2 Year Old Hub Unfeatured after editing a few words

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   Sebastian Balogposted 8 years ago

   My best hub just got unfeatured after editing a few words (updating some info). It's been featured for 2 years, it's getting quality traffic and it's what people are looking for. I edited it again in the hope that it will get featured again but same issue. I don't understand what's happening to Hubpages?! This is the kind of issue that will drive people away from writing here! You work a lot to write a good article and seo optimize it and then edit a few words and your work goes to dust...what can I say besides that I'm highly dissapointed. I will give it one more shot but I'm highly sceptical it will change the outcome. Your own website is the way to go.

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      Fiction Tellerposted 8 years agoin reply to this

      Sebastian, thanks for letting us know. I share your pain. Have you been keeping up with the changes to quality standards? They've changed radically, especially in regards to affiliate links.

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         Sebastian Balogposted 8 years agoin reply to this

         Hi thanks for your reply. I just have 2 links to amazon and one to Fiverr and they're all related to the content. It's what people are looking for, I'm not pushing anything. I have edited the hub before..months ago and never had a problem. Same links in the article, that part didn't change

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      Matthew Meyerposted 8 years agoin reply to this

      As Fiction Teller mentioned the site standards have changed over the last two years. All Hubs are evaluated by the site QAP. Your Hub did not pass the QAP due to spammy elements.
      You can find more information here.
      http://hubpages.com/faq/#Spammy-Elements

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         Sebastian Balogposted 8 years agoin reply to this

         Ok now I have removed all the links but it's sad to see those rules not being apllied in a fair manner because my article was being recommended by a lot of people on forums and those links were highly relevant to the content and were what people are looking for and were helping people choose what to buy.

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            Marisa Wrightposted 8 years agoin reply to this

            It's unlikely that you needed to remove ALL the links - I do see a lot of Hubber panicking and doing exactly that, but it's not necessary.
            
            You can have one Amazon capsule per 100 words - so if you have a 500 word Hub, you can have 5 Amazon capsules.  HOWEVER they must be directly relevant to the main topic of the Hub  (so for instance, if you're writing about red widgets and drop in a short para about blue widgets, you can't use an Amazon capsule to advertise blue widgets).
            
            Other tips that help avoid Amazon problems - always use the "description" section of the capsule (you can even move a paragraph of your Hub text into it), and break them up - don't list two or three capsules one after the other. 
            
            It may be that the link to Fiverr was really the problem, since some members on Fiverr are selling dubious services such as fake Facebook likes.

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      peachpurpleposted 8 years agoin reply to this

      I say, try adding two amazon but no external links

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2. 81

   Sebastian Balogposted 8 years ago

   OK I removed 2 of the 3 links and giving it another shot now. Will report the result.

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   Fiction Tellerposted 8 years ago

   Marisa,
   
   Unfortunately, I wasn't overreacting - and HubPages can certainly clarify.  I modified a bunch of hubs that were not performing so well as an experiment to see if it were worth risking editing my bread and butter performers. I quickly started getting frustrated by seeing patterns of unfeaturing that seemed to contradict that 1 per 100 quality guideline.
   
   So I asked the team:
   
   "Can you tell me what the limit to the number of products is if I have direct experiences with the items, they are all relevant to the hub, and there are at least 100 words of text for each product?"
   
   The HubPages team told me, in a series of clarifying emails:
   
   "Yes, it is the large number of product capsules....Hubs should include a small number of directly-related products (my emphasis)....You should have direct experience with each item...It is important to understand that requirement of 100 words per product capsule is only the minimum requirement for a Hub (it is necessary, but not sufficient to be approved by published)..."
   
   I was still optimistic and tried to whittle things down, but could not get long, in-depth, media-rich hubs as long as, oh, I think it was 3,000 words approved with more than three products, though one hub was a top ten list of media items I had direct experience with and the products were all directly relevant (e.g., products actually reviewed in the hub). Since I made changes incrementally, I was able to track the edits that got them approved, and these weren't any content quality edits, but rather whittling products down to 2-3.
   
   They never gave me the hard and fast number, but that was what worked for me.
   
   They certainly may be passing more than this number for some people. They weren't for me.

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      Solarasposted 8 years agoin reply to this

      I would guess it was the Fiverr - I had a link to a marketplace other than Ebay or Amazon and it failed QAP until I removed it.

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         Sebastian Balogposted 8 years agoin reply to this

         It would seem that`s the case because I removed the link and the hub got featured again but it doesn`t seem fair. I last edited the same hub on the 18th of June 2015 and had no such problem and besides all, the people that were searching for the info that`s in my article were all very satisfied because of the value that the FIverr link added to the content. It`s on 7th place in google`s 1st page so Clearly the big G doesn`t have a problem with it but Hubpages do.. how awkward is that? So Hubpages is more strict than Google? I can only be dissappointed.

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            Marisa Wrightposted 8 years agoin reply to this

            This is the price you pay for writing on a free platform.  Every platform is entitled to set its own standards and rules, and if you want to write on that platform, you have to accept those rules. 
            
            Personally I feel that some of HubPages' rules are unnecessarily strict and some are downright wrong - however, they feel that, based on expert advice, the rules are necessary to improve traffic to the site.    That's their privilege - after all, Google doesn't explain ANY of its requirements in any detail, and even SEO 'gurus' are just guessing when they give advice on how to get a good ranking in the SERPs.
            
            By the way, how are you determining your Hub's position?  You do know that your search history influences what you see, even if you're not logged in, so you may be seeing this Hub as doing better than it really is?

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               Sebastian Balogposted 8 years agoin reply to this

               Hi Marisa, I have a paid subscription on SerpBook so I can always see the real position in Google

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   nicompposted 8 years ago

   Hubs are audited by Mechanical Turk, a combination of real people and automated processes. On the whole it works but there will always be outliers.

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