Horrified to see so many of my hubs unfeatured

1. 78

   Bard of Elyposted 8 years ago

   I haven't been here much lately because I have a 'proper' job now but just posted a new hub. I was checking my account and see more hubs no longer featured than ever before. My traffic is way down too. What has happened in my absence?
   
   I still get payments from this site so think it is the best of the revenue sharing websites but today's visit is very depressing!

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      TIMETRAVELER2posted 8 years agoin reply to this

      The guidelines have changed significantly in recent months, so it would be best to take the time to read the info in the Learning Center to find out what has transpired.
      
      In many cases, unfeaturing is the result of too many ads, ads that do not meet the word limitations, self promotion and other such issues.
      
      HP is fighting for its life and is trying to limit featuring articles that do not or no longer meet Google's guidelines (or their own).
      
      I rarely go unfeatured but I have the time to check and update regularly and often will remove articles myself because I see that they are failing.
      
      This is why I try to limit myself to around 100 hubs.  Otherwise, it would be too hard to maintain them.

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         TIMETRAVELER2posted 8 years agoin reply to this

         By the way, you seem to have a good bit of self promotional information on your Profile.  This could be part of your problem.

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            Bard of Elyposted 8 years agoin reply to this

            Thanks for your replies and explaining. sadly I do not have time to be tweaking all my many hubs.

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               Rochelle Frankposted 8 years agoin reply to this

               Sometimes just changing a word or two in the intro or title gets them re-featured quickly. You might want to try it on a few old favorites-- especially if they were traffic-getters.

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                  Bard of Elyposted 8 years agoin reply to this

                  I have found that to be the case before and just tweaked a few but there are so many now.

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      peachpurpleposted 8 years agoin reply to this

      you have to be active, editing hubs with new text and pics. I used to have 12 hubs unfeatured, now all of them are featured because I am here daily

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         Marisa Wrightposted 8 years agoin reply to this

         Completely unnecessary, peachpurple.  If you're doing that, then you're not making the best use of your time.
         
         It would be much more efficient simply to check your account daily, and IF a Hub gets unFeatured, THEN do an edit if you feel it's fixable.  Being unFeatured for a day or two won't hurt your Hub so it's not worth putting in daily effort to prevent something that may never happen.

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         Thelma Albertsposted 8 years agoin reply to this

         I am not here everyday but I check every now and then and edit if I have unfeatured hub. Just like now. I have one to be edited, to be featured again.

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      MikeSyrSuttonposted 8 years agoin reply to this

      That has happened to all of us. They won't stop taking hubs that are featured and "unfeaturing" them. I don't even get 10% of the traffic that I did 3 years ago! HP is self destructing fast. What can we do? Fill out that survey and leave strong comments. I left a 1 out of 10 and explained why rather harshly.
      we authors need to stand together and make our disappointment clear!

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         Jodahposted 8 years agoin reply to this

         I have found quite a few hubs that have always been featured suddenly no longer featured due to engagement..a few of these are seasonal so when Christmas comes around again etc I will touch up and reshare. One hub however was no longer featured due to quality after being featured for over a year. I removed links under photos, one Amazon advertisement, added one word to the title, about 50 words extra text..now refeatured and also now my highest scoring hub with two red up arrows for increased traffic.

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   LuisEGonzalezposted 8 years ago

   Over 60 % of my hubs are now unfeatured. I too have a full time job and cannot dedicate as much time to my hubs as I wish. However with that said I think it's utterly ridiculous for HP to keep "forcing" authors to practically "live"  on the site and do nothing else but tweak their hubs in order to keep them featured.

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      gmwilliamsposted 8 years agoin reply to this

      OH NO, you write such beautiful hubs, Luis.   Only a few of mine are getting unfeatured.  Well, it is time to refurbish them yet again!

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         MikeSyrSuttonposted 8 years agoin reply to this

         Don't bother. I have tried over 10 times with several hubs, and HP is NOT budging. I used to love this site, but what it has become is a total shame!

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      Thomas Swanposted 8 years agoin reply to this

      Yea, I'm getting piddled off with this too. I edited a bunch of poorly performing hubs recently to stop them getting unfeatured. When I say edited, I mean putting in 2 hours per hub to rewrite, change titles, pictures, and so on. I was hoping to have a few months without having to worry about it. A week later, and now a different one is unfeatured. I can't be expected to dedicate significant hours to this site every month. I'm going to have even less time in future.
      
      I have a lot of high-performing hubs here, but maybe 30% that don't do so well. If Hubpages wants the best of my scrumptious Google Snacks, it has to eat some fruit and veg with it too. Otherwise I'll be looking at other opportunities if/when they arise.

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         Marisa Wrightposted 8 years agoin reply to this

         ....and why did you think that would stop them getting unFeatured?
         
         There are two reasons an already Featured Hub can get unFeatured:
         
         One is quality - but in fact, it's very rare for an existing Featured Hub to be checked for quality, normally it's just ignored by moderators until you edit it again.   
         
         By far the most common one is "lack of engagement" which just means it's not getting enough visitors.   The ONLY solution to that problem is to find ways to improve your search engine traffic (since no other traffic is counted).   If you can't work out how to do that, any other tweaking is just a waste of time.
         
         Unfortunately many of your Hubs are on subjects which people aren't searching for.

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            Thomas Swanposted 8 years agoin reply to this

            They haven't been unfeatured. So as far as I can tell, what I've done is working. The one that was unfeatured was one I haven't edited. It's just annoying because I thought I'd updated all the ones that stood a chance of getting unfeatured in the near future. Now I have to come back and do at least one more.
            
            Thank you, I'm aware of the reasons a hub can get unfeatured. I'll take your opinion on what the entire world is searching for on the internet under advisement.

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               Marisa Wrightposted 8 years agoin reply to this

               How long ago did you edit them?   When you edit a Hub, if it passes the QAP then it will be featured again for several weeks - it gets a second chance to gain traffic, if you like.  So you won't really know if it's worked for a couple of months.
               
               I'm not saying that NO ONE is looking for your topics,but at a glance I'd say they are not heavily searched, and that's the glaring weakness of the unFeaturing system.
               
               Once upon a time, it was possible to earn a consistent income from writing quality Hubs on obscure subjects which aren't heavily searched:  because no one else is writing about them, those Hubs ranked well for the few searches that were made, and the readers you did get were often very appreciative.   The unFeaturing system made those Hub impractical.

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      Lady Loreleiposted 8 years agoin reply to this

      Agree 100% Lous. many articles have a specific period when they are more active and having them knocked out of the search engines is not helping them get featured when they are being searched for. Self defeating!

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         Bard of Elyposted 8 years agoin reply to this

         Yes, it is obvious there will be hubs about news items that are currently searched for at the time they happened but not in later years much. I have ones about forest fires and drought that keep getting unfeatured and I presume this is because this news is out of date. Does this mean old news is not worth having?

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   bluebirdposted 8 years ago

   Yup, things are a-changin'. That's right. I noticed it too.

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      Bard of Elyposted 8 years agoin reply to this

      And not for the better it seems! Sad because I like this site best of all the revenue sharing ones!

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   FatFreddysCatposted 8 years ago

   I just noticed this morning that one of my Hubs had the dreaded "unfeatured for quality" white circle... which was weird cuz I had just edited/tweaked it a few days ago and it had even picked up a small bump in traffic when I shared it out thru the usual channels. Go figure. I just noodled with it some more so we shall see that tomorrow brings for it. (shrugs)

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5. 91

   Jodahposted 8 years ago

   HP seems to be unfeaturing hubs more often. About a month ago Inoticed about 12 of my hubs with the half circle symbol..not featured due to engagement. I updated all of them and they were re-featured. Yesterday another two suffered the same fate. I am working on getting them back up now. If you are away from the site for long you are bound to find this has happened when you return. It seems we are being encouraged to keep updating and improving.

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      Bard of Elyposted 8 years agoin reply to this

      My problem here has always been that there is nothing wrong with the hubs to start with, and in fact I have had hubs unfeatured, made some very tiny tweak and at some point later they have become Editor's Choice. I really do not understand what rules are being used to unfeature hubs! It often looks like someone has gone through my hubs and unfeatured some and left others in a very random way.

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         janderson99posted 8 years agoin reply to this

         Purely and simply hubs get unfeatured (half circle) if traffic falls below a threshold - nothing to do with quality, but HP assumes hubs get little traffic because Google 'does not like them'.

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         Jodahposted 8 years agoin reply to this

         There wasn't anything wrong with my hub either. It usually isn't a quality issue, just traffic (engagement) or lack thereof. Even just changing one word in the title often gets a hub re-featured so it's all rather superficial.

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            Bard of Elyposted 8 years agoin reply to this

            Yes, I have found that too, that changing a few words gets a hub featured again!

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         Marisa Wrightposted 8 years agoin reply to this

         Bard,  you DO know the rules for unFeaturing Hubs perfectly well.
         
         I'd bet that 99% of your unFeatured Hubs have been unFeatured for lack of engagement.  THAT JUST MEANS THEY'RE NOT GETTING ENOUGH TRAFFIC.  It really is that simple.   It says NOTHING about the quality of the Hub, and that's why it's possible for one of them to be unfeatured one week and Editor's Choice the next.
         
         You may think lack of traffic is a loony reason for unFeaturing a Hub and I don't disagree with you - but it's a HubPages rule and that's that.
         
         You can give those Hubs another chance by editing them, then they'll get Featured again - but if you don't do something to improve their traffic, then it'll be a waste of time, because eventually they'll go unFeatured again for lack of traffic.
         
         You know some of your Hubs have always struggled to get traffic because they're on obscure subjects, and for those it's very unlikely you can improve traffic no matter what you do - so those are, frankly, lost causes.  The only thing you could do is move them somewhere that doesn't have an unFeaturing system.

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            Bard of Elyposted 8 years agoin reply to this

            A lot of my Tenerife ones have been unfeatured. Tenerife appears to be something that goes against them getting traffic. I suppose the bigger holiday sites take all the traffic.
            
            I am seriously thinking of starting a new blog site just so I can move a lot of my hubs that get unfeatured there. It will be a lot of work though and I have a paid job I am busy with.

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               Marisa Wrightposted 8 years agoin reply to this

               Remember if you want any traffic at all, a blog must specialise. So your Tenerife Hubs will need their own blog with Tenerife in the name.

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                  Bard of Elyposted 8 years agoin reply to this

                  Yes, you are right. I realised that after I had posted. It will mean several new blogs if I do this.

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                     Jean Bakulaposted 8 years agoin reply to this

                     I just check Unfeatured hubs for any outdated info, though usually that doesn't change much, as I write evergreen hubs. I used to have several links to other hubs that related to the one the reader was on, but now HP has done that. Or at least they mention two of your other hubs at the bottom, (or the Group feature does that) and then on the side there are about 5 hubs which may or may not be about similar topics as your hub. If you are lucky, one or two are. Also, you can't link to any of your work or blogs you wrote anyplace else, I've gotten hit for that. We aren't allowed to promote our work here anymore, so you can put a link to another blog of yours, but it won't work, although others can read the URL and go to it if they want.
                     
                     Normally all my hubs are featured, but very few are Editor's Choice, and I could never figure out why. I think maybe it's my use of pictures, but Pixabay and other photo sites don't have a lot of choices for metaphysical subjects. Good luck.

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                        Bard of Elyposted 8 years agoin reply to this

                        What exactly isn't allowed when it comes to promoting our work besides links? I mean I have hubs about my music and about my books. Isn't this OK any more?  And in our profiles are we allowed to mention media achievements and where we have been published etc or is this too promotional now? I am confused!

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                           Marisa Wrightposted 8 years agoin reply to this

                           You are allowed to link to any site that's relevant to the Hub. What's not allowed is to openly promote your services. I think Jean had a problem because she was linking to her blog to offer readings.
                           
                           You are not supposed to have links on your profile,  but since very few people see your profile, I don't that think Hubpages polices it much

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                              Bard of Elyposted 8 years agoin reply to this

                              That is OK then because I do not do this. Thanks for explaining!

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   thumbi7posted 8 years ago

   I faced the same problem when I came back after a break.  I have given links to others' hubs under the same topic in some of my hubs. They got immediately featured again.
   But they are not making much difference in traffic

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      Bard of Elyposted 8 years agoin reply to this

      Maybe I should try that.

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   paolaenergyaposted 8 years ago

   That's very interesting to learn about this issue - so, if I understand correctly, HP wants all of us to share our own content as much as possible (therefore doing HP a favour in terms of it domain authority) in order to keep our content featured.
   
   I don't mind that, but as some of you said, not everybody has the time to constantly share content and update it to ensure it keeps its "featured" status.
   
   Shall we propose to HP to send us an email to warn us BEFORE they decide to unfeature a hub? It would save us all a lot of time and effort.

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8. 84

   Good Guyposted 8 years ago

   Yes, this is a real pain.  But I always tweaked them to make them featured again.  Right now the most depressing thing is the low pageviews.  Mine has nosedived to 50% of my previous record.  This is most depressing and has affected my motivation to write further.  Of course my earnings likewise reduced by that amount too!!

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      Bard of Elyposted 8 years agoin reply to this

      I have been tweaking away today!

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         paolaenergyaposted 8 years agoin reply to this

         Good luck! I am sure you will see an improvement in your stats.

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         paradigm searchposted 8 years agoin reply to this

         To tweak? Or not to tweak? That is the question.
         
         'Tis better to have tweaked and lost than to have never tweaked at all.
         
         A tweak in time saves nine.
         
         Yep. I, too, am a known tweaker and it has served me well.

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            DzyMsLizzyposted 8 years agoin reply to this

            LOL paradigm--as long as you're not a twerker..   

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               paradigm searchposted 8 years agoin reply to this

               I saw a youtube of that sometime back. Oh my, thought I.
               
               I also wouldn't be surprised if the DEA dropped by, what with tweaking sometimes being an alternate spelling of tweeking.

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                  DzyMsLizzyposted 8 years agoin reply to this

                  (Giggle)

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   makingamarkposted 8 years ago

   The main thing is NOT to assume anything is wrong with your hub
   Plus make sure you make a webarchive copy before you make any changes
   
   I've adopted the principle that if a hub is unfeatured or unpublished then the content is removed from HubPages.  Also if one hub in a series is ditched by HubPages then I work through the process of removing all the hubs from that series.
   
   I'm moving content to either an archive or my own sites and it's being republished there (once the old hub has been expunged from Google's records) - where it then gets lots of traffic
   
   The thing is, if you put it on one of your own sites you at least know you're not going to have to rework it for another change of rules in a few weeks time.

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    jackclee lmposted 8 years ago

    There is nothing wrong with HP unfeaturing some hubs periodically. That is what is designed to do. If a hub is not getting traffic, it probably is not interesting to the general public. As a huber, I want to know if my hubs are not featured for lack of traffic. Over time, you will learn what is important to readers. I also found it is easy to get featured again just be editing the hub a little and republish. It takes a day and it usually get featured again.

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       Jean Bakulaposted 8 years agoin reply to this

       Hi Marisa,
       Nice to see you. I still have the URL of my blog in my profile, but it's not a link that can be clicked on. I have a lot going on and decided to let the blog lay fallow for now, I'm moving my better pieces to here, as I don't know where else to put them. I've never made money on a personal blog.
       
       I don't want to sound snobby, but I see a lot of badly written hubs here, and think I am a good writer. I know some of my hubs are long, but I like to cover my subjects, and I have split them into parts. I even made the paragraphs smaller for people who don't like to read. Why do so many people have many Editor's Choice hubs, and I only have 3 (which has been knocked down to 2)? I've been changing pictures, it's really hard to find them for metaphysical subjects, and the "suggestions" seem to want 3 pictures per hub. I've always argued this is a writer's site, not a photography or recipe one. (though I admit some of those recipes look really good)!

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          Jodahposted 8 years agoin reply to this

          I too wonder about the Editor's Choice hubs Jean. I have three but the most recent is about two years old and I am a much better writer now and I think my hubs have improved a lot, even my use of photos etc. I have no idea how to write a hub anymore that is suitable for Editor's Choice obviously. Unless they have changed the requirements from what they used to be. I almost always meet all the ticks when completing hubs etc.

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             Jean Bakulaposted 8 years agoin reply to this

             Hi Jodah,
             They do often change the rules without telling us. I feel like I've learned a lot since I began writing here too. I'm not saying I'm a great writer, but compared to some of the EC hubs I see, I know many of mine are better. It's so confusing, and gets discouraging at times. But I always come back, because there aren't too many good writer's sites anymore.
             
             I had articles on Infobarrel, but there doesn't seem to be a way to delete them, even though I wrote to the administration many times. I don't see anyplace where it says when you publish there it becomes their property. I'm now moving everything here, because it's too time consuming to be writing in different places, and here is the only place I made a little money, I never wrote enough on other sites. It is easier here. On some sites, you have to go through the whole approval process again if you correct a typo! So HP does have good points.

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                Bard of Elyposted 8 years agoin reply to this

                I moved some hubs to InfoBarrel years back but never made anything there and haven-t bothered with the site. It isn't good if you cannot remove your work though if you want to.

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    makingamarkposted 8 years ago

    Basically I avoid editing hubs. That's because my experience to date suggests this is not a good idea.
    
    Of the 8 hubs I edited recently, 50% have been subsequently unfeatured for quality. (These are for the most part hubs which have been around for a long time and have never ever presented a problem to Google.)
    
    However since 1 of those is part of a series of 8 hubs, HubPages unfeaturing that one hub will mean I now remove all eight from this site and move it to one of my new websites
    
    I'm sure HubPages thinks it knows what it is doing
    
    However it would do well to ponder on the fact there is now a considerable body of evidence which suggests Google sends more traffic to the content that HubPages thinks need to be unfeatured (according to HP rules) AFTER it leaves the HubPages site.  In my book Google rules and if I have to choose I choose to play according to their rules only.

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    Ibiza Styleposted 8 years ago

    how many people have moved away and put their content on their own sites?
    
    this will be hubpages loss, IMO they dont have the faintest idea "what Google wants.." and any site that spends all its time trying to please Google's latest "advice" (propaganda and FUD) has already lost the fight
    
    it should be fairly obvious to everybody here that your hubs have to not only be featured, but be THE hub that Google rate most relevant on that subject in the WHOLE of hubpages, to actually show up for that kw search.
    
    if you do this search, site:hubpages.com  my keywords   
    
    ..and your site is not pos 1 within hubpages, then Google aren't showing it at all for that kw, and will not, until you are the best ranking page within hubpages for it.  ..once that happens then you get it all.
    
    there are no (Google) points for second place here. 
    
    I once had a detailed hub up on another account here explaining how to outrank hubpages competitors, but its been unfeatured lol, and is their loss.

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    lobobrandonposted 8 years ago

    Steve if your hubs aren't receiving enough traffic then they tend to get unfeatured. I have no clue what the threshold is, because a hub with 2 views a month still remains featured.

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       Bard of Elyposted 8 years agoin reply to this

       I just can't seem to get enough traffic here despite the quality of my hubs and I find it very frustrating, though I am sure I am hardly alone with this problem.

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          lobobrandonposted 8 years agoin reply to this

          The one hub I spoke about with just 2 views the past month, that's one of the best hubs I've ever written. So I totally understand what you mean. The others which are doing well, I'm not really proud of them "quality" wise.

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          Marisa Wrightposted 8 years agoin reply to this

          Quality is irrelevant, the question is whether people are searching on Google for your topics, AND how many other sites are providing the same (or better) information.  If people are not searching for that topic, you won't get traffic.   If there are lots of other sites providing the same information, you won't get traffic.

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             Bard of Elyposted 8 years agoin reply to this

             I can see that you are right and this is why a lot of my hubs fail despite their quality. It feels like a waste of time and was a product of my blind optimism at the time.

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    Enelle Lambposted 8 years ago

    I have been away from HP for quite a while, content to accept my meager pittance every few months or so. Then I decided to post another hub and was appalled at how many of my hubs were not featured. It has taken a week of constant tweaking, rewriting and in some cases unpublishing hubs to bring them back to featured status.
    I had to unpublish one, then copy and paste it into a "new" hub just to get rid of an incoming link (to a non existent site) that I could not delete.
    I have also noticed that the amazon capsules will only show one result at a time and if you have "too many" capsules the hub becomes "spammy".
    Wow...you get a 'job' and stop writing for a while and look what happens! LOL

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       Bard of Elyposted 8 years agoin reply to this

       Yes, that is like what has happened with me. I got a proper paid job so spent a lot of time on it away from here but when I returned to HP I found loads of my hubs unfeatured. Looks like you have to put in regular time here or this happens.

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    Snakesmumposted 8 years ago

    It's difficult to know just what is expected of us these days.     Yesterday I edited four of my hubs, and added one link to each of them, to a website giving more information.
    
    Today, three of these hubs had been unfeatured for quality.    They have always passed the QAP before, and there are no more than two links plus two Amazon capsules on each one, so I am stumped.
    
    It's going to be a long time before I make payout unless things improve drastically, so moving or deleting some of the hubs is looking more tempting at present.   
    
    Reading this thread, it's obvious I'm not the only person with this problem though.   Guess it's nice not to be alone!  :-)

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    makingamarkposted 8 years ago

    Somebody asked how many people have moved content. The answer with respect to ex-Squidoo people is a LOT of people have moved a lot of good quality content. They've also deleted a lot of content in the way that you do when making a decision about where to prioritise effort. Many of them are people who have had top ranking lenses within Squidoo and know how to write good content.
    
    Many of them now have new websites and blogs which get a lot of traffic. So much for HubPages second guessing what Google wants to have in its index.
    
    I think the point made above about there being no prizes for "second place" when writing a hub on a specific topic on HubPages is a very good one.

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       Marisa Wrightposted 8 years agoin reply to this

       Leaving aside the question of HubPages' rules, I agree that the point about there being "no prizes for second place" is a good one.    It was NOT always a problem - and in this case, it's not HubPages' fault that it is a problem now.
       
       When the sub-domains were originally launched, they were each treated as a separate domain by Google.  That's why they worked - each sub-domain stood on its own merits and was ranked separately.  We were often told this couldn't possibly be the case, that wasn't how Google treated sub-domains - but the results spoke for themselves.
       
       Google has changed the way it handles sub-domains several times, but each time it didn't seem to upset the "separateness" of sub-domains - until one of the more recent updates. I can't even recall when it was, but it's since Squidoo was merged.  Since that update it appears that sub-domains are no longer being treated separately by Google - suddenly our individual Hubs all in competition with each other within HubPages.  This is far more of a problem for Hubbers than any of the ther changes that have occurred.

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          makingamarkposted 8 years agoin reply to this

          Well that would explain why traffic did not increase after the merger with Squidoo
          
          In a way you can see Google's viewpoint. If you merge two article sites then you're bound to get a lot of similar articles.
          
          It also explains why traffic from Google rockets for those authors of sound content who remove their content from HubPages and put it on another (non-article) site which complies with Google's rules.
          
          So, hypothetical question, if some/most/all (take your choice) of the authors of good quality content move if off HubPages in order to get traffic, where does that leave HubPages?

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             Mark Ewbieposted 8 years agoin reply to this

             What I don't understand is why you keep on spouting the same message?
             
             Is it your aim to get people to move off HP?
             Are you 'helping' people by telling them about the wonderful world out there?
             
             I just don't see the point of it.  Once, fifty times maybe, but forever with the same message?
             
             If you are doing so great - that's wonderful.  You might as well leave this place to fester.
             
             Seriously I would love to know your motivation.  It seems a complete waste of time to me.  Maybe there is some clever marketing angle to it.

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                makingamarkposted 8 years agoin reply to this

                Mark - I don't know about you but I certainly don't read every comment left in every thread and I also don't visit the forums every day. So it seems to me some repetition of a very basic point is, I think, in order.  For some people it will be a new message. (I think we will also agree there are several basic messages that are repeated ad infinitum on these forums - or others associated with this place)
                
                However you're probably right - I have been saying it too much of late so if it's boring the whatever off people I do apologise.
                
                Sorry to disappoint - it's no great marketing mystery.  It''s just that I've been a business analyst all my career (prior to retirement) and I continue to be really perplexed as to why HubPages seems to want to repeat the Squidoo death spiral (i.e. making changes which don't IMO address the real issues of the current context).  The experience of what has been happening of late on HubPages is very familiar to some of us.

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                   Mark Ewbieposted 8 years agoin reply to this

                   OK cool - and sorry for mentioning it.  I do read the forums and they get a bit samey.
                   
                   My bad.
                   
                   Carry on!

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             Marisa Wrightposted 8 years agoin reply to this

             Yes, I think it does explain it.  I've been digging in my memory banks and now recall that unfortunately that critical change in Google's attitude to sub-domains occurred just after the Squidoo transfer - so we will never be sure if the traffic drop was caused by the influx of Squidoo articles or the transformation of the sub-domains back into one big site. 
             
             So yes, I think that does explain why transferred articles do better on a completely separate blog.  The challenge for most people is not understanding how to monetize, so even though they could get more traffic elsewhere, they would probably earn less money.

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                makingamarkposted 8 years agoin reply to this

                Marisa - your point about the Google sub-domain change is plausible but needs evidence to be a sound conclusion.
                
                I'm trying to think of what other sub-domains I know which might have been affected by the change in attitude to sub-domains and the Google change last year.
                
                The most obvious one is my main blog which sits on a Blogger sub-domain. That Google change had absolutely no impact on any of my blogs.
                
                I'm wondering if anybody else can think of sub-domains which also saw an impact from the Google sub-domain change
                
                I also agree that the main challenge is monetisation. However that's a challenge for everybody in the era of the adblocker!  Something very big is going down in advertising right now - and I don't think anybody knows the answer - other than the advertising landscape in 12 months time will be very different from the one today - ergo it would be unwise to build a business model on advertising income alone.
                
                To my mind Amazon works but only when located within a sound website where any products are obviously related to a lot of good content. To my mind that works better when pages are broken out so they are more focused and products can be better tailored to content.

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                   Marisa Wrightposted 8 years agoin reply to this

                   It's all a bit academic now so I don't have the energy or time to dig back to the relevant research and discussions that occurred at the time, sorry!
                   
                   As you say, Blogger.com and Wordpress.com sub-domains have always been, and still are, treated as individual blogs by Google, so why would it change for HubPages?   Who knows, but ever since 2011 I've had plenty of "experts" tell me the sub-domains on HubPages should NEVER have worked, because our sub-domains are so heavily interlinked with each other - a strong signal to Google that our sub-domains were not true independent blogs but a multi-author single site.   
                   
                   It's true that blogs on Wordpress.com, Blogger etc have no automatic interlinking with each other so I guess it was a fair point, but the fact is that up until the time of the Squidoo merger, we really did seem to be separate - it was obvious from the way each sub-domain had its own traffic fluctuations.  I don't know what changed with the Google update at the time of the merger, but suddenly the majority of Hubbers showed a consistent drop in traffic across the board.  If our sub-domains were still working as they did, then the Squidoo migration shouldn't have affected our traffic at all.

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                      NateB11posted 8 years agoin reply to this

                      Yes, and I was doing well before that merger. Clearly something happened at that time and it became hard to tell if it was the content from Squidoo that wrecked traffic or the Google update. It seems to me it was a combination of both.

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                      EricDockettposted 8 years agoin reply to this

                      But one more thing HP has done since the Squid merger is increase the amount and visibility of the interlinking between Hubs. Look at the mass of links in the sidebar.
                      
                      Furthermore, HP appears to be trying to shuffle visitors around the site in an effort to get readers to discover different content or something. This means, as of the past several months, an individual author sees fewer of their own Hubs appearing in the Related Hubs section, and more Hubs that would otherwise never see the light of day if they weren't linked to Hubs that get search traffic. If you write in a niche this is tremendously frustrating.
                      
                      I suppose the idea is that eventually, due to the QAP process, all indexed Hubs will be of decent quality and therefore will not hurt good Hubs when they are linked. However, that is a risky bet to make considering how much low-quality content still exists here.
                      
                      If we think of quality Hubs and subdomains as floats and poor-quality subdomains as weights, when they are all heavily interlinked the string might float at top of the water very nicely. However, there is also a good chance that the weights will drag the whole thing to the bottom, especially since that's how Panda is supposed to work.
                      
                      What do I know, but that seems like reasonable explanation as for why our subdomains no longer seem to have as much individual clout. To me it seems smarter to link the floats together and remove the weights from search visibility. That was the mission of 2013/2014, but it seems to have been largely abandoned in 2015 in favor of HubPro editing.

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                         NateB11posted 8 years agoin reply to this

                         I think that's a very accurate metaphor to explain what most likely is happening, especially considering what Panda does to whole sites.

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    Ibiza Styleposted 8 years ago

    with 21 million+ links to hubpages.com showing on majestic I dread to think of the number of links in  to (now unfeatured) hubs.  this will not do the site's overall authority and hence rankings on any hubs still left, much good either. 
    
    I run the SEO on several large sites and rule number one for devs is NEVER NEVER NEVER delete pages without asking/telling us, because if they have important links into them, they are torpedoing the whole site by doing so.
    
    for example, there is a very big link to this url,
    
    http://hubpages.com/hub/Mobile-TV-Elite … bile-phone
    
    but hubpages appear to be serving up 404s to massive authority links inbound, then wondering why their performance is fading..?
    
    jus sayin.

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       makingamarkposted 8 years agoin reply to this

       what's "majestic"?

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          Ibiza Styleposted 8 years agoin reply to this

          majestic . com  industry standard link analysis tool

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    makingamarkposted 8 years ago

    That's interesting (as I sit here working my way through blog posts changing the links re basic content which is now in its 3rd home on a new website)!
    
    That means unfeaturing hubs might have more of a negative impact than a positive one!

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       Ibiza Styleposted 8 years agoin reply to this

       I'm pretty certain it hurts them more than it helps. content is almost immaterial to rankings, despite the Gorg's endless propaganda. 
       
       ..whereas randomly deleting years old hubs with big links into them by the thousands.. that really will matter given a little time.

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    makingamarkposted 8 years ago

    The issue re. the sidelinks made by EricDockett is really interesting.
    
    On Squidoo I had six links on every lens where I could determine the side column links. Given I made lenses in clusters every single lens linked out to every other lens in the cluster - ergo my lenses looked more like they were made by a single author
    
    The more HubPages HQ includes side links to other wholly unrelated hubs (ie not by me and not on topics which are the same as the one I'm writing about), the more they make it look like a multi-author article site where no author is viewed as in any way independent - hence they cannot earn status in their own right (as happens under sub-domains on a blog running on (say) Blogger.
    
    That makes it very easy for Google to view this site as a content farm - and we all know what Google thinks of those!

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       EricDockettposted 8 years agoin reply to this

       I have been lobbying for user control of the Related Hubs section for a while. Something like Squidoo used to have, as you mentioned. As you can see, I haven't had much success.
       
       I have a niche sub with over 150 Hubs on a topic. On my own Hubs, if I am lucky I will see two of my other Hubs in the Related section. At the bottom, of course. Sometimes the system throws in Hubs by other Hubbers with nearly the exact same title as one I have on my account. This drives me absolutely batty.
       
       It's not a matter of selfishness, though it does bug me to see my search traffic siphoned elsewhere. There are good reasons to send visitors to more Hubs by the same author.
       
       For one, if someone reads your Hub and likes it, it seems only logical to send them to another Hub by the same author. Instead, HP spins the wheel and hopes the reader lands on another author they like. Doesn't that just increase the chances of poor reader experience?
       
       When users jump from sub to sub everybody's on-page time and bounce rate suffers. While Google says they don't use analytics data to decide ranking, surely they use something similar.  Again, that just seems logical. When users arrive at a subdomain and stay, that has to look better than when they click over to another sub.
       
       The way HP manages on-page links has made it harder than ever for an individual Hubber to establish or promote their brand. That was something HP used to encourage when I first came here. Now, even if you are successful, they just spread your traffic around to sub-par Hubs.
       
       I still have a lot of faith in this site and its management, so I hope nobody reads my comments as doom and gloom. But the past year has been very, very frustrating, and I sure wish HP would rethink some of its policies.

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          makingamarkposted 8 years agoin reply to this

          I agree with everything you say 100%  - except the last paragraph.
          
          There again I've just been reading (elsewhere) the experience of somebody who has had one of their most popular hubs edited  by HubPages Pro where they were told to REMOVE all links to related hubs by the same author.
          
          I can only think their "research" never included Google's comments about clusters

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    Thomas Swanposted 8 years ago

    Another example came up today where I thought "what if that hub had been unfeatured?". One of my hubs only had 800 views since it was published in 2013. This was a bit strange, as similar hubs I've written have had 100 times the views. Nonetheless, in my experience, this put the hub in the "soon to be unfeatured" category. However, in the last 24 hours it got 180 views from facebook because someone discovered it and shared it in a place where lots of people wanted to see it. I know 180 isn't that great, but it's something that never would have happened if the hub had been unfeatured. The views could still increase further, and this could trigger more recognition of the hub by search engines. What if it had been unfeatured?

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       janderson99posted 8 years agoin reply to this

       This is a classic Pinterest mini-viral. HP wanted to kill it off. Serious traffic, good income but took 2 years.
       
       

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          MikeSyrSuttonposted 8 years agoin reply to this

          You are right on! My google traffic crashed because of HP's policies. Still Pintrest has caused some of my hubs to go viral. My traffic would be dead without that!

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          Thomas Swanposted 8 years agoin reply to this

          Exactly. It's why "unfeatured due to engagement" shouldn't be happening this much. If they're high quality hubs then they're not harming the site anywhere near as much as spammy, barely legible hubs; and there's always the possibility that some sharing could completely and permanently change the level of engagement years down the line.

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       MikeSyrSuttonposted 8 years agoin reply to this

       Thank you! Keep speaking out!

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          Thomas Swanposted 8 years agoin reply to this

          Cheers Mike, will do!

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    Kalmiyaposted 8 years ago

    You can always check out some new options. I recently discovered WeekendNotes and have made my first $50.00 payout in three months (please check my article under my name for all the details). WNs is a very nice, legit, site that pays you to write about local cafes, wineries, events, and activities. They have an awesome awards program that helps you hit payouts through your entire writing career with them. Worth checking out!

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