Why are all my pages getting labeled as spammy?

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   iijuan12posted 8 years ago

   For the last week every single day I have been greeted with notifications about more of my lesson plan hub pages being moved to unfeatured status because they are now considered spammy. Did I miss a new change to what hubpages allows? My lesson plans include the books and links we actually used for the lessons. This is an example of one of my many now-unfeatured pages:  http://hubpages.com/education/lever-and … esson-plan . I am unsure as to why it would be considered spammy and would appreciate some insight.  Thank you!

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      Susan Hambidgeposted 8 years agoin reply to this

      Hi - I don't really know but this hub seems super packed! If it was mine I'd make maybe 4 hubs out of it, referring readers to the rest of them. They are filled with great ideas - but there are a lot of books to buy listed. If you split them up, and maybe add a more detailed explanation to some paragraphs, then each hub would have fewer 'books for sale'. Personally I try to stick to 2 or 3 Amazon capsules per hub and have them split up on the page. But I am by no means knowledgeable on these things.
      
      I read somewhere that today, online, people will only read small amounts of text. And I know that is true of me - if I need to read something in depth I want a paper copy!

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      TIMETRAVELER2posted 8 years agoin reply to this

      I think your problem may be the placement of some of your ads.  Remember that you need a minimum of 100 words per capsule (preferably 300) per ad.  You have a few that are grouped together, so the paragraphs on one side or the other may throw the count off.
      
      Also, you have a great number of links to other sites.  Too many links that take readers away from HP are considered spammy.
      
      Great article, by the way.  Have you considered breaking it up into smaller articles for easier reading?  You have quite a bit of text in this one.
      
      You might want to email the team and ask them specifically what you have done wrong, but I think my analysis may help you.  I would try changing some of the ad placements first and see if that fixes things for you.
      
      Good luck.

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      Sherry Hewinsposted 8 years agoin reply to this

      I think your hub is great. Good, detailed information on the activities. Still, by the HP definition, any Amazon item that is not actually necessary for the activity could be considered "spammy."

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   Marisa Wrightposted 8 years ago

   "Spammy elements" just means unrelated links, either Amazon capsules or some other kind of link.
   
   So, the only links you are allowed in that Hub are links essential to carry out the activity, nothing else.  That means links like the one to the Kronos Curriculum are "spammy".   You also have a capsule advertising Lego at the very end of the Hub that appears unrelated. 
   
   You also have links to each of the other lessons in the series at the end of the Hub - this could be construed as self-promotion, it would be better to content yourself with a link at the beginning to Part 1 i.e. "This is part 2 of a 6 part hands-on unit on Inventions and Simple Machines (you'll find Part 1 here)" and a link at the end to continue to Part 3.
   
   Finally, HubPages does seem to be running a bit of a vendetta on Amazon capsules right now. However, since most of your Amazon capsules are directly relevant to the activity, I would just delete the last one, and the other unrelated links, resubmit and see what happens.
   
   Alternatively, I could see your lesson plans working very well on a dedicated blog or website exactly as they are.

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      iijuan12posted 8 years agoin reply to this

      Yes, I am looking into transferring all my hubs over to a blog. I am dreading the time it will take to do that.  I do appreciate the suggestion and helpful hub you wrote on that topic!

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   iijuan12posted 8 years ago

   Thank you to everyone for your suggestions! I'll try to apply some of them and see what happens.

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   iijuan12posted 8 years ago

   I made many of the above suggestion changes (greatly reducing links, removing links to the Konos curriculum that I used to help with the lesson, etc.) to this hub, and it still remains unfeatured due to "spammy elements."  http://hubpages.com/education/amphibian … esson-plan .

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      Marisa Wrightposted 8 years agoin reply to this

      I would still be concerned that listing all the other Hubs in the series could trigger the warning.
      
      I could also imagine that a moderator, reading the Hub in a hurry as they do, would think the very first Amazon capsule was irrelevant - this is a Hub about amphibians, not Bible study!   So that might be safer removed, especially since the passage can be found in any Bible.

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         iijuan12posted 8 years agoin reply to this

         Thank you for the suggestions!

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         iijuan12posted 8 years agoin reply to this

         I was wondering how much work transferring my hubs would entail. Could I just type in a bit of information and have most of our modules, images, etc.transferred, or would I have to copy, paste, and re-load everything again?

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            calculus-geometryposted 8 years agoin reply to this

            You pretty much have to upload everything by hand to the new site.  There's a firefox addon called scrapbook that saves webpages, but it's mainly handy for creating a backup, not for moving content from one site to another. 
            
            Make sure you also download all the original images from your photo library in your HP account.   The images that appear on hubs are all reduced to 520 pixels wide and converted to lower resolution jpg's, so if some of your images are higher resolution and of a different file extension, you will need to perform a little trick to find the original:
            
            If the photo that appears on your hub is http://usercontent1.hubimg.com/8755642_f520.jpg, then you just change the url to http://usercontent1.hubimg.com/8755642.png and you get the original (in this example my original was a png.)  You might need to change the "png" to some other file extension.  Right click on the image and save it.

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            TIMETRAVELER2posted 8 years agoin reply to this

            Here's the problem with making a transfer like this.  You have to delete every single article (and hopefully you have them saved to a disk somewhere).  Then you have to wait a week or so for Google to de index them unless you request that they do this via Webmaster Tools. 
            
            In the meantime you have to do all the work involved in setting up your own site or blog...and it is considerable.
            
            You also have to hope that during the time between the day that you deleted and the day that you repost nobody has stolen your hub.  If they have, you  will not be able to post it due to Google's "duplicate content" rule, and you will lose the entire post permanently.
            
            Even if you can repost and don't lose any of your work, you will then have to figure out how to monetize your work.  While Amazon pays as much as 8 1/2% to Hubbers, it pays about half that much to regular affiliates.  Other vendors pay at different levels, but you either have to deal with them directly or use a sight such as Vigilinks to be able to access them.
            
            Once you are set up, transferred and monetized, you then have to hope that people will find your work and buy products .  This does not always happen.  Sometimes, it does not happen at all.
            
            You will, as they have said, get plenty of views, but that does not mean you will get plenty of money.
            
            People who are very tech savvy make moves likes this and do OK, but people like me, who aren't, don't make a dime.
            
            How do I know all of this?  I went through the entire process except that I did not transfer hubs, I wrote new articles about the same topic.   Got great views, but not one cent.  I shut down the site after about 6 months.
            
            If I were you, before I move everything, I would set up a site and post some articles there for a trial period and see how they do.  I would also rework my articles to make them shorter, more carefully designed and monetized.
            
            You might find, as I did, that you'll make more here on HP, even with all the changes and limitations, than you would elsewhere.
            
            As I said, some do this with great success, but most fail at it. 
            
            One more thing, when you create a new post, it can take awhile to get well ranked.  So, when you delete and re post elsewhere, you lose ALL of the momentum you have built up.
            
            To me, it's just not worth it, but I don't do this for a living.  Whatever you decide, I would tread very slowly and carefully.

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               Marisa Wrightposted 8 years agoin reply to this

               TT2, if you are transferring to your own blog there is absolutely no need to wait for the original to be deleted before putting it on the blog.  True, there will be a short period when you have duplicate issues but that is not a major problem.   Google doesn't have a duplicate content penalty per se - all it does is look at the two versions and decide which one to feature and which one to ignore.  If one of those versions subsequently disappears, then the other version will become the featured one.
               
               The important thing to do is to run something like Copyscape over your Hubs to make sure they haven't been stolen before you move them.  If one has been stolen, you can't delete it until you've dealt with that theft, because you need the Hub to prove you published it first.
               
               You are right that blog posts should be shorter so these series need to be split up into shorter chunks for the blog.  I do, however, think that the OP has more potential to make money from his blog because he would be able to sell his services through it.

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               iijuan12posted 8 years agoin reply to this

               Thank you! That is helpful to hear!

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