thousands of hubs being posted. If we want a site with good quality articles on it then it does come down to every one pitching in. While there are lots of very badly written hubs on the site it is sure to cause problems for everyone including those who are trying to sort the mess out. I can see this now.

                  1. Johnrr631992 profile image84
                    Johnrr631992posted 11 years agoin reply to this

                    I would definitely agree that we all have to take an equal part in removing sub-standard content to get the poor quality off HubPages. We can't rely on staff alone, keep in mind there are over 1 million hubs, 100,000+ users, and 21 official staff members.. While there are moderators etc.. Their jobs are functionality of the site, and making sure everything is running smooth, but that's why we should be using the hopper, and that's why it was implemented to assist HubPages in removing poor content.

                2. Marcy Goodfleisch profile image84
                  Marcy Goodfleischposted 11 years agoin reply to this

                  I agree completely, and I would go even further. Maybe HP could somehow assign some of us to review accounts that (according to their software info) look like they might be substandard.  I am sure there are many thousands.  But if a team of Hubbers volunteered to review batches of them and recommend action, it would help clear out the clutter. We need to clean up the old stuff as well as the hubs coming in the door every day.  And I do believe we can pitch in and help with both issues.

                  If the site ever got rid of those lingering 'bad' hubs, maybe some changes could be made to filter incoming work in a way that would keep it from hitting to begin with.  Otherwise, we are trying to bail water out of a boat with a cup, when there's a hole the size of a large elephant in the hull. The elephant on the floor, so to speak.

                3. Marisa Wright profile image86
                  Marisa Wrightposted 11 years agoin reply to this

                  ..and tell me, why should that be necessary?   If the Idle algorithm was correctly designed, it should be automatically getting rid of this rubbish.   

                  It should be a no-brainer to idle all Hubs with a very low score - because although the scoring system isn't an accurate reflection of quality, it's a fair bet that anything with a HubScore lower than 20 has something seriously wrong with it. HubPages knows they've got a scoring system, why don't they use it?

                  1. Marcy Goodfleisch profile image84
                    Marcy Goodfleischposted 11 years agoin reply to this

                    Marisa - I agree that the new Idle feature should, in theory, take care of that. But I am not entirely sure it is doing it. There are cases where people have gamed the system and gotten their buddies to click and vote up.  And, as we have seen with good writers like Dale and many others, some very worthy hubs are being penalized.  If the site is to be cleaned up, the bad writing that has languished here for years (from writers who probably moved on long ago) needs to be checked out and dealt with.

                    No matter what, we should all spend a few minutes on the Hopper whenever we can. If you don't like the new one (and I don't particularly care for it), just click on the Classic mode and hop away. And be sure to flag the bad stuff.

                    I don't know if the moderators will delete profiles or hubs based on just one person's input (although the underage Hubbers I reported, and adult content things were nuked within minutes of reporting them), but if a handful of trusted Hubbers here all flag the same thing, it attracts attention.

                    1. Marisa Wright profile image86
                      Marisa Wrightposted 11 years agoin reply to this

                      It would appear it isn't doing it, that's the point I was making.  Whatever criteria the Idle algorithm is using, it's clearly not very effective!

              2. Marcy Goodfleisch profile image84
                Marcy Goodfleischposted 11 years agoin reply to this

                Oh my - note to self - don't post comments early in the morning, before you've put in your contact lenses.  And on a mobile device. My deepest apologies for the typos!

        2. paradigmsearch profile image60
          paradigmsearchposted 11 years agoin reply to this

          Hey, Marcy. I haven't had an earthquake come after me in months... big_smile

          @all: Just thought I'd toss some good news out there. HP is indeed Z'ing such accounts in toto. I stumbled across one such account yesterday, though the owner did suddenly discover it and reset her profile to show Z'd hubs, but most such accounts will remain zero shown hubs.

          1. Marcy Goodfleisch profile image84
            Marcy Goodfleischposted 11 years agoin reply to this

            So glad you haven't had any additional Earth-Shaking events, PD!

            Can you clarify further what is going on with the profiles that are old, unused and bad?  I'm guessing the old hubs that fit whatever criteria the system filters for Idled hubs are being de-indexed - at least I hope so.  But I worry there are some lingering problems. Maybe not, though. The profile question does intrigue me - if I landed on this site for the first time and went on the hopper or otherwise came upon a hub like the one I saw this morning, I'd seriously wonder what criteria was in place for publishing here.

            1. paradigmsearch profile image60
              paradigmsearchposted 11 years agoin reply to this

              Based on what I saw yesterday, all hubs that are stale content (she hadn't touched them in a year), and getting zero traffic (she had a 1000 traffic accolade), are getting slaughtered by HP right and left. That will be over 4 years of dross gone right there.

              As for how HP is dealing with more current content... Looks like HP is still fine tuning that...

              1. Marcy Goodfleisch profile image84
                Marcy Goodfleischposted 11 years agoin reply to this

                PD - this is probably a dumb question, but how did you know that profile had been zzz'd out? 

                Thanks!

                1. Nicole Winter profile image60
                  Nicole Winterposted 11 years agoin reply to this

                  That's a fantastic question, I'd been wondering the same thing myself!

                2. paradigmsearch profile image60
                  paradigmsearchposted 11 years agoin reply to this

                  Not at all.

                  Deduced from this adventuresome thread: http://hubpages.com/forum/topic/105744

                  1. IzzyM profile image87
                    IzzyMposted 11 years agoin reply to this

                    The thing about that hubber's hubs is that while I didn't understand a word of them, they were lengthy hubs that may have been of interest to someone, assuming they ever actually got found in search (did you see the titles??).

                    They were not bad hubs likely to pull the site down, like the ones full of spun, illegible content, short sentences passing for a hub, hubs full of links and nothing more, copied content hubs and the blog-style "what I had for breakfast" type posts passing for hubs.

                    Nor were they written on offensive or harmful topics. They were a little strange, but that's OK because Google can't read. I'm sure there are plenty strange people in the world who would have enjoyed them.

                    I can't help thinking idle hubs are aimed at topics and the suppositions posted on the Ning thread about HP changing direction to want only hubs on fashion, cooking and lifestyle to fit in with their new partners could well be true.

                    1. paradigmsearch profile image60
                      paradigmsearchposted 11 years agoin reply to this

                      I think the 3 fatal parameters were...

                      Hadn't been updated in a year (according to the profile dates I noticed).

                      Zilch traffic (the 1000 accolade).

                      And last but not least.....

                      Drum roll....

                      All the ones I looked at were in the poem and poetry category.

                      With all 3 of those factors working against it, I'm surprised HP didn't take that entire profile out behind the barn, shoot it, and bury it so deep that not even the most industrious coyote on the planet could dig it up.

                    2. Marcy Goodfleisch profile image84
                      Marcy Goodfleischposted 11 years agoin reply to this

                      Izzy - I agree with you on the overall quality of the hubs that Hubber produced - the writing was a bit futuristic or something, but certainly not bad.

                      I do think ParadigmSearch has a point - poetry seems to be unpopular in terms of search engines.  HP has stated they like the poetry here (in an earlier thread that asked about idled hubs), so that suggests they aren't yet deviating from the broad content approach.

                      Apparently, we are living in interesting times . . .

                  2. Marcy Goodfleisch profile image84
                    Marcy Goodfleischposted 11 years agoin reply to this

                    PD - I read the thread, and the only thing I got from it is that her entire inventory was idled or something.  But I didn't see where her actual profile was idled. My original question (about 95 posts ago!) was about profiles that are empty, with Hubber scores that are six. Or one, or some other very low number.  With no hubs.  The question is whether the actual profile page is factored in when Google runs its algorithm.  If so, I would think those very slim pages would pull the site down.

                    Even if a page is idled, it can still be found on Google if you enter the name of the url - so I don't know how we can determine whether profiles that were abandoned long ago (or are new, and empty of text) are indexed. Probably one of you experts here knows how to figure that out?

                    1. IzzyM profile image87
                      IzzyMposted 11 years agoin reply to this

                      In that case the hub has not yet been de-indexed.

    22. Dale Hyde profile image79
      Dale Hydeposted 11 years ago

      Just a minor note here. As many may know, I moved 11 hubs elsewhere that were wearing the "idle" status.  I have not submitted them to Webmaster tools yet,  I am finding they are still in Google, so that will wait.

      The interesting thing is that the one hub that was idled, Chief Two Trees - Healer and Man of Wisdom Remembered, is in the number two spot on my stats page with a score of 87, with good views as always.

      So...keeping that in mind, just what is the formula that HP is using?  Their own forumula has placed that hub in the number two spot and has given it a decent rating of 87.

      I do see that Google has now dropped those 11 hubs from search results and the new home is already showing as being indexed with those articles showing.  Less than 24 hours to deindex and have them reindexed elsewhere.  It was just this morning that I requested that Google deindex those hubs.  Pretty good record. smile

      1. Bard of Ely profile image80
        Bard of Elyposted 11 years agoin reply to this

        Yes, that has happened to me that I have suddenly had a hub with a high score by HubPage standards and that may well have had a high ranking point in my hubs, for some reason idled. I don't understand what factors are being used to do this. I thought it was traffic but why should a piece of writing that was performing well suddenly not do so? It is all very disconcerting and seemingly random!

        1. Dale Hyde profile image79
          Dale Hydeposted 11 years agoin reply to this

          I remained confused, lol.  However, I will continue to move any idled hubs to another location.  I hesitated to make this decision, and waited weeks, but at some point a person has to make a decision and move forward.

      2. IzzyM profile image87
        IzzyMposted 11 years agoin reply to this

        This sounds like a mistake. How can a hub with a high score and daily views get idled?

        I reckon I've probably got more idled hubs than anyone else, but they are all low or no traffic hubs ( I hardly ever notice hubscores).

        Oh and the really sad thing is that since I have unpublished all my low traffic/idled hubs, my traffic has fallen away to its lowest level ever sad

        This idled hubs thing is definitely not working for me.

        Traffic is (seriously) down across almost all of my subdomains, so its not just this account affected.

        1. Dale Hyde profile image79
          Dale Hydeposted 11 years agoin reply to this

          May have been a mistake, Izzy, but the hub is killed on HP.. I have had the URL taken out of searches and moved this hub.  As mentioned before, I had to make a decision. I have been following this for weeks and it simply is being ignored by staff and no logical explanations given.  My writing is not that bad to be hit the way it is.  We all know that there is "trash" on the site that has been here for years that is still published.  My articles certainly are not trash or low quality.

    23. Bard of Ely profile image80
      Bard of Elyposted 11 years ago

      I now have a new variation: a hub going up with a red triangle but idled all the same!

    24. daisydayz profile image86
      daisydayzposted 11 years ago

      Wow this is quite a hefty forum, I'm still quite new - 7 months - but I agree that the idle hub thing may not be the best way to go. I can see exactly what Bard and Dale are saying, just because traffic is low doesn't make it a low quality hub, and I shouldn't think google would agree either. It could very well be just a specific topic, incredibly niche, and logically that is a good thing. Should it not be that hubs with low scores after x amount of time are idled? I have hub hopped quite often and found many badly written, spun or just useless articles on here. Yet they seem to be still here and not idled even with hubscores in the low 40's.
      I recently tried my hand at Squidoo, but they seem to be very much about traffic and sales! If you cant get 1000's of views a week to your hub, you wont make it anywhere into their top 20,000 rating system. The only other way is to make sales using affiliates so I found 90% of the articles over there are just shameless sales plugs and bombardments of sale capsules. Granted I sometimes think hupbages could allow a few more affiliate links of schemes here, (maybe controlled ones they run like ebay), but over all I rather informative articles over sales pitches. So I can't see me taking my work anywhere else yet. For some people your own domain may be the best way to go, especially if you can build one around a niche.

      1. Bard of Ely profile image80
        Bard of Elyposted 11 years agoin reply to this

        Hi Daisy! Yes, I have had problems at Squidoo too and don't like the site much not just because of the WIP system but also of the constant barrage of alerts congratulating you or suggesting what you should do!

        1. daisydayz profile image86
          daisydayzposted 11 years agoin reply to this

          Oh yes they are very annoying! I dont really care about squid points and leveling up, its a very childish concept! The odd trophy idea for milestones is fine, it shows peoples progression. Hubpages has enough as far as im concerned, there seem to be a million different ones on squidoo, its just not needed!

          1. Bard of Ely profile image80
            Bard of Elyposted 11 years agoin reply to this

            Agreed! The amount of different types of modules there is mind-boggling. All I was looking to do was publish some text, some videos, some photos, some links and some ads but there's stuff on Squidoo I don't even know! lol

      2. Barbara Kay profile image73
        Barbara Kayposted 11 years agoin reply to this

        The problem with starting your own domain is that you will need to more work than ever promoting it to get traffic. Hubpages rank with Google does help our articles to do well. A website takes a long time to get enough links to it to rank well. I have 3 of them and they do pretty well, but they are years old.

        1. Marisa Wright profile image86
          Marisa Wrightposted 11 years agoin reply to this

          That used to be the case.  I'm not so sure now.  I think a blog can do better than a HubPages sub-domain, IF you focus on a single subject and IF you know how to monetize it.  The monetizing is the bit most people fall down on - Adsense is just not enough on a blog.

          When I first joined HubPages, it was a favourite with Google and you only had to write, and not worry about promotion.   However, when Panda hit, HubPages was "on the nose" with Google and most people lost huge amounts of traffic.   It was only when the site was split up into sub-domains that some Hubbers got their traffic back - but think about why that worked.  It was because Google no longer saw HubPages as one big "content farm", it saw it as a lot of individual sites, and it ranked each sub-domain individually.

          So start a new sub-domain today, and it's not that different from starting a new blog.  You do get some benefit from the interlinking within HubPages - appearing in "related Hubs" etc - and you get the benefit of the community, which gives you motivation.  However I'm still not sure how valuable that really is.

      3. Dale Hyde profile image79
        Dale Hydeposted 11 years agoin reply to this

        For the time being, I have moved the idled hubs to another location.  I have monitized the other location with my products and my wife's products as we both sell items via Amazon, Etsy and our personal websites.  I am going to give it a try without trying to incorporate third party ads.  Should I do well in this new endeavor, I will move this other site to my server and expand upon it.

        1. Bard of Ely profile image80
          Bard of Elyposted 11 years agoin reply to this

          Good luck, Dale!

          1. Dale Hyde profile image79
            Dale Hydeposted 11 years agoin reply to this

            Thanks Bard. smile

    25. cperuzzi profile image89
      cperuzziposted 11 years ago

      It's a pain.  The problem is finding a new widget to update your site and renew interest in an idea that may force the search engines to notice the article again.  We make our money from volume.

      1. Barbara Kay profile image73
        Barbara Kayposted 11 years agoin reply to this

        cperuzzi, I agree with you. I think that is why Hubpages is ZZZing articles that are still getting traffic. Google wants fresh articles now and this is forcing us to update our articles. The trouble is that if you've got hundreds of articles and you keep them updated, you'll never have time to write anything new. I am getting tired of Google and their new ideas.

        1. Bard of Ely profile image80
          Bard of Elyposted 11 years agoin reply to this

          I agree with you on that! I seem to be spending every day moving hubs and trying to improve them not creating new articles!

    26. Dale Hyde profile image79
      Dale Hydeposted 11 years ago

      I have specifcally read in the HP blog post about idled hubs that no hubs that are seasonal would be placed on idle status.

      Well, my next hub to move offsite is "Valentine's Day Is A Pagan Based Celebration" which has just been placed on idle status.  Note again, this is a hub that was to not be idled due to it being seasonal and also that it is yet another "Pagan" based hub that has been tossed in the trash by HP.

      Note:  I am starting to feel that I am under personal attack here for posting in threads such as this.

      1. paradigmsearch profile image60
        paradigmsearchposted 11 years agoin reply to this

        I think you are safe. If anyone would be personally attacked, it would be a certain Hubber, who shall remain nameless, that daily totally slams HP's ethics and competence. His account is still alive and well. Besides, there are lots of others here also expressing disagreement with some of the things HP is doing.

        1. Dale Hyde profile image79
          Dale Hydeposted 11 years agoin reply to this

          Well at the present rate, I reckon I shall not have to worry in about 30 more days.  By then all of my hubs will have been placed on idle status.  As mentioned, seasonal, as well as good traffic and scored hubs have been idled, so I don't have much else to work with, lol. smile

        2. Marcy Goodfleisch profile image84
          Marcy Goodfleischposted 11 years agoin reply to this

          Just to be fair, most of those who are posting concerns are also stating their respect for the site and the staff. I truly feel the staff and moderators are working hard to create a dynamic new presence, 'fix' older problems and address the latest whim of Google. I support everything they're doing, and as others have mentioned, I'd be happy to pitch in for a clean-up campaign.

    27. Nicole Winter profile image60
      Nicole Winterposted 11 years ago

      First Dale, thank-you for reminding me of the need to at least copy my work onto my hard drive for posterity... my poetry, for example is only available on Hub Pages, I've no longer any more, (even hand-written,) copies of it anywhere else, it'd be a shame for me to lose those poems entirely due to fruit nuttery on the interwebz.

      Dale, do you really feel like your personal beliefs are being singled out here?  There are many HP writers who are pagan or write specifically and almost exclusively about pagan / wiccan subjects.  I've noticed over the last few years that many of these writers are no longer with us, however, and have wondered about this.

      1. Dale Hyde profile image79
        Dale Hydeposted 11 years agoin reply to this

        Hello Nicole.  I am glad that you are copying your material.  It is a great move on your part.

        As for being singled out due to perhaps my spiritual beliefs and articles, I do get that impression simply because I have a vast assortment of articles up and the only ones that have been idled with the exception of one has been pagan based in some manner.

        This does surprise me.  For one thing, I have just a ton of pagan articles up scattered around the web including my own sites, but worked hard to provide unique quality articles here for HP.  These articles did well, overall, until about the last two months or so.  I just can not comprehend what has actually happened.  From my reasearch many of these hubs have nothing in common to be placed on idled status.

        As for the quality and Google suddenly not liking them, then I question why my material on other sites are not seeing this decline in views?

        So, yes, I do feel that Paganism may well have something to do with what is going on with my membership here.

        1. Marcy Goodfleisch profile image84
          Marcy Goodfleischposted 11 years agoin reply to this

          Dale - I seriously would not think the staff would single you out.  I do think there are some topics that people (readers) don't like, and the 'down' button can cause issues for those writers if the system filters interpret that as poor quality or something.  But I would be surprised if the site mods were behind anything.  Just keep writing, and ride it out.  Not everyone agrees with various beliefs, but people have a right to post that information.

          1. Dale Hyde profile image79
            Dale Hydeposted 11 years agoin reply to this

            You may well be right Marcy.  Even with that in mind I have stopped publishing here on HP.  It takes too much time to put up material to see it idled and have to be moved anyway.  I would just as soon publish it elsewhere and not worry about the move.

            I was very consistant here on HP. I wrote many hubs, I was active in using the hubhopper until they changed that up, I was active in helping members in the forum, but simply got discouraged there as the problems escalated with no solution to be offered. 

            I do wish that HP would pull up out of whatever it is going through. I liked the platform as well as the earning and of course the community here.  It used to be fun but to me now, well, to be honest, it is depressing to see what is going on with my material here.

    28. janderson99 profile image55
      janderson99posted 11 years ago

      Update from an Avid Idle Hubs Watcher - The Prince's Kiss
      => Play the game, you can't change the rules - Awaken them with a Kiss!
      => Let 'em go idle - you get a hub score boost of 10 or so when edited - Kiss and Make up!
      => Change the title to something more competitive
      => Add one huge image and Pin it
      => Google + it
      => Keep doing it.
      Back to watching the grass grow

      1. Dale Hyde profile image79
        Dale Hydeposted 11 years agoin reply to this

        This is a temporary fix that will be shortlived and requires that one constantly tweak their material.  This is not a solution.

        1. janderson99 profile image55
          janderson99posted 11 years agoin reply to this

          It Works!
          Stayin' Alive Ah, ha, ha, ha
          Stay Fresh - even Google looks for freshness.
          5 mins work for a 3 hour creation!

          1. janderson99 profile image55
            janderson99posted 11 years agoin reply to this

            Imagine doing some tiny things to boost traffic like adding internal and external links
            Its easy if you try
            Even constipated Squids do it. Wizz is next.
            Like cleaning your teeth or tending the garden –
            Awakening Sleeping Beauties with a Kiss.

        2. wordscribe43 profile image92
          wordscribe43posted 11 years agoin reply to this

          I couldn't agree more, Dale.  I've been lucky and have only had 2 idle hubs, but I don't have the time or inclination to continually watch and monitor hubs.  Once they're zzzz'd, I move them.  One was idled yesterday and off to Wizzley it goes.  It was a good hub, too (if I do say so myself).  It's a shame, really.  It was a new(ish) hub that hadn't had time to rise in the SERP's.  But, I refuse to continually babysit my material- ain't gonna happen!

          1. Dale Hyde profile image79
            Dale Hydeposted 11 years agoin reply to this

            That is my thoughts as well, wordscribe.  Hubsitting is not in my time schedule, lol.  So, like you, I pop in and see idle, I simply pack the bags, unpublish, deindex in Google and move to the new site with the material.

    29. Nicole Winter profile image60
      Nicole Winterposted 11 years ago

      Dale/Marcy:

      That is an interesting concept... is there a way to see how man thumbs down votes a hub has received?


      So basically, the reason why the HP staff has been pushing the "help us out & hop some hubs" functionality may have partially been in order to encourage us to moderate the site?

      1. Dale Hyde profile image79
        Dale Hydeposted 11 years agoin reply to this

        I have no idea on this one. I stopped using the hubhopper when you are not allowed to move on to the next hub without rating the one that is displaying.  I don't think it is fair that I have to review a hub that holds no interest to me in order to move on to the next hub to review.

        1. Marcy Goodfleisch profile image84
          Marcy Goodfleischposted 11 years agoin reply to this

          Dale - we can still access the old Hopper - when you're on the main 'Hopper' page, look at the small text just about the bars where you rate hubs on the new version.  There's a link where you can go to the 'classic hopper,' and it will take you to the old version.  I've tried both, and I still prefer the old one.  I do understand the goal to rate various elements, but the new version doesn't cut it for me.

          1. Dale Hyde profile image79
            Dale Hydeposted 11 years agoin reply to this

            Thanks Marcy, I do see that on the Old Hopper that we do still have the option to click on "Hop" and go to the next hub.  I shall participate using that Hopper. smile

      2. Bard of Ely profile image80
        Bard of Elyposted 11 years agoin reply to this

        I may have been complaining but Marcy has made a very valid point today!  The hub hopping idea was brought in with good reason. I admit I am not a hubber that has been using it because I have been too busy but  I can see that maybe then I am being a bit harsh moaning when measures have been introduced to try and do something about the problems we are faced with here.  There are a lot of terrible hubs on this site and if we don't pitch in by flagging them or doing our bit at hopping then the site will continue in the state it is in.  There are only  a very small number of staff and a vast number of hubs and hub accounts. It is obvious to me that Google would not be happy about HubPages if it is looking at a lot of the badly written rubbish on here. The site really does need a clean up! Each one of us can help.

        1. aa lite profile image84
          aa liteposted 11 years agoin reply to this

          I think the hub hopper only lets you look at new hubs?  This does not help with clearing up a lot of the bad hubs that have accumulated over the years.  Although moderating 1 million hubs might seem to be a huge task, I'm sure there would be a way to 'triage' hubs, and prioritise checking them.

          For example material written by hubbers who have a very low hubber score, who have only published a few hubs, who have not uploaded an image to their account.  I am not saying that all these people are spammers, but probably most spammers have these characteristics.  Maybe a new hub-hopper which gets us to check these hubs out, and not rate through the sliders, just flag them for moderation and removal  would work at getting rid of the bad stuff here?

          I guess the idea is that these hubs will become idle and be hidden from Google, but really they should be unpublished.  Google thinks this site has some thin and spun content, they even sent a warning through web masters' tools about it.  Google is still 'aware' of idle hubs, it just can't crawl them.  Perhaps it will not be satisfied by having the spam hidden from it, and will not lift the penalty.  Unpublishing spam content is much stronger than slapping a no-index tag on it.

          1. janderson99 profile image55
            janderson99posted 11 years agoin reply to this

            When  you awaken a ZZZ it goes to the pending sin bin for 24 hours. Why?
            Is it not hopped?
            Hop springs etermal

            1. paradigmsearch profile image60
              paradigmsearchposted 11 years agoin reply to this

              God will get you for that...lol

            2. aa lite profile image84
              aa liteposted 11 years agoin reply to this

              LOL.  Yep I guess you are right.  My biggest frustration is that the idle hubs program ain't working in terms of getting Google to like HubPages, the last Panda hit me, and I think other people badly.  Why? Paul E. thinks it just needs more time, I hope he is right, but what if we wait 6 months and things don't improve?

              What the idle program, and the delays in getting hubs indexed because of the pending sin bin, has done is annoy a lot of good hubbers.  Frankly I wouldn't mind having some hubs idled, if the others got more traffic to them, now they are getting less traffic than they did in September.  Just wondering if there isn't a better way to go about clearing the site of spam and thin content than the idling hammer.  Turning attention on hubbers with really low scores as Marissa suggested above, deleting their spam might work better.

              The new sliding scales in hubhopper really aren't that easy to use, but you can pretty much tell if a hub is utter rubbish or not within seconds.  If HP collected all suspect accounts in one place and let us loose on them, I'm sure many on this thread would take great pleasure in flagging the obvious spam for deletion.

              1. Marcy Goodfleisch profile image84
                Marcy Goodfleischposted 11 years agoin reply to this

                +1,000 on that last idea!  Sign me up - rubbing hands in anticipation!

          2. Marcy Goodfleisch profile image84
            Marcy Goodfleischposted 11 years agoin reply to this

            You are right, I think.  The Hopper is for newly published hubs.  So all the old stuff is still there. And the old profiles.  It's still important to use the Hopper to help flag poor-quality hubs, though.

      3. Marcy Goodfleisch profile image84
        Marcy Goodfleischposted 11 years agoin reply to this

        I don't know of a way to find out the number of 'down' votes, and I am also not sure what those votes do.  I guess they might affect the hub number, but not sure how they factor it in!

      4. Marcy Goodfleisch profile image84
        Marcy Goodfleischposted 11 years agoin reply to this

        I wasn't here when the original Hopper was implemented, but I have read posts on the forum that indicate it was started as a way to help filter out problem hubs.  We are a community, and I think that's a good way to maintain the desired quality.

        Izzy, or someone else who's been here a while - if you read this, can you shed light on the original intent of the Hopper?

        FYI - when you use the Hopper or flag a hub, etc., you will see messages that express appreciation for helping to keep up the quality on the site (or something like that). Also, we often get encouraged to use the Hopper.  So, if we are spending time here mentioning our concerns, we should also spend time on the Hopper and flag any problems we see.

        1. IzzyM profile image87
          IzzyMposted 11 years agoin reply to this

          The first hub hopper was brought out to make it easier for hubbers to report poor hubs, I believe.

          Before that, I think we just randomly checked the hubs, latest feed. I still use the feed, finding the hopper cumbersome, even the first one.

          The new hub hopper is part of an automated process HP is working out.

          Did you miss this thread? (It's now closed to reply).

          http://hubpages.com/forum/topic/105348

          Really if anyone wants to help HP out here, use the new hopper to help them perfect their new program.

          I don't get paid for this, so I'll just stick to using the feed smile

          1. Marcy Goodfleisch profile image84
            Marcy Goodfleischposted 11 years agoin reply to this

            Thanks, Izzy!

    30. Nicole Winter profile image60
      Nicole Winterposted 11 years ago

      Without being mean about it... can anyone give me an example?  Whenever I've used the Hub Hopper I've seen nothing but great hubs... I don't want to single out anyone who's still active, but I'd like examples of what you guys are talking about?

      1. janderson99 profile image55
        janderson99posted 11 years agoin reply to this

        Go to http://hubpages.com/hubs/latest/
        scroll through and look at ones with hub score less than 55
        Page 5 about half way down has a ripper

    31. Bard of Ely profile image80
      Bard of Elyposted 11 years ago

      I just did some hopping. I found two terrible hubs that were really short. One was just a list of links and had no photos, no subheadings, no real content, so I flagged it. The other terrible one was grammatically OK but just a couple of hundred words and again no visual appeal at all.  These were contrasted with well-constructed , good length, interesting and grammatically correct hubs that had visual appeal too.  I am going to have to learn more about hopping if I am going to be doing more because it isn't easy giving a score unless they are utter rubbish!  I was shocked to see such terrible quality posted on here.

      1. janderson99 profile image55
        janderson99posted 11 years agoin reply to this

        "The other terrible one was grammatically OK but just a couple of hundred words and again no visual appeal at all."

        I pity the poets

        1. Bard of Ely profile image80
          Bard of Elyposted 11 years agoin reply to this

          I am one and nearly all my poems and song lyrics posted here have been idled, some several times.

    32. Nicole Winter profile image60
      Nicole Winterposted 11 years ago

      Okay, I'm going to go ahead and look into these substandard hubs a little further, I thank all of you for pointing me in the right direction as to how to find them.

    33. Dale Hyde profile image79
      Dale Hydeposted 11 years ago

      In the past I have never "tracked" a hub from birth to demise here on HP.  So... I just published a hub, first one in weeks, that I was going to place elsewhere, but I wanted to check out all aspects of this idle thing and much more that has recently been implemented here on HP.  I should have done all the editing I am going to do to it...so I will let it ride.  It is a straight-forward hub, one large related image, one video, over 1000 words, no Amazon or Ebay capsules.  Time will tell on this one... Oh....it is about something that may well be Pagan, lol. Imagine that.

    34. Nicole Winter profile image60
      Nicole Winterposted 11 years ago

      I've been hopping hubs for about fifteen minutes now, and I definitely see what you guys are saying about the quality issues, there's been more than a couple of hubs that are nothing but link dumps with a title.  I haven't had to do anything other than slide the bars up or down, so I'm assuming that this is the old hopper you guys are talking about?

      1. Marcy Goodfleisch profile image84
        Marcy Goodfleischposted 11 years agoin reply to this

        Nicole - on both versions of the Hopper, there's a link to flag the hub.  In the new one, it's hard to find (in the upper right hand corner, very small).  I think it's still in the black box in the old one.

        Anyway, look for the link to 'flag,' and you'll get a box that lists several types of reasons you would flag a hub.  Among them are 'Purely Personal,' 'Promotional,' 'Low Quality,' and several others. There are definitions of what each category means.

        I do know HP will remove bad content (it might take a day or two if it's a weekend and they're backed up), and they will ban Hubbers who are violating rules.  I have flagged hubs as well as Hubbers, and once in a while I check later & they're gone.

        You can also go to the latest hubs and start reading (only if you have a strong stomach, in some cases!).  You can flag issues there, too.  As I've mentioned, I have found underaged Hubbers (kids who openly state they are 12 years old or something), adult content, extremely promotional content, doorway hubs leading to outside links & having no substance, spun content, on & on.  It's entertaining to do, in a perverse sort of way . . .

        I don't think the staff would moderate a hub just based on the sliders on the new hopper - so flagging is very important for egregious situations.

        1. Bard of Ely profile image80
          Bard of Elyposted 11 years agoin reply to this

          I am new to this hub hopping and didn't see the flag icon at first  but after I found it I flagged one really short hub that was just a list of links.  Some of the others that were very bad,mainly due to how short they were and lack of content, I gave very low scores with the sliders for.  I will flag in future.

    35. Nicole Winter profile image60
      Nicole Winterposted 11 years ago

      There should be an algorithm written that check for word to link ratios which would pretty much solve the issue of link farming... shouldn't there?

      1. Marcy Goodfleisch profile image84
        Marcy Goodfleischposted 11 years agoin reply to this

        That's a great idea, Nicole!  I hope the moderators take a look at this thread, there are some interesting posts in it.  Maybe you should also post that idea on the forum thread where we can suggest new features?

        1. Nicole Winter profile image60
          Nicole Winterposted 11 years agoin reply to this

          I just wanted to mention, Marcy, that it was my SO's idea, he's an internet product manager... (well, the words for what it's called, anyways,) I was telling him about what was going on.

          On another note, there's an actual "flag" function, so when we come across substandard, (obviously substandard) hubs were supposed to use that versus just giving it a very low sliding scale evaluation?

    36. justateacher profile image85
      justateacherposted 11 years ago

      At this point, not one of my hubs is idled. I would suggest going back to your hubs and making sure that there are no spelling or grammatical errors and that any pictures are credited correctly. Maybe the idle ones need something, and maybe they don't. If they don't, change a word here or there and the hub will go to "pending" and, unless something is terribly wrong, will go to the regular status again.

      1. IzzyM profile image87
        IzzyMposted 11 years agoin reply to this

        Oh what a wonderful idea! Why didn't I think of that?

      2. Marisa Wright profile image86
        Marisa Wrightposted 11 years agoin reply to this

        I would love to invite you to go and look at some of my Idled Hubs, but I've already unpublished them in preparation for moving them elsewhere.  However you're welcome to check out some of my others, which are comparable in their standard of writing.

        I don't do spelling mistakes.  I'm a bit of a spelling Nazi, in fact.  As for grammar, if you write for a popular audience then you don't want to sound as though you stepped out of a style manual - people will think you're stuffy.  Pictures:  HubPages wants you to credit photographers correctly, but they have NO way of checking whether you have or not, so you cannot be penalized for that. 

        Changing a word here or there will take your Hub out of idle, but only for a few weeks.  Then you'll have to repeat the exercise.

        1. Marcy Goodfleisch profile image84
          Marcy Goodfleischposted 11 years agoin reply to this

          I read two of your hubs just a bit ago - and I thought both were very well written, very informative, attractively formatted and everything else you'd want in a good hub. 

          As you mentioned, when we edit a bit, an idled hub gets re-indexed (un-idled?).  But I agree - if the traffic doesn't pick up or something, it will go back to idled status.  I don't know if Google is looking at traffic and therefore HP is using that as a factor, or what the situation might be.

          The ones I had idled were hubs I'd already thought about unpublishing - they're essays or poems, etc, and were among my earliest hubs. The writing is okay (I assume), but they only got traffic when first published, and they don't fit what I currently write.  So I will pull them from the site and repurpose them.

    37. Nicole Winter profile image60
      Nicole Winterposted 11 years ago

      This might be a silly idea, but what about the possibility of continuously updating various hubs with new ideas?  Just adding onto what is already there.... can we do that?

      1. Marisa Wright profile image86
        Marisa Wrightposted 11 years agoin reply to this

        Of course you can, they're your Hubs.

    38. Marcy Goodfleisch profile image84
      Marcy Goodfleischposted 11 years ago

      Brilliant statement by Izzy:

      "Google can't read"

      Explains a lot.

      1. paradigmsearch profile image60
        paradigmsearchposted 11 years agoin reply to this

        I'm gonna mail all my hubs to the Pulitzer Prize committee; with a note asking them to give Google a heads-up.

    39. galleryofgrace profile image70
      galleryofgraceposted 11 years ago

      I can't help but wonder if the basic reason for this is the onslaught of poetry we've received recently. I love poetry and write some myself but it has been pretty strong in here lately.

    40. ElizaDoole profile image81
      ElizaDooleposted 11 years ago

      I've got three zzz hubs mainly on topics that I wrote with a sense of humor. My philosophy hubs are currently rolling in views of 70 or more a day, which is good for my hubscore, but they did languish for ages until some students found them I guess. I've de-listed a couple of hubs too, I guess one way to deal with idled hubs is to de list them, reinvigorate them if you still really believe in the topic and give them another go for a bit. I've noticed the main idled ones are the first few I wrote, so chances are they are not too good for monetisation. Fairplay to hubpages for that, I'm still learning.

    41. Dale Hyde profile image79
      Dale Hydeposted 11 years ago

      I see this thread sort of died off, however, I did want to mention that I now have my 14th idle hub and look for three more this week if they follow the same guideline stats as the 14th one.

      For those who are wondering how to find that "noindex" tag, I did the "source" and "element" and found it on line 42 of this 14th hub:

      "</script><meta name="robots" content="NOINDEX"/>"

      With that one line your material is DEAD to Google indefinately unless you attempt to nurse it back to health.

      So this number 14 will soon follow the previous 13 to a new home elsewhere online.

    42. justateacher profile image85
      justateacherposted 11 years ago

      It only takes a minute or two to revive a hub...less time than it would take to move it to another website...just my opinion...

      1. Dale Hyde profile image79
        Dale Hydeposted 11 years agoin reply to this

        A simple "edit" will take the idle status off, but that will not keep it from reverting there again in a matter of days or weeks.  I don't have the time to go to each individual hub and update it all the time to keep it live on a site.  Most of what I write about does not have information that needs to be updated on a regular basis.  I have NEVER updated my articles elsewhere and some are upwards of ten years old and still doing quite well in Google. smile

        1. Bard of Ely profile image80
          Bard of Elyposted 11 years agoin reply to this

          Yes, that is how I feel about it too! Whatever way we look at this there is a lot more work created for very little reward!
          I get a lot of hubs idled about locations in Tenerife or wild plants from Tenerife  and these subjects should not need updating. The places are still there and the plants remain the same. This is really a lot of nonsense over work that had nothing wrong with it to begin with! Good writers are being unfairly penalised because a load of very poor writers have rubbish posted on this site!

      2. Marisa Wright profile image86
        Marisa Wrightposted 11 years agoin reply to this

        True, but it has now been explained that Idled/Featured Hubs are decided by a Rating Panel. 

        If a Hub is idled and you revive it by changing only a sentence or two, it goes back into the queue for rating again.    If you haven't changed much, you can expect it to be rated down again.  So it's pointless.

        1. Dale Hyde profile image79
          Dale Hydeposted 11 years agoin reply to this

          My rating panel on other places is simply the public, Google and keywords.  I don't agree with the rating system here to be honest.  I don't publish material here for ratings from other members of the site. I publish for the public, that is my main audience.  I do not think that a pool of competitive authors is a good means to rate an article.  The public is by far more unbiased.

          I don't mean rated by traffic.  I keep seeing where traffic seems to be equalled into the ratings here on articles.  I know for a fact that Google does not use traffic as a major deciding point on how it rates articles.

          Again, we are back to one hub of mine that came in number one when keywords were typed into search, it had a high hub score, and decent views....not astounding views, but decent and steady. It was idled by HP, killing it in the searches.  The HP rating panel, for whatever reason decided to idle this hub....why?  HP lost a unique article with great ratings in Google and great keywords.  Makes no sense to this naive person. This article contains historical value and I have received many emails about the information provided from places of education....as well as students doing research.

          So, Marisa, why in such a case would I want to edit a top rated article by Google, to please HP, only to displease, perhaps, Google?  I moved the article keeping it word for word the same including the title, had it deindexed from HP and reindexed on the new site.  In time it will climb back to the number one article for those keywords and that subject.

          By the way, sure enough, I awoke to yet another idled hub... Great rating panel and very predictable, lol.  It seems like the rating panel does not like my "pagan" articles.   Number 15 bites the dust. smile

          1. Dame Scribe profile image58
            Dame Scribeposted 11 years agoin reply to this

            I say +1 trillion smile once our Hubs are idled, that's it. No amount of 'updating' will guarantee staying indexed on 'G'. There is no point. Yeah, I guess tis time to start moving stuff out. Just irks me any links I may have gained will be lost unless I send out emails too of new forwarding address tongue lol

            1. Dale Hyde profile image79
              Dale Hydeposted 11 years agoin reply to this

              One note to keep in mind, I did have to go back and review all my links that were contained within my hubs.  I also will have to go to other sites and change the URLs.  It is no easy solution to move material and very time consuming and I only decided to do this as the demands keep increasing here on HP to keep an article published without the "noindex" tag on it.  Those who have followed me in the forums know that I put off my decison for quite some time before I finally started moving material off of this site.

              1. IzzyM profile image87
                IzzyMposted 11 years agoin reply to this

                Talking of links, I spent a whole month earlier this year interlinking all my hubs.

                Now that I have unpublished about a quarter of them, I have broken link symbols all over the place.

                So it's double the work!

                If HP really wanted to drive away writers, they have done it this time.

                It's going from bad to worse too! From what I read on another thread, they want all hubs to have a million words, and to cover a topic more fully than wikipedia, AND to have lots of stupid capsules with polls asking daft questions like "Are you thoroughly bored yet?"

                In my own personal experience, long and detailed hubs do not garner more traffic.

                They say it does.

                It is their site, and their rules, but they are wrong, IMO.

                They are now (yet again) chasing away the better writers.

                The apprentices here are actively promoted. Nine times out of ten, it is an apprentice who wins HOTD.

                The contests seem to have the same winners.

                The people who get their hubs featured straight away are either long term hubbers or pets.

                We are not wanted, folks.

                What a way to run a site sad

          2. Marisa Wright profile image86
            Marisa Wrightposted 11 years agoin reply to this

            As you probably know by now, Dale, ratings are not done by other members of the site - they're done by a paid panel of rates over at Mechanical Turk.  Which is worse,  of course!



            Changing it would be madness and it just goes to show the problem with the rating system.

    43. Bard of Ely profile image80
      Bard of Elyposted 11 years ago

      Dale, Marcy got me to understand the problem faced here by the staff , caused by the vast amount of terrible hubs and hubbers on this site, and I could see her point of view, and why we should all be hopping to get rid of the hubs that are dragging the site down. But when I consider the actuality of Mechanical Turk workers who receive less than a pittance for checking hubs I am back to feeling sad and annoyed with what is going on! I would go as far as saying I would think a lot of these people doing this quick reviewing are not much better than those posting spammy, lacking in content, short, badly written and in every way terrible hubs!

      1. Dale Hyde profile image79
        Dale Hydeposted 11 years agoin reply to this

        Bard, I have been doing the hub hopping and such, however after a short while I see the same hubs from the same day or the previous day that I have already rated. 

        Also, between updating idle hubs, as one is lead to believe needs to be done to take the idle status off, writing new material, trying to keep up with all the changes in the forum and the blog and then taking the time to look for broken links and squeeze in hub hopping.... umm...sort of becomes like a second full time job.  At my best, I was well under 200.00 for one peak month...now I am back to skipping months without a payout.  So I ask, without the exception of providing material for the readers, where is the income from all the hard work?

        As for providing what I have to share for readers, I can do that elsewhere without all the other time consuming issues.  That is what I am saying overall.

        1. Bettyoverstreet10 profile image68
          Bettyoverstreet10posted 11 years agoin reply to this

          You mention income, which is why I decided to give this a chance but how do you earn that much?  It was my understanding that when I add items in an Amazon capsule I would earn if the items are sold. However, I know of two items sold and nothing is showing up about them.  And I agree I am spending much too much time here, but it has helped me start writing again!

          1. Dale Hyde profile image79
            Dale Hydeposted 11 years agoin reply to this

            You get paid several ways. You get a percentage from Amazon.  Mine is 4 percent.  I think that may vary from affiliate to affiliate.  You also get income from the ads that are displayed on your hubs....through the HP Ad Program.  Overall, I think the majority of my income came from the number of ad impressions.

            Also there is income that can be generated from using the Ebay capsules.

            The income I was referring to was the HP Ad program income.

            1. Bettyoverstreet10 profile image68
              Bettyoverstreet10posted 11 years agoin reply to this

              Thanks so much! I appreciate you taking the time to respond.  I have just been wondering if I am missing some step to make it all work.

              1. Marisa Wright profile image86
                Marisa Wrightposted 11 years agoin reply to this

                ...all that assumes you've signed up for Adsense, Amazon etc and pasted your ID in the appropriate places.

        2. Bard of Ely profile image80
          Bard of Elyposted 11 years agoin reply to this

          Dale, I echo your thoughts there! I am now losing monthly earnings due to not reaching payouts and yet am doing at least twice the work I used to put in here. Until recently I could at least count on getting enough to make payout from the HP ads but not any more. I am currently averaging on around $1 a day here. This is insane!

    44. IzzyM profile image87
      IzzyMposted 11 years ago

      Well I've got a 5 week old hub with Christmas in the title, that has had exactly 15 views, 5 of them in the past week.

      Firstly, the noindex pending thing stopped any search engine boost, then it finally got indexed to total silence, but it was just starting to see views, then HP idled it.

      What is the point of writing here anymore?

      This is just too crazy!

      1. Bard of Ely profile image80
        Bard of Elyposted 11 years agoin reply to this

        I think it is only worthwhile if you write hubs about subjects that don't get idled or not featured or whatever they are now calling it.

        1. IzzyM profile image87
          IzzyMposted 11 years agoin reply to this

          Any idea what topics those are?

          No seriously, this is just too much for me. I think I will be removing a lot more hubs shortly.

      2. Dale Hyde profile image79
        Dale Hydeposted 11 years agoin reply to this

        My seasonal Valentine's Day hub got idled, so I understand your frustration.  It was in the original blog post that "seasonal" hubs would not be idled, Izzy.  I moved mine.  No way to update a seasonal hub that would keep it "unseasonal" and not idled that I can think of.

        1. IzzyM profile image87
          IzzyMposted 11 years agoin reply to this

          And only 5 weeks between publication and idle. They might at least have left it for 6 months or so to give it a chance.

          I've already unpublished some of my Valentine's Day hubs that got idled, but at least they were a couple of years old.

          1. molometer profile image80
            molometerposted 11 years agoin reply to this

            Don't know if you have checked this. It may help.

            I checked my hubs on Google Analytics and found that from the time that the idle thing came in. A robot txt had stopped Google crawling all of my hubs. My traffic plummeted of course. I have fixed it. I think. We will have to see if the traffic picks up again.

            Michael

            1. IzzyM profile image87
              IzzyMposted 11 years agoin reply to this

              How did you fix it?

              I do have those errors showing on Google webmasters tools. On one of my subs I got an error message saying Google couldn't access the site at all, and less than a week later the traffic collapsed to it, and the error message is still there. Been like that for months now, and still no traffic.

              I've brought this problem to the forums, and never had any input from HP staff.

              They own the site, not me. What can I do? What did you do?

          2. Dale Hyde profile image79
            Dale Hydeposted 11 years agoin reply to this

            The one I moved was coming up on it's second season in Feburary.  Did well last year here.

    45. JustBrian profile image60
      JustBrianposted 11 years ago

      As I understand it, and forgive me if I'm wrong only having 3 hubs myself (one idle), can't you update them and get them rolling again? If they are super inactive, it's not like they are performing for you anymore anyway, right?

      1. IzzyM profile image87
        IzzyMposted 11 years agoin reply to this

        Yes but this was a 5 week old seasonal hub. We are just coming into the season; it should not have been idled.

        As it had started to get search engine traffic, idling hits it with a noindex tag. This means Google will drop it. I have to edit to get the hub back into pending for 24 hours, then it should get indexed again.

        But it will have lost traffic meanwhile.

        Google do not like pages that are there one minute and gone the next. Then back again, then gone.

        This whole thing is stupid.

        There is nothing wrong with the hub. Its just a little out of season for it.

        1. aa lite profile image84
          aa liteposted 11 years agoin reply to this

          I guess your Mechanical Turk rater thought otherwise!

          1. Dale Hyde profile image79
            Dale Hydeposted 11 years agoin reply to this

            I signed up for this Mechanical Turk thing to learn more about it.  It was not hard as I have an Amazon Seller Account, an Amazon affiliate account, and an Amazon Prime account.  Amazon knows me.

            But.......... Apparently I was not approved!  Never got an email saying I was approved and that is what we are told to expect within 48 hours.

            1. janderson99 profile image55
              janderson99posted 11 years agoin reply to this

              Just try again - I got approved the second time - but ran into a brick wall as I don't have a US social security number!!!!

              1. Dale Hyde profile image79
                Dale Hydeposted 11 years agoin reply to this

                Well I do have a social security number I think... lol. smile  I doubt if I reapply again.  It was something I basically wanted more information about.... I wanted to Turk a few things to see what all was required for that 5 cents.  I did see there that there are other articles to rate elsewhere online, but some pay as little as 1 cent per review, lol.!

              2. WriteAngled profile image74
                WriteAngledposted 11 years agoin reply to this

                Odd considering there is a whole section in the FAQ about how non-US residents set themselves up, and another sections about payments in rupees to Indians who work for them!

                1. DrMark1961 profile image97
                  DrMark1961posted 11 years agoin reply to this

                  When a non US resident tries to register for MTurk they are bounced out of the site. It does not matter that they discuss alternative payments.

          2. IzzyM profile image87
            IzzyMposted 11 years agoin reply to this

            No can't blame that lot this time. A hub that goes from featured to idle is down to HP.

            1. Marisa Wright profile image86
              Marisa Wrightposted 11 years agoin reply to this

              Why do you say that, Izzy?   Is it to do with what they said about idling Featured Hubs if they don't get enough traffic?

              1. IzzyM profile image87
                IzzyMposted 11 years agoin reply to this

                Well yes. Surely they have to give a hub a bit of time to gain search engine traffic. Our hubs starts off at a disadvantage by being idled for 24 hours. They lose any search engine boost they used to get. Then just 5 weeks later, they get idled because they had no traffic? Even though traffic had started to trickle in?

                The very least HP could do is give hubs a chance, and allow them instant featuring, especially when one has already written 10 hubs or more and so has proved one is not a spammer.

                That way, we could at least see which hubs are never going to do well.

                You know yourself, some hubs just never hit the target, and get very little traffic from the outset.

                I am finding it is taking an average of 3 weeks for new hubs to start seeing traffic.

                Before, it was instantaneous.

                But what HP are basically saying is that hubs that fail to attract search engine traffic inside 5 or 6 weeks, are not wanted, even when they are seasonal and written for a season that hasn't yet arrived.

    46. Dame Scribe profile image58
      Dame Scribeposted 11 years ago

      I have no doubts Dale lol I'm already feeling the enormity of this task lol and I haven't even started. If our writing is not welcome nor appreciated then we don't have a choice but to move them elsewhere, so be it. Least they will be available to an audience without controls in place except ourselves smile I'm not excited but c'est la vie, oui? tongue

      1. Dale Hyde profile image79
        Dale Hydeposted 11 years agoin reply to this

        I agree, I was very content with the way things were going here on HP, and I was pumping out hubs on a regular basis...views were good, not anything record breaking, but rewarding.... Now I hate to log in and see how many idled hubs I have, lol.

        But times change and changes have to take place.  I am not enjoying the transition and it will be a slow process as I am working full time as well on what I refer to as a "regular" job..you know the one that pays the rent on our cat's apartment and such. Thankfully she lets us live under her roof! smile

    47. Bettyoverstreet10 profile image68
      Bettyoverstreet10posted 11 years ago

      I'm new to Hubpages and not sure how I ended up here with you, but happy I did.  Or maybe sad, too. I didn't realize we writers/hubbers were expected to be judges of each others writings.  I have really enjoyed the Hubs I have read and thought it was interesting to communicate with others who share my love of communicating through the written word.

      Knowing that so many people seem to be  just going from hub to hub flagging the ones they don't approve of makes me a little sad.  I'm sure I will understand more when I get more information about how it all works.

      Happy Hubbing!

      1. IzzyM profile image87
        IzzyMposted 11 years agoin reply to this

        Betty, hi and welcome to Hubpages smile

        The problem we have, and I mean "we" as hubbers is that all our work is interlinked.

        This was fine in the past. because there was a time when Google could tell good hubs from bad hubs.

        There is a huge amount of crap, spun, translated nonsense on P. There always has been. This is an open publishing platform.

        Hubpages is so popular, that they never actually got round to employing enough staff to keep up with the sheer volume of crap published.

        We are not talking here about wannabe writers, we are talking mainly about ESL or poorly educated English speakers.

        Or even just people who thought they could 'blog' here, about what they had for breakfast.

        Betty. if you can spell, and string a sentence together, you will do well here. hopefully smile

    48. Will Apse profile image88
      Will Apseposted 11 years ago

      The flippin' nerve of it! As my old mum still likes to say. Often at random. Mainly to herself.

      1. IzzyM profile image87
        IzzyMposted 11 years agoin reply to this

        Will, are you one of those granted instant featuring of new hubs?

        1. Will Apse profile image88
          Will Apseposted 11 years agoin reply to this

          I'm certainly one of those willing to give HP yet another chance to get this whole thing right. Mainly, because there is no other choice.

          1. Bard of Ely profile image80
            Bard of Elyposted 11 years agoin reply to this

            Me too, Will, even though I may have been moaning a lot here!

            1. Marisa Wright profile image86
              Marisa Wrightposted 11 years agoin reply to this

              Bard, does this mean you've changed your mind about moving to other sites?

          2. CMHypno profile image83
            CMHypnoposted 11 years agoin reply to this

            No other choice?  There is a whole world out there Will.  Write here if you enjoy it and still get something out of it; if not there are loads of other options for your writing.

            1. Bard of Ely profile image80
              Bard of Elyposted 11 years agoin reply to this

              I think what Will means is that this is still the best place for earnings poor as they may now be!

              1. CMHypno profile image83
                CMHypnoposted 11 years agoin reply to this

                Are you sure Bard?  But if hubbers are writing for money and are dependent on that income stream, and their earnings have truly dropped to pennies on HP then maybe it is time for them to explore other ways of earning a living?  I don't mean to sound negative, but with the world economy the way it is I can't see advertisers upping their Google Adwords budgets any time soon or the big G making it any easier to get traffic and clicks.

                There will always be writers who do well earnings wise here, but for those struggling now it is probably either time to just start viewing hubbing as an enjoyable hobby or time to go and find a more lucrative way to earn.

                I wasn't having a go at Will in any sense, I just think that there are always other opportunities to create, if the one you have right now is not working out for you  smile

                1. Bard of Ely profile image80
                  Bard of Elyposted 11 years agoin reply to this

                  I have never been much of a success at making money here, or indeed anywhere, but I was making enough to pay some bills and it was money I could count on. That is no longer the case, nevertheless, I make nothing at the other sites or a pitiful amount eg I am still waiting for payout from Redgage at which I have around $25 and been on there for years.
                  The really frustrating thing for me is that people say I am very talented but I am certainly not talented at getting money because lack of money has been my main source of problems over the past few years.

                  1. IzzyM profile image87
                    IzzyMposted 11 years agoin reply to this

                    Bard, have you joined sunforged's site, xobba?

                    I have a couple of articles there, and they consistently get hits and traffic.

                    I am also going to put more stuff up on thisisfreelance, Thisisoli's site.

                    I am pretty sure seekyt is a hubber's site too.

                    I think the ideal would be to create a link wheel by sharing similar topics round a range of sites and interlinking them, but it will take some planning beforehand to get it right.

                    Linking out from HP would be good anchorage, rather than the other way round. This is the high PR but low-trafficked site. Those other sites are probably higher trafficked (now) but lower PR and linking out will help them.

                    1. Bard of Ely profile image80
                      Bard of Elyposted 11 years agoin reply to this

                      Not joined it yet! Will do though. I seem to be overwhelmed with stuff to do and spending even longer on my PC but not seeing any good results for having done so. One thing I am certain of: it all used to be far more simple!

                  2. Marisa Wright profile image86
                    Marisa Wrightposted 11 years agoin reply to this

                    Redgage is not a writing site, so I'm not sure why you'd expect to make much there! 

                    HubPages used to make money because it ranked high with Google, so anything anyone wrote here would get ranked easily.  That's no longer the case.  I doubt there will ever be another revenue-sharing site that matches HubPages in the old days, because Google doesn't like content farms these days.

                    Bard, you are a talented writer.  Your problem is that you don't know how to write online.  I don't mean writing about silly subjects or sales pitches - I mean understanding the use of keywords, and promoting effectively.

                    1. Bard of Ely profile image80
                      Bard of Elyposted 11 years agoin reply to this

                      Redgage I went to because like so many of these sites, people were recommending it. Although it has taken me ages to make $25 or whatever it is now, that is still a lot better than nothing at all from most places I put my writings.

                      I obviously don't promote effectively or I wouldn't end up with the terrible results I usually get.

    49. cam8510 profile image92
      cam8510posted 11 years ago

      There are times on my account page when it looks like a blue waterfall with all of the blue arrows pointing down.  In fact, when I came on HP today that was the case.  But what happened today since signing on has happened many times before.  As I comment on hubs, forums and questions the blue arrows disappear.  I didn't count them when I came on, but now there are only two.  There is some relationship between social interaction and the direction our hubs are headed.

      1. galleryofgrace profile image70
        galleryofgraceposted 11 years agoin reply to this

        I used to be surprised by the red and blue arrows until I realized you get a red arrow for just 1  read. After that I ignored them.

    50. Dale Hyde profile image79
      Dale Hydeposted 11 years ago

      Just updating... I have finished moving the last "batch" of idled hubs from my account to the "new home."

      It is a slow process, but overall I am not feeling depressed about having to do it.  The one article that I previously mentioned in this thread that was top rated by Google for keyword search that HP idled and slapped the "noindex" on is doing quite well, already, on the new place of residence. smile  Others are slow to start, but Google has 'em and is working them. smile

    51. Rain Defence profile image80
      Rain Defenceposted 11 years ago

      You should maybe do some reading into seo and start promoting your articles and sites. It isn't interesting but if you want to get traffic, it is the way forwards.

      1. Bard of Ely profile image80
        Bard of Elyposted 11 years agoin reply to this

        I do promote my articles and sites but clearly it isn't enough.

     
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