Do you keep unfeatured Hubs so they can get traffic from featured Hubs

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   NateB11posted 9 years ago

   On a different account, somewhat "experimental" account, one of my Hubs is unfeatured. Generally my inclination was to unpublish it and move it or just delete it. But I kept it and put it in a Hub group. Meaning, if the Hubs before and after it get traffic, possibly the unfeatured one will too. This could create income because that Hub is still monetized, just not indexed. Has anyone else done this with success? Is it a good idea or not? It's occurred to me that it might be better just to get rid of the Hub, to, maybe, improve the status of the subdomain in the eyes of Google.

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      TIMETRAVELER2posted 9 years agoin reply to this

      If you link this article to others in its group, it is possible it will get some traffic...but how much is the question.  Personally, I never get unfeatured  hubs because when I see their numbers slipping I either upgrade them or dump them.
      
      In my way of thinking if an article is not getting views but is well written, there simply is no audience for it, so why keep it?  It takes 1000 net views to get from $3  and up, so if you look at this in a business sense, a hub that is not even getting 1 or 2 views a month is a financial loser.

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      The Examiner-1posted 9 years agoin reply to this

      NateB11,
      When I got a Hub, or Hubs, unfeatured I would look to find out why. Next I would do what I could to correct the problem(s). If this still did not help then I would try updating it and changing photos, videos, links, to see if that helped. I would not give up until it was featured again.
      
      If anything, save the main, or very best, parts of it and write a new Hub or combine it with another similar Hub.

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      colorfuloneposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      I think its a great idea, Nate. Certain worth a try from some of the comments on this thread.

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         NateB11posted 9 years agoin reply to this

         Thanks, Susie.

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      Marisa Wrightposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      I don't see how removing the unFeatured Hub will improve the sub-domain's status.
      
      If the Hub was unFeatured for quality, yes - but if it's unFeatured for lack of traffic, then HubPages has admitted that low-trafficked Hubs do not hurt.   Google recognises that any website will have low-trafficked posts, especially if the subject is topical.
      
      I think your idea could work IF you do more than put the Hub in a group.   Many readers won't get as far as the boxes at the bottom of the page.  You need to actively refer readers in the text.

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         NateB11posted 9 years agoin reply to this

         That is interesting that Google recognizes sites will have low-traffic posts. That, of course, is logical and I kind of thought that was the case, but good to know Google sees it that way.
         
         Good point about referring readers. That is something I've done often in many articles.

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            Marisa Wrightposted 9 years agoin reply to this

            There was a great discussion on this topic with Derek and Simone when the unFeatured process was first introduced.
            
            At the time, it was explained that HubPages knew low-traffic pages weren't harmful.   That wasn't the reason for introducing the process.
            
            The reason was that the QAP couldn't possibly catch up with all the old Hubs.   While all low-traffic Hubs are not poor quality, it IS true that all poor quality Hubs are low-traffic.   So unFeaturing low-traffic Hubs woudl automatically hide all poor quality Hubs from Google.   
            
            Derek said that HubPages recognised there are good quality Hubs that get low traffic because they get few searches, and that they would be penalised unfairly as a result of the policy - but that because of the vital importance of hiding the rubbish, that was a penalty we had to live with.

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               NateB11posted 9 years agoin reply to this

               From what I can tell, that strategy has worked. But it's good to know that low-traffic articles do not hurt a site unless the work is low-quality.

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      peachpurpleposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      i got too many unfeatured hubs that had made my hubscore decrease and the views too. So, I revamp them and everything is getting better now. I think it is not advisable to leave them behind

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   LindaSmith1posted 9 years ago

   Depends on why it is unfeatured.  If is content, simply proofread for errors.  If no errors, take out a word, put the word back in and publish again.

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   tirelesstravelerposted 9 years ago

   After nearly two years of being featured unfeatured, with a low hub score I slightly edited it. The hub was refeatured and is currently my high draw hub.  Always group and be patient as long as it isn't labor intensive.

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   calculus-geometryposted 9 years ago

   Since it's so easy to make a low-engagment unfeatured hub return to featured (changing a single word and waiting 24 hours while it's re-QAPped will do it) I just do that and give the hub a chance to bounce back.
   
   At least for me, I have a lot of hubs that are basically duds, but now and then get little bursts of search traffic out of nowhere, so I like to periodically check that all my hubs are featured.

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   Arachneaposted 9 years ago

   That's an interesting question. I would assume that a hub which is unfeatured can't be accessed from any links to it. One thing I am toying with now is combining hubs on several topics under one titled hub and then deleting the old original hub. For instance, several hubs on different tea beverages could be combined and published under a single title specifying tea beverages.

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      The Examiner-1posted 9 years agoin reply to this

      That is also what I thought, his question made me wonder.

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      NateB11posted 9 years agoin reply to this

      Unfeatured Hubs can still be seen on the site and people can get to them through a link; they just aren't indexed in the search engine. You can hide them on your profile, but that's up to the authors.

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      Marisa Wrightposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      An unFeatured Hub is simply no-indexed so that Google will ignore it.   Links to it will still work as normal.

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   Kylyssaposted 9 years ago

   I edit them slightly then sandwich them between hubs on the same topic that get a lot of views in groups. I don't know if the light editing alone would work as well but the sandwich technique gets people on the pages and, if the content is good enough, they might share it.

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   Dressage Husbandposted 9 years ago

   I have not yet had enough time on Hubpages to find out, but I would link them in groups as that worked for me at Squidoo. The other thing whenever a Hub or Lens got locked or unfeatured I will always look at it and try and edit to see what is wrong.
   
   Often like others said it was nothing, just normal traffic fluctuations. I have also tried changing where the Hub is placed within HP this often creates more interest and traffic as it gets shown on different featured Hubs then.
   
   As long as the topic chosen was one of interest I would keep mking little changes and the grouping is one that I personally would try. It will not hurt and it may make all the difference. In SEO and IM it is the little things that make a difference just like the butterfly in the forest (whose wings fluttering lead to hurricanes elsewhere!).

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   Lisa HWposted 9 years ago

   This is more story than most people probably want to read, but the main point is to be careful about being too quick to delete unfeatured stuff (or just stuff that doesn't do all that well right now), and be careful about thinking that what someone else says they do seems like what you should do as well.  Maybe people who weren't here at "the height of the "stellar revolution" (months after "the first big Panda" in 2011) wouldn't run into the whole, complicated, kind of deal that I did (and learned from).  Either way, here's the story of my regrets....
   
   My account (the one under this name, and my main one, is pretty much the dregs of whatever I've written on HubPages at this point; but I regret having deleted as many of my older Hubs as I did when a) "stellar" and the Apprenticeship Program were "the big thing" on here, and cutting my own traffic and earnings down dramatically as a result of it.  This account has had at least 400 Hubs come through it, and I have a five-year-old account that I started with a certain thing in mind, mostly didn't bother with, but wrote, I think, four Hubs (three of which I've since deleted).
   
   As things have transpired since the big emphasis on "stellar" was first happening, it turns out that some of what I thought didn't fit on the site either eventually would or else could have easily been fixed up to make them more acceptable.  Then when the Squidoo thing went on things changed yet again.
   
   As it is right now, I don't think two of my Hubs have the same issue, but the same x percent of them that have always earned the most and gotten the most traffic are still the same ones. The trouble most of them are not my best writing and pretty much none of them comes anywhere close to being stellar.  I have some that I won't remove because they've been stolen, and I'd rather not give them to whoever stole them (no matter how bad they are, and particularly because some had still been earning a little bit).  I have some that need better titles but otherwise might sort of be reasonably OK.  I have a few that need more stuff added to them (which I may do).  Then, too, some are subjects that I don't think lend themselves well to the whole thing about "no big blocks of text", or even lend themselves well to images-for-the-sake-of-images.  Also, since we can't change our user name, and since this user name (for what is is or isn't worth) is well established in terms of the Hubs that are left), and since I'm in the process of phasing out this user name and "starting new" under the other account; there's an added complication.
   
   As of relatively recent times I have about 10/11 Hubs that are not featured for lack of engagement.  When unfeaturing was "first invented" on here my automatic thing was to just delete the relative few that were unfeatured.  After discovering that wildly deleting had been a mistake I became more reluctant.
   
   My account here has always been "an experiment" in a lot of ways, and these days I've been kind of seeing what happens.  For now, those older (and sometimes "dregs" and hardly-stellar, but informative (I suppose) ) Hubs are what continue to earn me the occasional payment here.  I looks like it's about every three months these days, although my traffic is higher since "the Squiidoo thing" than it was before.
   
   What I think my aim is now is to use the other account for "straight, as close to stellar as possible, information" Hubs and then delete most of what remains unfeatured, leave either what earns me money because it gets some traffic (even if it looks like crud) or because it's fairly new and may eventually get some traffic (I only have one or two of those, I think); and then maybe, before I completely phase away from this account  - or at least mostly phase away from it - add a couple/few "experimental type" Hubs of one sort or another, mainly just to see what happens with them.  I don't plan to do any experimenting at all on the other account.  Since it is more openly tied to my real name, I'll approach that one differently.  With seven years invested in this particular account, though, I think it may make some sense to (possibly) take advantage of any "being-well-established" (on here or with my Google author profile-thing; and at least in terms of not being a spammer or otherwise a fly-by-nighter, or whatever); and then do some experimenting with increasing the volume of what's on this account while trying to add writing that's higher quality while also being in "reasonable keeping" with what is now being encouraged on this site.
   
   I think, though, who deletes what can depend on how much time and old stuff (that's getting even some traffic) the user account has been up ;and running.  My "dregs" problem is partly (largely) because I came from "the olden days" of HP, but also because I've got seven years' worth of experimenting with approaching Hubs without a lot of emphasis on "the whole SEO/article-maketing/product-marketing thing".  I don't think any two Hubbers necessarily should follow the same "guidelines" when it comes to what stays and what goes.  I just know that for my particular purposes the only thing I ultimately plan to keep, or put, on this site is something that is going to get some traffic on its own, something that I think makes both the site and me (as a writer) look reasonably good and/or maybe something that I think offers unique information/insight and that I want to reach an audience with, whether or not it does well earnings-wise).  (For now, I'm pretty much making both myself and the site look "iffy"   , but I'll clean up the dregs factor in the near future.      )
   
   In any case, I do think people need to be very careful/conservative with deleting stuff that is unfeatured, or just stuff in general.  When it comes down to it, it can be a very individual thing, whether that's Hubber-by-Hubber or Hub-by-Hub (which is why I still have x percent "miscellaneous-problem dregs" that I'm not sure what, if anything, to do about.  I know they're dragging my account down, but I'm not sure how much better an almost emptied out account with a handful; of sort-of-traffic-getting "dregs" would do (rather than, say, adding a bunch of really high-quallity Hubs from here on and seeing what  at least x percent of the unfeatured stuff does/doesn't do).    (One thing I did when I premature deleted SOME Hubs was to post the stuff somewhere else, which means it would now be a big deal to make some changes to some of those, remove them from wherever they are, and put them back on here.)  If I hadn't done such a hack job on this account I would probably today at least be receiving a pay every two months, probably even month (which is peanuts but truly 100% passive income, and which wouldn't have been a bad "base" on which to build an overall higher-quality, collection of Hubs from here.  For now, I have my own (temporary) reasons for leaving the unfeatured Hubs visible to "whoever".  For what it's worth, whatever traffic I do get to the featured ones is generally from Google or  the occasional other search engine), so I'm apparently not completely blackballed for the "dregs factor" or for the "horrible-scores/numbers factor".   

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      Barbara Kayposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      I deleted a lot of hubs when the unfeatured thing first came out and my earnings also went down. I wonder if it is the right thing to do. Some of those hubs might be earning well if they had aged.

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   Arachneaposted 9 years ago

   I noticed today that the hub I've been working in but haven't published is already clocking page views just from my editing efforts. So, it's possible unfeatured hubs may recognize impressions.

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      colorfuloneposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      Was that a unFeatured hub you were working in and didn't publish? That is curious, if so.

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         Arachneaposted 9 years agoin reply to this

         It's not been published yet, so it can't be featured.

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            colorfuloneposted 9 years agoin reply to this

            That is even more curious, to me. There has to be a reason.
            Do you think it is an HP bot that checks on newly added content?

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      NateB11posted 9 years agoin reply to this

      My understanding is that when you view your Hub it is registered as a view.

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         Arachneaposted 9 years agoin reply to this

         I see. Even though it has not been published - ever?

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            NateB11posted 9 years agoin reply to this

            Yes, even before it's published. By the way, if you use Google Analytics, you can set a filter on the stats so that they don't count views coming from your IP address. That way you get a more accurate view of how many people visit your site. Kind of an aside, but thought I'd throw that out there.

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               The Examiner-1posted 9 years agoin reply to this

               I have several Hubs that I started and they all have zero views.

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    misterhollywoodposted 9 years ago

    Interesting conversation. I would try to correct whatever the issue is. I had a hub "not featured" because of too many outbound links. I cleaned it up and it seems to be going fine.

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    brakel2posted 9 years ago

    I wish it was possible not to count your own views in HP statistics, as it confuses new hubbers and inflates views.

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    aerospacefanposted 9 years ago

    I agree - I get confused too!

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