24 Hour Pending Publication Has Negative Impact on Search Engine Rank

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   Page1 SEO tacticsposted 11 years ago

   Anyone who knows SEO knows that Google prefers fresh content but when our newely published hubs undergo the 24 hour pending publication with a no index tag added to the robot txt our hubs loose their freshness by the time the no index tag is taken off therefore Google does not give our hubs the opportunity of being on page one that fresh content receives and we lose traffic because of it.  Why doesn't HubPages allow hubs to be indexed and if after a certain time period the hub doesn't receive the desired traffic for the hub to be featured then add the no index tag?

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      dragnhazeposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      Why punish quality content contributors when they are what drive traffic to HubPages.  Remove the no index tag and let the real target market determine our fate when we get our fresh content boost, and HubPages will regain it's popularity.

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   2. 81

      Dale Hydeposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      Not sure about this method.  I will say this, that my most recent hub was published on 11/12/2012 and the noindex tag taken off on 11/13/2012.  Once the noindex tag was taken off I submitted this hub to be indexed via Google Webmaster Tools.  Not once, not twice, but five times now.  Google refuses to crawl the hub and it still does not show up in searches under my Google Authorship.  The page shows up listed in Google but coming from my profile page, however when I attempt to view the cache, it goes to a 404 error.
      
      My conclusion once again is that once Google sees that "noindex" tag Google simply discards the hub for an undetermined amount of time.
      
      This noindex is killing the site.  So far I have moved 1/6th of my hubs elsewhere due to this.
      
      This most recent hub is about an ongoing issue that is has been and will be updated as a process continues that I am currently going through.  So fresh material has already been added.
      
      My final conclusion that is formulating in my mind is that HP only wants certain material on the site. What does not fall into their idea under the Ning Glam/Social guidelines is being tossed aside at the expense of the authors here.

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2. 78

   LuisEGonzalezposted 11 years ago

   Not a bad suggestion. Thanks for sharing it.

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3. 60

   LindaSmith1posted 11 years ago

   Dale: Who knows what HP is doing. I continue to see things published that are not even hubs. Others are poorly written, grammar and punctuation, if any, is horrible. Yet this trash is published, while hubs from decent writers are sent to the wayside.  I am remedying this by slowly moving my hubs.

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      Dale Hydeposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      Hello Linda. Right now I am only moving hubs that are idled by HP..however with this recent hub still not being able to have Google crawl it...well... The hub is one that is beneficial to anyone who may be undergoing this relatively new therapy....and they are not being able to find it in searches.  So, I may be moving this pretty soon without waiting for an idle to be slapped on it.  I am like you, I have no idea what is going on, however, I have been coming up with my own conclusions based on what i would think would be common sense and not impacted by all the speculation and guessing that is going on the in the forums.

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      wavegirl22posted 11 years agoin reply to this

      LOL, didnt you do that months ago? Makes me wonder why you are still here as you said over and over again how you were moving everything back then.
      
      Some things never change do they!

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4. 60

   LindaSmith1posted 11 years ago

   That is what I am doing. The second I catch them in idle, off they go elsewhere.

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      Jean Bakulaposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      Don't be too fast to move Idle hubs. I find that most of the new hubs I write are in the "idle" status for less than 24 hours. It doesn't stay there long, or at least not in my experience.

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         Dale Hydeposted 11 years agoin reply to this

         I am talking about idled hubs that were previously featured and are months old, not newly submitted hubs.

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            Page1 SEO tacticsposted 11 years agoin reply to this

            I don't blame you, I am not as new as I look, and though my hubs are featured at the moment I don't count on it lasting since Google won't come and crawl my pages.

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               Jean Bakulaposted 11 years agoin reply to this

               OK Dale, I have a few that go idle. Usually they do not see much activity, but if I change a sentence or two they become active again. I am confused, as now they seem to want not evergreen, but timely material. You can't have timely material if the administration holds it back. If you stay off here for a few days because you write on other sites, it's hard to keep up.

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               1. 81

                  Dale Hydeposted 11 years agoin reply to this

                  I agree. Most of my material does not need to be updated.  Simply going in and changing a word or two does take the idle status off, however, I have found that is just a short term solution as the hub will become idle again over time.
                  
                  I joined to write and earn "passively" as promoted by HP at the time I signed on.  I, like you, simply do not have the time to continually "update" material that does not need to be updated.

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      2. 89

         Rock_njposted 11 years agoin reply to this

         The problem he is talking about is that a new hub was given the NOINDEX tag by HP, and Google refuses to index it, even after being prompted to through Webmaster tools (which most HP users probably don't do).  This is a horrible way for fresh content to start out on the Internet.

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5. 73

   brakel2posted 11 years ago

   Ever since the changes, my new articles don't stand a chance to hit page 1. I still believe the bad content continues to hurt the site. I also read that Google has changed it's crawling procedure, whatever that means.

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6. 95

   thooghunposted 11 years ago

   Since the change, NONE of my articles, most of which use the exclusive feature and are crafted under the apprentice guidelines, are receiving traffic. Literally, none.
   
   Whether this is down to the tag or not I don't know, though I doubt it is fully. I have a feeling that the extent to which the previous power of internal backlinks are counted, and how now been "normalized" is probably the bigger factor.
   
   Keeping articles unpublished and into a moderation queue for 24 hours, without the noindex would be a better idea in my mind.
   
   Of the 5k views I have today 90% are from Pinterest. What a strange turn of events.

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      LindaSmith1posted 11 years agoin reply to this

      Thhoghun. I publish on a newer site, and get more views, more Google, Bing viewers, other search engines, than ever gotten here at HP. Also get more Pinterest traffic on newer site as well. Funny thing, is the Google Ranking for the new site is lower than HP.  Go Figure. On the new site, I don't have to depend on members to view my articles.

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         Page1 SEO tacticsposted 11 years agoin reply to this

         Okay Linda you got me wondering, so I gotta ask, what new site is this that you are writing on?

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7. 83

   Isabella Snowposted 11 years ago

   I would like to add my 2 cents, if I may.
   
   I joined HP a long time ago and am quite familiar with how long it typically took before a new hub started getting organic traffic from Google throughout both the pre-Panda and post-Panda days.
   
   Personally speaking, the new 24hr HP wait period has not affected this time-frame at all, nor has it affected the traffic volume I would have expected before it was implemented.
   
   I think it's probably helping the site overall. I also think the HP staff are pretty keen to see the site get back to its glory days as quickly as possible so I don't think they are up to anything nefarious. There are actually some very clever people working behind the scenes who would not benefit from anyone losing more traffic, let alone everyone.
   
   I hope everyone's traffic levels recover soon.
   
   Good luck!

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   1. 89

      Rock_njposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      I think it's probably helping the site overall.
      
      This idle / unFeature / NOINDEX hub policy has been horrible for HubPages overall.  The numbers speak for themselves.  100s of Hubbers deleting their accounts each day since this policy was put into place and tens of thousands of quality hubs removed from HubPages and published elsewhere.  Are you aware that HubPages has lost about 40% of their writers (over 70,000) since the peak in early 2012, and this loss turned into a torrent after the idle / unFeature / NOINDEX hub policy was put into place?  This is a misguided policy if there ever was one, and HubPages staff has taken too long to respond to their writer's concerns about this policy.  I just learned today that they are finally working on a warning system that gives writers a warning about hubs nearing the idle / unFeature / NOINDEX status, so they can avoid the NOINDEX tag slap by updating their hubs before it happens.

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         mattforteposted 11 years agoin reply to this

         I still get plenty of traffic, and that traffic is growing. I've experienced some drops, but with those drops I can look up and see that my articles are still in the exact same SERP, which tells me there are just less people searching at the time.
         
         That said, I made more money every month than the one prior for at least 6 months.
         
         I have yet to see a single hub go idle.
         
         Which leads me to believe that these people supposedly "leaving in droves" are, for the most part, doing something wrong on their own end. People can whine/delete/go somewhere else, or they can take a hint from the HubPages changes and improve.
         
         And no, this noindex thing has not impacted me one bit. However, a lot of the spammy hubs I flag on a regular basis probably never see the light of Google - which is a good thing for our overall authority. I'm not going to cry over 24 hours of views per hub....I'd rather work to get my articles on page one for good, rather than some crappy single day Google dance garbage.

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            Rock_njposted 11 years agoin reply to this

            Matt,  I see you only have 28 hubs.  I've noticed that most of the people that have no problem with the unFeature / NO INDEX policy don't have many hubs to update.  If you had 3 or 4 hundred hubs and were constantly dealing with unFeature / NO INDEX, you might feel differently.  I understand the rationale behind this policy, as it is an effort to clean up HubPages, but in reality getting the unFeature / NO INDEX slap has littled to do with a hub's quality and everything to do with its popularity (per my observations), so I'm not sure if it is helping HubPage's authority.  It is helping to accelerate the departure of writers from HubPages (tens of thousands have left over the past year and a half), and not all of them are the poor writers that will not be missed, and therefore it is not necessarily helping HubPages build a good rep on the Internet.

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            1. 87

               mattforteposted 11 years agoin reply to this

               Correct. I have 28 hubs. And I make payout monthly, and those 28 hubs have gotten me 30,223 views (Plus ~10k slideshow views) over the past 30 days.
               
               I have also written more than 28 hubs. Many I deleted, prior to the "idle hub program"
               
               I also help manage more than one account. The quality hubs I deal with don't go idle - ever. The ones that do...a little bit of updating (Not changing a sentence, this is trying to circumvent the system) and not only do they begin to get some real traffic, but they never go idle again.
               
               Also, those numbers are useless to me.
               I see spam accounts showing up every day. I have zero doubt that many of these "lost hubbers" are nothing but spam accounts.
               
               If people can come to HubPages and write 30 hubs in 30 days, they SHOULD experience idle hubs, because I refuse to believe anybody can write that many hubs in 30 days that are really going to be high quality. People with 300 hubs had better be making a LOT of money, or they SHOULD experience idle hubs, because chances are 250 of those hubs aren't anywhere near the quality they should be...and to have them indexed drags the rest of us down.

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               1. 89

                  Rock_njposted 11 years agoin reply to this

                  I see your POV.  But let's face it, most people come to sites like HubPages to write, not to manage and revised articles and conform to ever-changing rules.  I'm glad it's working out for you.  I am actually one of your early followers, as I also have a keen interest in science. 
                  
                  It appears that HubPages has finally gotten the message from Hubbers about the unFeature / NO INDEX policy.  I just heard from Simone today (see another forum post of mine on the unFeature / NO INDEX policy) that they are working on a new unFeature/ NO INDEX policy that provides warnings to writers about hubs nearing the unFeature / NO INDEX threshold, so they can make changes before the Google NO INDEX slap happens.  That is a pretty harsh penalty since Google doesn't just forget the NO INDEX tag once it is removed.  It can take a long time for Google to reindex a page.  I heard fetching in WebMaster tools may help?
                  
                  My primary concern with the unFeature / NO INDEX policy, beside the harsh and ongoing Google penalty, is that it does not necessarily tag hubs that are poor quality.  From my experience, it tags hubs that get low traffic, regardless of the quality of the written material, so it's not really improving HubPages, as intended.

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                     mattforteposted 11 years agoin reply to this

                     That's good news. Having a warning is, in all aspects, better than the instaslap. The problem with coming here not expecting all the changes....well, that's the internet. There was a time where you could go to websites that didn't change with the market. Some might remember the name "GeoCities".
                     Failure to adapt to rapid change on the internet is a recipe for rapid failure as a whole. The HubPages staff is stellar at making those changes fast enough to continue thriving. People will leave...but those people will go somewhere else...and eventually leave there as well.
                     
                     As for flagging quality hubs with low traffic...herein lies the problem. "Quality" is a subjective term when it comes to writing articles. My own girlfriend was educated for this type of thing from a prestigious university. She writes way better than me...but I have to alter her work to help fit under Google's idea of "quality" which is quite a bit different. I often throw in keywords where I wouldn't normally because of the overall sound. I do it in such a way that it is t distracting...but gets Google's attention. We also had to drastically change our take on image captions. Previous methods were high quality... they still are, IMHO...but at least now, Google is more likely to agree.
                     
                     Also - I will never consider poems, personal experiences, etc "quality" for HubPages. They might be great, well written pieces of writing - just not from a monetary standpoint. And people don't understand that *that* is the HubPages business model. There are other websites who's business model fits poems....just like LinkedIn and Facebook are both social networks....but with very different agendas.

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                  Greekgeekposted 11 years agoin reply to this

                  I have been building academic websites and posting informative pages on the web since September of 1993. I have published on many platforms and watched the web grow from its infancy. For my first fifteen years on the web, I created content on the principle that we all benefit from the web, thefore it's imperative for us to provide our own useful, interesting, well-researched and entertaining content and resources in return.
                  
                  Starting in 2007, I began to monetize a small portion of what I published.
                  
                  I understood then and understand now that personal experiences and creative writing don't get traffic; it's all about figuring out what people on the web want and find useful.
                  
                  Yet you appear to be saying that I must not know what I'm doing, and that this is why some of my hubs -- which were getting search traffic -- are idled.
                  
                  It astounds me that you can pass judgment on so many people with no idea about their level of expertise, their content, or their web success. (Yes, I do make a living with my online writing, although Hubpages remains a small part of my monthly total.)

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                     mattforteposted 11 years agoin reply to this

                     Simple : There are exceptions to every rule.
                     
                     Also, publishing on the web and making money publishing on the web are completely different animals. I designed my first website using notepad when I was 11. (This was 20 years ago) I have not been monetizing for 20 years, so I will not claim to have 20 years of experience in the field.
                     
                     If you have hubs that have gone idle *while* getting search traffic - I don't know what to tell you. I don't know how much search traffic you mean (1 hit a day from Google is "getting" search traffic, not that I am saying that is what you are getting - I'm pointing out that your statement is ambiguous)
                     Or if you mean, it lost traffic - then went idle...it's simple. Google slapped it for whatever reason during one of their many updates, said article no longer got traffic so it idled.
                     If it is a matter of HP idling something for no reason - well, that's an issue with HubPages and probably something that can be fixed by contacting support....and it obviously doesn't fall under the generalizations that I am making.
                     
                     You assume that I am passing judgement on every single person that has left.
                     Saying "Politicians and Lawyers are evil" is a statement generally accepted to be true. However, there are several politicians today that hate what is going on in our government and desire change.
                     It is inconvenient to expect everybody to be specific about everything, when everything has exceptions.
                     
                     
                     Also, stating "I had hubs that were number 1" means very little. I could easily rank a hub for "Logitech K120 keyboard online want to buy cheap". That doesn't mean I am going to get any hits from that.
                     Unless, of course - it again fits into my above statement where a message to support may fix the issue. But I have yet to see a single hub - on mine or other accounts - that gets "good" traffic go idle...so either there is an issue with certain accounts, or some people have a vastly different view of "good traffic" than myself (and HP apparently).
                     And yes, I will be a HP cheerleader in this department, Dale. They have provided me with a great service. I have complained about things, when I felt they needed to be complained about - - but those are few and far between...whereas I see a lot of the same complaints over and over for things that are *good* for the HubPages website itself (which translates into being great for me).
                     As a matter of fact, just last night I was whining about not having the "goals" tool on my account because it can apparently be seen by some...somehow...as "less than useful".
                     
                     As for Valentines hubs going idle...well...that's just collateral damage. Personally, I have a gift hub that I wrote for Christmas 2011...and have changed the title/wording to match the upcoming holidays ever since. It has continued to gain maturity and views year-round.
                     Many people probably don't want to bother doing this (Especially if you have many seasonal hubs, or articles that would have to be completely rewritten to do so) and I understand. As a result, it's going to go idle, unfortunately. Every silver cloud has a lining?
                     That said - the best solution for an issue like this? Go into the suggestions forum - instead of complaining about idle hubs, offer a solution. Perhaps a special category for seasonal hubs, where they are immune from going idle? They would have to be approved of course, to prevent other junk from getting in there.
                     But...that is a possible solution. I've seen many solutions posted in the suggestions get noticed and implemented. It is much better than complaining.

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                        wildernessposted 11 years agoin reply to this

                        Seasonal hubs - somewhere in the forums (I'm not going to look) we are told by HP that a part of the 'idling" algorithm is that traffic can be distributed over a year.  A seasonal hub that get lots of traffic at Xmas, then, is good for a year before being idled again, and by that time should be once more picking up in views.
                        
                        That agrees with my experience; while I have had seasonal hubs idled they either never saw their "season" or were too new to get any real traffic when they did go through the right time of year.  Publish a Christmas hub now, when it won't get traffic, and it will end up idle; publish it in Aug or Sept and it probably won't as it also gets a "bye" for a period of time before being idled for lack of traffic and by that time it is in season and being looked at.

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                           mattforteposted 11 years agoin reply to this

                           And there you go.

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                  psycheskinnerposted 11 years agoin reply to this

                  If you think people shouldn't complain about a drop in earnings (and effort-to-earnings ratios), well, welcome to human nature.
                  
                  [shrug]

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         2. 89

            Rock_njposted 11 years agoin reply to this

            BTW, writers are not supposedly "leaving in droves", they are leaving in droves, per HubPages own statistics.  This hub chronicles the massive departure of writers from HubPages:  http://goody5.hubpages.com/hub/Google-vs-the-Hub-Pages

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8. 81

   Dale Hydeposted 11 years ago

   I see that nothing new is really in the works, lol.
   
   Quality hubs of mine have been idled and I have moved them elsewhere.  So, to the one above, I guess I am following your advice on whining and moving.  When I had several hubs that were number one on Google go idle with good views, I gave up on what was happening here.
   
   Plus, at the start of all of this idle stuff, seasonal hubs were not supposed to be idled according to what HP staff posted.  Yet, a hub of mine from last year on Valentine's day was idled here on HP months ago.  Had nothing to do with "quality", but low views due the non-peak season.
   
   Sounds like the HP cheerleaders still abound here however.    Glad some are doing better each month, lol.   However, I reckon I don't know too much.  I do have 193,953 views for the past year, however my numbers still are not what they used to be.  Overall, I still make payout...not every month all of the time, but some times it is back to back.  Used to be every month for me.  Nothing has changed in my content.  I have moved 25 hubs from the site that were idled and see today I have yet another to move.

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9. 61

   wjack2010posted 11 years ago

   It's a bit late right now to write-up a detailed response, so, I'll cut to my opinion on this;
   
   -Remove the no-index tag. If a Hub fails the QAP, it gets removed, and Google ends up de-indexing it anyway, by having the no-index in the first place, just slows the entire process down.

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      Rock_njposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      The NOINDEX tag is not placed on poorly written Hubs, it is placed on Hubs that aren't getting traffic.  I just confirmed this today per some posts I read by people who work for HP and explained why a Hub gets unFeatured / NOINDEX.  Look at the QAP forum discussion that is current to see these posts.  This came up because Hubbers saw perfectly good Hubs getting unFeatured / NOINDEX.  QAP will not change this.

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         wjack2010posted 11 years agoin reply to this

         I think you should read my post again, your reply is in no-way related to what I said.

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            Rock_njposted 11 years agoin reply to this

            If I read your post correctly, you were saying slapping on the NOINDEX should not be necessary because the QAP process will ge rid of poorly written hubs anyway.  If that's what you were saying, then it's not going to continue HP's actual NOINDEX policy that seems to not have to do with hub quality (QAP), but rather is based on hub traffic.  There are poorly written hubs that get plenty of traffic due to their topic, and these do not get the NOINDEX tag slapped on them.  I guess they may pass the unFeature criteria and escape being unFeatured and getting the NOINDEX tag, but then get removed due to a low QAP score.  But, this raises the same issues as the unFeature policy.  Is there going to a warning to hubbers regarding a hub that gets a low QAP score and is subject to removal, so they can improve it, or will HP just remove it and let the hubbers pick up the pieces?

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10. 54

    Page1 SEO tacticsposted 11 years ago

    I would hope that HP would notify those hubbers who get a low QAP score, to at least give them a chance to improve their writing and having their article featured, otherwise I wouldn't blame those hubbers for taking their writing elsewhere.

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11. 54

    mcxniftycallsposted 11 years ago

    The pending status is just for quality assurance and I think it is not a bad idea, it need to check content for quality assurance and there is no effect on SEO of this.  Many of my article start getting Google traffic just an hour of publishing even received 20 visits a day just after publishing.
    Not only Hubpages but all major and reputed article submitting websites take time to accept your article, EzineArticle even take 20 days to approve article, where HubPages only holding for 24 hours.

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