Any Thougts Re: HubPages Getting Rid of RSS Capsules?

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   Rock_njposted 11 years ago

   I just received an announcement that HubPages Is Getting Rid of RSS Capsules to get rid of seldom used capsules.  I found this surprising since I use the RSS Capsule on every Hub that I publish, so readers can see my latest work when reading any of my Hubs and also to keep Hubs from being static.  I don't agree with this change.  What are other Hubbers' thoughts on Getting Rid of RSS Capsules?

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      IzzyMposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      I don't have a problem with it, even though every single hub I have used rss extensively.
      
      If you were using hubs/latest as an rss feed, it is not surprising HP wanted to get rid of the whole option, as your related hubs would not relate unless you only write on one topic.
      
      Intext links to your related hubs are much more powerful anyway, than rss feeds.
      
      I agree about the need for some form of automatic fresh content. I used to like the old news feeds - they did that very well.
      
      HP removed them a long time ago, though. Maybe they should consider bringing them back?

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         Millionaire Tipsposted 11 years agoin reply to this

         I used the latest option for the RSS capsules, but I also specified particular tag words to make sure that the content was relevant.  The main feature of the RSS capsules was that it kept up with new hubs. Now every time I write a new hub, I will have to go back and add links to older hubs.

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         1. 89

            Rock_njposted 11 years agoin reply to this

            
            
            Good to see HubPages moving forward and using technology to its fullest.  ;-)

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      relacheposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      It's that usage that is probably a main reason for HubPages ditching RSS.  If the majority of people were using RSS to link to relevant, targeted news headlines or blogs on their Hub topics, the capsules would be more relevant and would be adding fresh content.
      
      Using RSS for interlinking is irrelevant and not what that's supposed to do.

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      1. 89

         Rock_njposted 11 years agoin reply to this

         Why can't they let us decide how to use RSS, instead of just getting rid of it?  We are all adults.  I have read some accounts of Hubbers using RSS very creatively to drive traffic to low traffic hubs.  That seems like a worthy goal for any site like HubPages trying to build traffic.

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            mathomposted 11 years agoin reply to this

            Because search engines downrank sites where half the content is links to unrelated content. (It makes it hard for search engines to tell what each page is about, if you link to a lot of stuff that it's NOT about.)
            
            Also, search engines downrank sites where much of the content is found elsewhere.
            
            Therefore, unless you really know what you're doing, you can sink a site's search traffic by using a lot of RSS feeds.
            
            There are ways around this, like having the feed load in such a way that it's not crawled by search engines, but I completely understand why they did it this way.

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               mathomposted 11 years agoin reply to this

               (oops, this would be GG forgetting which account I'm logged into)

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            2. 89

               Rock_njposted 11 years agoin reply to this

               Thanks for the explanation.  HubPages did not explain the change in that manner.  They said they were getting rid of the RSS module due to lack of use.

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                  Marisa Wrightposted 11 years agoin reply to this

                  They did mention misuse in their blog post.
                  
                  If you were using RSS feeds to provide a link to your latest Hubs, that's an example of misuse - it's actually against HubPages' rules to link to unrelated Hubs, including your own.

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   3. 72

      livewithrichardposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      Having RSS feeds of your own content on every hub is not a good thing to do.  If you write on a variety of topics like most people here do then an RSS feed of your 'latest' hubs will place content that is unrelated to the main topic of your new hub.  Google will demote the value of a page that contains unrelated links.
      
      The main purpose of having RSS feeds was to provide a way to make the page more dynamic, other than the comments capsule.  It provides a way to allow a page to receive freshly updated content so that when the spiders crawl your page they see something new... that new stuff will add a freshness quotient to your content and may help, but if it is unrelated to the main topic, it will hurt instead.
      
      The best way to show your readers related content is to make good use of 'groups' and only place related content in those groups.

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   psycheskinnerposted 11 years ago

   Probably because supporting any module and keeping it working requires staff time and hence money. So it does have a 'use it or lose it' element

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   wildernessposted 11 years ago

   I don't have a problem with it.  I used to put at least one and often two on each and every hub, using tags to make sure it pointed to relevant hubs.
   
   Those RSS feeds were deleted months ago now, and although the time since then makes any correlation very tenuous I haven't seen any drop in traffic.
   
   Instead I've seen a good increase in general traffic and specifically in traffic originating in my own subdomain.  The latter has increased to the point that it is generally #2 on the list, right under google dot com and ahead of HP dot com, Bing, Yahoo or any of the other google results.
   
   I do interlink my hubs heavily with textual links, however, which is probably supplying the bulk of the views from my subdomain.  I don't get many to my profile, so they aren't coming from there and thos textual links are about the only other place I can see that visitors are picking up links to the other hubs.

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