Hubs becoming unfeatured during the "grace" period

1. 71

   Tim Baderposted 9 years ago

   Hi,
   I've got several hubs which have suddenly become un-featured "due to lack of engagement".
   
   On the one hand, fair enough, in that they haven't had a lot of traffic, if any, since they were transferred from Squidoo.
   However, on the other hand, these are hubs I just haven't got round to editing yet, but we are still well within the grace period - aren't we?
   
   Or doesn't the grace period apply to the featured status, if it's due to lack of engagement?
   
   Thanks,
   Tim

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   1. 31

      Writer Foxposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      Tim, send an email about the Hubs:
      team@hubpages.com

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      1. 71

         Tim Baderposted 9 years agoin reply to this

         Thanks Writer Fox, I'll give it a try.

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            Writer Foxposted 9 years agoin reply to this

            Let us know the outcome here.

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   2. 92

      Christy Kirwanposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      Hi Tim,
      
      The grace period applies to a Hub being moderated or unpublished due to rule violations. It's a normal part of the process on HP for some Hubs to become unFeatured due to traffic or quality, but those Hubs will remain published and, once edited, will have the chance to become Featured again.

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      1. 87

         Marisa Wrightposted 9 years agoin reply to this

         I can understand an existing Hub being unFeatured for lack of traffic.    But how can it be unFeatured for quality?   It would need to go through the QAP and that wouldn't happen unless it was edited?

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      2. 71

         Tim Baderposted 9 years agoin reply to this

         Hi @Christy,
         I tried emailing the team, as Writer Fox suggested, and I am now alarmed that the initial response I received from them indicated that they didn't think my hubs had transferred over from Squidoo - please reassure me that the 'system' knows that they did.
         My old profile was http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/tim-bader-982/ for reference.
         
         I understand what you are saying re the traffic/quality, but that wasn't made clear in the FAQ.
         I read the FAQ through several times when I joined and thought that the grace period would apply to all the 'rules' on all my hubs.
         
         I spent 2 years on Squidoo, building up a small amount of traffic.
         I was just beginning to "get there", when Squidoo was closed down and my traffic dwindled to virtually zero within days of the announcement.
         
         Once my lenses came across to HubPages, I was grateful for the opportunity to continue with them and hopeful that I would be able to pick up where I had left off.
         I followed the advice that your leader (sorry, I forget his name) gave in the forum: to edit my best lenses/hubs first and then move on to the rest.
         
         Sadly, the initial traffic spike I received on some hubs has not lasted, so I am relying on them being available to the public.
         I have diligently arranged them into groups and started going through to edit them up to the HubPages standards.
         
         Having a full time day job, etc, I can only edit one or two hubs a week (at best), so it was a great comfort to me that my Hubs would stay public during the 4 month grace period.
         It is therefore disappointing to find that this is not actually the case and that a number of them are now no longer featured, after only a couple of months on the site.
         It feels like a bit of a kick in the teeth, at a point when I felt I was beginning to get to grips with your system.
         
         Can't an exception be made in this case, for me, and my fellow ex-Squids?

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         1. 31

            Writer Foxposted 9 years agoin reply to this

            Tim, I found your old account here:
            https://web.archive.org/web/20140718043 … -bader-982
            
            But, your Squidoo URL is not getting a 301 redirect to HP.  If you try to go to your Squidoo URL, it says the page isn't found.  So, you need to tell the staff that the 301 is missing for your Squidoo account.

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            1. 71

               Tim Baderposted 9 years agoin reply to this

               Thanks!

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      3. 71

         Tim Baderposted 9 years agoin reply to this

         Further to Writer Fox's comment, can you also fix the 301 redirect for my Squidoo account?
         Thanks,
         Tim

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            Writer Foxposted 9 years agoin reply to this

            In case no one sees your post here, send an email.

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            1. 71

               Tim Baderposted 9 years agoin reply to this

               Done!
               Thanks for your input on this.

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         2. 87

            Marisa Wrightposted 9 years agoin reply to this

            Tim, this may be a silly question, but was your account transferred by HubPages or did you manually transfer some of those lenses?

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            1. 71

               Tim Baderposted 9 years agoin reply to this

               Hi Marisa,
               My account was transferred by HubPages - around 50 lenses.
               I wrote 3 or 4 new ones since I joined, but those have gone through the standard QAP process, as expected.
               
               As for the rest...
               I have only been able to edit a few of them (5 or 6, I think, I have a record of which ones), but the ones that have been unfeatured have not been edited at all.
               
               Bizarrely, one of the un-featured Hubs has actually received some traffic in the past week, so I don't understand why that one in particular lost its status.
               
               Even more bizarrely, I have been in conversation with the team, as Writer Fox suggested, but the person on the other end thinks only 1 lens was transferred and that it was deleted afterwards (it was deleted, as it was my old Squidoo user profile, but I'm slightly alarmed that he thinks the rest were written here!

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                  makingamarkposted 9 years agoin reply to this

                  Did you take a webarchive page of your dashboard at any time?  Can you identify all the lenses which were in existence. Do you know what date they all moved?
                  
                  I'm guessing the more facts and evidence you provide of your lenses existence the more help you will get from the HP HQ team
                  
                  Incidentally - there is no 301 redirect on ANYBODY'S Squidoo account profile. A number of people have already identified that omission. I gather it wasn't ever intended to provide a redirect for the profile page for an individual lensmaster

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                  1. 71

                     Tim Baderposted 9 years agoin reply to this

                     Thanks,
                     I checked back through my emails and sent him the date I joined and the date the lenses were transferred (10th September).
                     I also received automated emails on the same date saying I had 5, 10, ...50 Hubs on here.
                     
                     During my time on Squidoo I also made a note of the URL of each and every lens, which I have recently updated with the HubPages URL for those I have edited - so I sent that list through to him as well.
                     
                     Hopefully, that will get things moving again.
                     
                     Thanks for the heads up with the 301 redirects.
                     It was certainly working a few weeks ago because I tested it out - for individual lenses, not my user profile (which I wasn't so bothered about anyway).
                     I'm more concerned that any links, social shares, etc for Squidoo which may still be out there, are currently going to pages saying "Squidoo is now HubPages" rather than being redirected to the hubs, as promised.

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                  2. 71

                     Tim Baderposted 9 years agoin reply to this

                     Oh, and I pointed out that many of my comments contain references to lenses + one of my unedited Hubs is "I'm the Video Games Rockstar Contributor on Squidoo" (which is still featured...).
                     If that isn't evidence they came across from there, then I don't know what is.

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                  Writer Foxposted 9 years agoin reply to this

                  Keep responding to their emails until this is sorted out.  It looks to me like a problem with the data on the new servers which has adversely affected your account.

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                     Tim Baderposted 9 years agoin reply to this

                     Yes, that would make sense.
                     - It would be nice to have something that did, lol.

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      peachpurpleposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      i have 12 hubs became unfeatured, so I edit them, add in new pictures and got them featured again. It goes on and off

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      WestelCSposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      I have a friend whose hub was moved here from Squidoo in September that he even not touched or edited any part .  But, now it's unfeatured due to lack of engagement.

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2. 91

   Titiaposted 9 years ago

   Just found out that I too have several hubs unfeatured that I haven't updated yet for the same reason.

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3. 85

   easylearningwebposted 9 years ago

   Same here, all of a sudden, several are not featured. I'm going to try to figure out how to improve on them and get them featured again.
   
   Maybe due to traffic or the onset of the added Squidoo hubs?
   
   Please share if you are experiencing the same.

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4. 91

   Titiaposted 9 years ago

   The redirect from my old Squidoo profile doesn't take me to my HP profile either. http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/titia I get a 401 can't find the page.
   
   However when I try one of my former lenses, the 301 redirect works. http://squidoo.com/poems-to-mom So something is not working right I guess.
   
   I completely agree with Tim. We were told that all our former lenses would be featured hubs after the transfer and we would have 4 months to straighten them out and get in line with HP rules. Editing one of my larger hubs took most of the day and evening. I have 100+ hub to update, I can't work 'round the clock only on my hubs, I have other obligations too, like everybody else.
   
   Christy Kirwan: The grace period applies to a Hub being moderated or unpublished due to rule violations. It's a normal part of the process on HP for some Hubs to become unFeatured due to traffic or quality, but those Hubs will remain published and, once edited, will have the chance to become Featured again.
   
   That's not the impression we got from the start. At least I did not understood it the way you write it now and aparently I'm not the only one. What we were told was that our transferred hubs would stay featured, but a hub would lose its 4 months grace period the moment we started to edit it. From that moment on it would have to go through QAP.
   
   From the HubPages Squidoo Transition:
   Will Lenses need to go through the Quality Assessment Process?
   
   Featured Lenses—which have already been vetted by Squidoo's quality systems—were imported as Featured Hubs on HubPages, meaning they were not subject to the QAP. Lenses that were moved over in an unpublished state will be evaluated by the QAP if and when they are published.
   
   From http://hubpages.com/forum/topic/124550
   Relache: As soon as you edit a Hub, you are saying you've fixed it, and the grace period for that one Hub is over. You have four months to fix all Hubs imported from lenses before the filters will then just sweep everything.
   
   Marisa Wright: Each Hub has a 4 month grace period, if you don't touch it. However as soon as you edit it, that sends it through the QAP and it loses its immunity.
   
   Marina Lazarewic: Yep, relache is correct!
   
   So I really don't understand anymore what the 4 months grace period means if our untouched hubs can be unfeatured due to lack of visitors. I don't understand the randomness either. I have still featured hubs sitting that have had less visitors than the ones that got unfeatured.
   
   Is HP tighten the screws on us? Pressing us to update faster by unfeaturing our untouched hubs? I just can't work harder than I do now to get it all done before the 4 months grace period ends.
   
   Unfeatured lenses might still be published, but they won't get google traffic, so we have to update them first in order to get featured again so google will find it again.

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      makingamarkposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      On the other hand if the lenses were unfeatured (ie not seen) because they weren't getting traffic then it's not a huge loss if they don't get traffic while you get round to fixing them
      
      The key point though is we were told one thing and now HubPages seems to be operating with a different set of rules
      
      If it meant that all featured lenses (ie in the top 180,000) would continue to be featured for 4 months then that is what should happen.
      
      If all lenses which transferred were over and above the 180,000 then for them to be unfeatured means they are no different to what was happening on Squidoo ie they still existed but nobody could see them until they were updated or improved.  They were effectively "unpublished" by Squidoo.
      
      Plus if HP intended to bring across 180,000 featured lenses but actually brought across 450,000 lenses belonging to those lensmasters who had lenses in the top 180,000 lenses - then it is inevitable that 270,000 unfeatured lenses now hubs will also be unfeatured - or should be.
      
      So it seems to me the thing to ask yourself was what was the lensrank of the lens/hubs which have become unfeatured. Were they part of the top 180,000 or not?  (Did you create a web archive page of your dashboard listing of lensrank for example?)
      
      It occurs to me that it maybe that when 450,000 lenses were brought across that they were all published whereas only 180,000 should have been - and that maybe Google was unimpressed with quality of content and hence this had an adverse impact on traffic.  Just a theory.....

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5. 90

   Millionaire Tipsposted 9 years ago

   I'm not one of the Squidoo transfers, but I did note that every announcement and communication from staff was careful not to discuss the featuring process. They said your hubs would remain published during the grace period, not featured.  They didn't lie to you directly, but it may have been a lie by omission.
   
   Let me tell you, though, that unfeaturing your low traffic hubs may be a good thing.  When this system was first introduced here, there was an uproar.  (They "idled" our hubs instead of unfeaturing them, in case you want to look for the posts.)  The logic is that Google isn't sending traffic to these hubs and therefore Google thinks of these as low quality hubs, for whatever reason.  Since the opinion of the low quality hubs affects the reputation of the whole subdomain, getting these out of Google's eyes might just make the whole subdomain (maybe even the whole site) look better.
   
   Instead of unpublishing hubs that don't get a lot of traffic, they simply unfeature them and get them away from Google's sweep.  A lot of us deleted a lot of our low traffic stuff - some to transfer elsewhere, but some to just make our subdomain a higher quality.  While there is no way of knowing with 100% uncertainty, but I think that this unfeaturing and deleting of content did help my subdomain.

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   1. 71

      Tim Baderposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      No-one is accusing anyone of lying to us, and I don't think we are in that territory in this discussion.
      It may have been an omission, but enough of us asked specific questions about it, that I would be surprised if that was the case.
      
      I understand what you are saying re Google's attitude towards our hubs and subdomains, but the issue for me (and I suspect for many ex-Squids) is that the indications were very much "if it was featured on Squidoo, then it will be featured on HubPages".
      
      From the FAQ (http://hubpages.com/squidoo/faq):
      "All Lenses (Featured and WIP) from accounts with at least one Featured Lens will be moved to HubPages, unless the user opts out of the migration. Lenses that were Featured on Squidoo will be Featured Hubs on HubPages. WIP Lenses will be unpublished after they're moved to HubPages."
      
      There were a few specific exceptions to that, such as spun content - which is fair enough, we all want to keep Spam out of the site.
      
      For example, the forum topic here has lengthy discussions on the grace period http://hubpages.com/forum/topic/123836 and I've not seen anything there that said transferred lenses would be unfeatured.
      If I look elsewhere in the general FAQ, there is plenty to say that even new hubbers are given a grace period for engagement, so it was natural to assume that this would extend to ex-Squids too.
      
      See this comment on the above thread:
      89Marina Lazarevicposted 2 months ago in reply to this
      "Tentatively, we are going to set the grace period at 4 months for most violations we expect to see, e.g., too many products relative to word count. You can see a list of all the automated warnings and manual flag types in the Learning Center. The majority of these will be given the 4-month grace period.
      
      More egregious violations, e.g., spun or other types of auto-generated content, will not be covered by the grace period.
      
      Hubs with ad safety issues will also not be covered by the grace period. However, these Hubs usually remain published with ads disabled.
      
      The important thing to note about the grace period is that once a Hub is edited, the grace period ends and it will be held to the same publishing rules as all other Hubs. The grace period is granted at the Hub level, so even if you edit one Hub, it will still apply to your other Hubs."

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         makingamarkposted 9 years agoin reply to this

         Like I said - if your lens was in the top 180,000 featured lenses as at the time of the announcement I would expect it to be featured on HubPages.
         
         The one thing that struck me that maybe HubPages didn't quite understand was how many lensmasters removed content from the site BEFORE the transfer either in terms of lenses they deleted or lens content they moved elsewhere - and then deleted the lens.
         
         The fact of the matter is that some lenses rose through the ranks as a result of the lens deletions and started being featured when frankly they never had a chance beforehand.  (I know it was huge because the top 100 or so of my lenses ended up in the top 10,000 lenses)
         
         I did wonder how that impacted on the promise that all lenses featured on Squidoo would be featured on Hubpages.

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            Titiaposted 9 years agoin reply to this

            I didn't have WIP lenses and all my 100+ lenses were in the 180k
            
            However only four of mine got unfeatured of which two were reviews, so I deleted those and updated the other two, all are featured again now.
            
            I do know though that there are former Squids who have as many as 32 squbs unfeatured and that's a lot.
            
            I'm for quality too, but it takes a lot of time (at least in my case) to update my hubs because of the photo one size that HP is using, which makes a lot of photos look blurry. Besides that, I used Zazzle en Squidtools a lot, so I have to work on those too.
            
            Let's say it was just a disappointment to see our hubs unfeatured, while we believed they would be featured during the four months grace until edited.

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               makingamarkposted 9 years agoin reply to this

               Have you formally complained?

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               1. 91

                  Titiaposted 9 years agoin reply to this

                  Yes I did and I got pretty much the same answer as Marina wrote here. I still don't quite understand though, but as I see it now:
                  
                  Our squbs will not be moderated during the grace period and the rating for quality (QAP) only comes in sight on the moment you edit one tiny bit in your hub (= end of grace period).
                  
                  However as it comes to the QAP 'traffic' engagement thingy, there's no grace period at all. Every hub/squb falls under that rule. Reading the 'unfeature procedure' (see link in Marina's reply) left me even more confused than I already was.

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      2. 79

         Marina Lazarevicposted 9 years agoin reply to this

         Hi Tim! I'm not sure if someone has replied to you from the Team inbox, but I saw this thread and wanted to chime in. The grace period was put in place to protect featured Lenses/Hubs from moderation, not the QAP (though it's true that a Hub would need to be edited in order to be rated for quality). Admittedly, we were not very clear about this in the FAQ and various forum posts and I apologize for that. I'll go ahead and update the FAQ after I finish this post. Your Hub(s) were defeatured for lack of engagement as part of the normal QAP *traffic* defeaturing process. You can read about it here.  I realize that this answer doesn't help a ton, but I hope it clears things up.

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         1. 71

            Tim Baderposted 9 years agoin reply to this

            Hi Marina,
            Thank you for getting back to me.
            I understand what you are saying and I have read the FAQ multiple times, but I would really like a response to my comments above, particularly in this post: http://hubpages.com/forum/post/2660175
            
            I have been in conversation with Matt from the team, via e-mail and I have asked some more questions which I am waiting for an answer on.
            
            - Sorry to harp on about it, but my concerns are:
            1. The de-featured hubs haven't been edited, so I was surprised that they would get de-featured, even for traffic, when they were all transferred lenses.
            2. The FAQ talks about a "generous grace period" for traffic for newcomers, regardless of whether they are from Squidoo or not - 5-6 weeks doesn't seem very generous to me, especially when traffic tanked on Squidoo following the merger announcement!
            3. Some of my de-featured hubs have received traffic, one in particular in the last few days, so I don't understand why it should happen to them.
            4. The 301 redirects are now broken for the de-featured hubs. - worrying, as any links I have to them on social media, etc (a potential source of traffic) will now fail.
            5. I am very concerned that when I first contacted team, Matt thought that none of my hubs were transfers from Squidoo. I am still waiting for confirmation that you do indeed have a record of them being transfers - I'm expecting around 49 of my 53 hubs to be covered under the grace period for transfers.
            
            I would be grateful if you could chase these up for me.
            Kind Regards,
            Tim

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         2. 87

            Marisa Wrightposted 9 years agoin reply to this

            Thanks Marina, I think Christy confused us all by saying, "The grace period applies to a Hub being moderated or unpublished due to rule violations. It's a normal part of the process on HP for some Hubs to become unFeatured due to traffic or quality", so everyone was worried about how a Hub could be unFeatured for quality without being edited.
            
            I think you've now saying that if you don't edit your Hubs, they can be unFeatured for traffic reason but not for quality reasons.

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6. 70

   Fiorenzaposted 9 years ago

   Hello Tim, have you had a response yet?  I've just emailed that address that WriterFox posted on the first page of this thread because the same thing has happened to one of mine that I have not yet had time to edit.  It would be nice to have clarification because the impression we were given all along was that the hubs would stay featured for 4 months from transfer date until we actually edited them, and I haven't had time to do half of mine due to offline commitments.
   
   I also read the QA that Marina linked to and it talks about people with low hubber scores having less time for their hubs to prove themselves.  But everyone on this thread with unfeatured hubs has a hubber score in the 80s or even 90s, which I would not have thought was low.

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      Millionaire Tipsposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      HubPages does not use the Hubber score when deciding to unfeature something.  There are two ways a hub can get unfeatured.
      
      1.  It went through the Amazon MTurk to be rated during the QAP. This happens when a hub is been recently published or edited.  If it gets low ratings, it could be unfeatured for quality.  It will probably also get a low score on the individual hub.
      
      2.  It isn't getting a lot of traffic through the search engine.  This does not mean that it is low quality, but for whatever reason, the search engines, particularly Google, is not sending traffic to it.  To get traffic, the hub needs some editing so that it can rank higher. You can do this by choosing a better title, reviewing it for content, spelling and grammar, etc.

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   2. 71

      Tim Baderposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      Hi @Fiorenza,
      Apologies I didn't get back sooner.
      
      I did get a response and Marina was very helpful, although the situation itself remains unchanged.
      However, Marina has updated the FAQ to make things a bit clearer.
      
      To clarify, as I understand it now:
      1. The grace period for Squidoo transfers is limited to moderation of Hubs only (i.e. where there is a problem with the Hub which violates the editorial standards of HubPages, or a quality issue).
      2. This grace period does not apply to Hubs which get de-featured due to lack of engagement (i.e. due to low traffic levels).
      3. There is a separate grace period for engagement, which is related to several items, including your Hubber score, and the type of traffic the Hub receives (e.g. they are looking for a combination of some search traffic, in addition to social traffic - this explained one of my de-featured hubs which had some hits from Facebook, but nothing from search)
      4. 301 redirects from Squidoo stop working when a Hub gets de-featured. However, all other links will still work and the Hub is still published and viewable by the public (just not the search engines).
      5. Editing and re-publishing a Hub should get it re-featured again (assuming it passes QAP) and the 301 redirects will work once more.
      
      I have tested this out with several de-featured Hubs and the 301s are working again for those that have been updated.
      Hope that helps.

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         Fiorenzaposted 9 years agoin reply to this

         Thanks Tim. I got an email from Matthew confirming the same thing, that the hubs are not protected from being unfeatured due to lack of engagement, that is, traffic. And that the FAQ would be updated to clarify this.

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            Matthew Meyerposted 9 years agoin reply to this

            Here is that updated Squidoo transfer process FAQ.
            http://hubpages.com/squidoo/faq#grace-period

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7. 0

   Snakesmumposted 9 years ago

   After reading this thread, I've just checked my hubs, and have discovered that one has become unfeatured due to engagement.
   It's one I haven't edited yet, so it was a surprise, as I believed the grace period for Squids covered this also.
   Guess I'll have to work a little harder to catch up with my editing, now that I know better.

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8. 70

   JenwithMistyposted 9 years ago

   I'm really struggling here.  Every day I come home from work to find at least 5 more of my hubs (ex-lenses) unfeatured.  Pretty soon I won't have any being featured.  I can't fix them as fast as they are being unfeatured.  I realize I'm terrible at this but it's still disheartening. 
   
   I'm also having a terrible time here in the forum.  After opening 2 or 3 discussions, my computer practically stops functioning and I have to close just about every thing to get it to work again.  And I really wish that the related discussions at the bottom were more relevant - the majority of them are over 3 years old.
   
   Sorry to vent, I'm just frustrated with all of the unfeaturing going on in my account.

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   1. 91

      Rochelle Frankposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      Jenwith, I can sympathize with trying to deal with a lot of former lenses at once.
      Are you looking at them in edit mode, and noticing the tips in the upper right hand corner?
      
      Sometimes just  adding a couple of capsules, like a poll and a video, will raise the status of a hub by quite a bit, Also sharing on twitter or pinterest, can boost traffic.
      
      Start with a few of your favorite and most successful articles and do a few at a time.
      Good luck,

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   2. 0

      Snakesmumposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      Jen, it may not be as bad as it feels/sounds.   
      Yesterday, I updated my unfeatured hub, added a capsule, and submitted it.   Today it is featured again, and it didn't take that long at all.
      
      Sorry you're feeling frustrated, but I think all us ex Squids get a bit that way at times, as we adapt to a new system of doing things.
      
      Hang in there!   :-)

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9. 68

   Dressage Husbandposted 9 years ago

   There is also an issue with the different cultures here. An unfeatured Hub is still there and published. It is just no longer being featured on other Hubs and HQ pages. Squids seem to be thinking it is locked it is not.
   
   The unfeatured Hub will still be found by anyone who clicks on a link to it from say Google + or Facebook etc. If it gets enough traffic it will become featured again without any interference by HP staff (correct me if that is incorrect), that is what I see with my Hubs so far.
   
   I am a former Squid and that is how I understand it.

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      Fiorenzaposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      I think the problem is the 301 redirect is deactivated which is a big issue for people who have a lot of links from Pinterest  etc.

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      1. 87

         Marisa Wrightposted 9 years agoin reply to this

         Is that definitely the case?

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         1. 71

            Tim Baderposted 9 years agoin reply to this

            Hi Marisa,
            Yes, it is - confirmed by Marina's communications with me and also in my testing, following on from that.
            All de-featured hubs lose the 301 redirects, but they are restored if/when the hub is edited and featured again.

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10. 84

    Coffee-Breakposted 9 years ago

    The problem with de-featuring a hub is that HP is adding a noindex tag to it. That tells search engines to not index that page anymore. So any chance to get visitors from search engines is lost.
    It is not necessarily bad, since the hub doesn't have visitors anyway; it weeds out irrelevant content.
    
    When you update a hub, you give it another shot at getting some search engine attention. But you really have to try to change it in a positive way, not just add a period or a coma. I have had lenses which took off after re-editing. After changing an unfeatured hub, usually it gets a little traffic, and the hub gets featured again. But if it doesn't get any search traffic, it will end up unfeatured again.
    
    I have a couple of dozens of unfeatured hubs, I have to evaluate which ones deserve my attention and which ones will get recycled.
    
    The missing 301 redirect is a big problem.

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11. 86

    Lady Loreleiposted 9 years ago

    I am just finding this process to be very unfair at the moment. Excellent articles are being unfeatured before they have a chance to prove themselves. The Google hit on Hubpages is affecting traffic and our transferred articles are doubly feeling the pressure.
    
    This is so very frustrating. A lot of good quality articles will probably be transferred because of the aggressive unfeaturing of articles. There has got to be a better way.

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    1. 84

       Coffee-Breakposted 9 years agoin reply to this

       I agree Lorelei, some of my unfeatured hubs used to get decent traffic before the transfer.
       I think, that Google has some throttling algo in place, and temporary removing some content might increase the traffic. At least, I have seen a 5% traffic increase in the last week, and I assume it is related to this.

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    2. 70

       Fiorenzaposted 9 years agoin reply to this

       Agreed.  I'm not a happy bunny about it either.

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