Unpublished Hubs

1. 72

   William F. Torpeyposted 14 years ago

   Just puzzled: How can an unpublished hub attain a higher score than any published hub? (The published hubs with lower scores must be pretty bad!)

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   1. 62

      SunSevenposted 14 years agoin reply to this

      I'd been wondering about that. Also, when you start a new hub, if you cook it for some time, it will attain a higher score that if you publish it at 50, faster! I have published new hubs at 75.
      Best Regards my old friend.

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      1. 60

         GeneriqueMediaposted 14 years agoin reply to this

         I'm not following you, I swear.
         
         But you're right, there is a correlation to how long it's been cooking, the total length of the hub, etc. that will determine a higher score while still unpublished.
         
         Although, I'm not entirely convinced that some of the hard working staff at HP doesn't go through them...

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   2. 72

      relacheposted 14 years agoin reply to this

      You answered yourself in your question:  "The published hubs with lower scores must be pretty bad!"
      
      I've gotten a few unpublished Hubs as high as the low 80s.  I leave completed Hubs unpublished for a week or two just so I can really fine-tune them.  I don't hit the publish button until the score is in the high 60s or better.

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      1. 80

         earnestshubposted 14 years agoin reply to this

         I think that is a great strategy relache. I check my unpublished score, and if it doesn't rise high enough I edit it adding capsules etc. until it does and then publish.

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      2. 72

         William F. Torpeyposted 14 years agoin reply to this

         I assume HubPages believes the hub to be "pretty bad" if it assigns a low score to the hub; however, many of my hubs have low scores and I do not believe they are bad at all. They may not meet HubPages criteria for what is a good hub, but it all depends on what yardstick you use. Some of my "pretty bad" hubs turn out to be pretty good when they get more traffic and their score rises significantly. How bad can a low-scoring hub be if it can rise significantly without modification?

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         1. 87

            Marisa Wrightposted 14 years agoin reply to this

            William, just because the score is low, doesn't mean the Hub is "bad".   Several factors influence HubScore, and quality of writing is NOT one of them.
            
            If you write a very short Hub, or if it's duplicate content, both those factors will have a strong negative effect. 
            
            HubScore also reflects traffic, so if you write fairly non-commercial Hubs which get only Hubber traffic, your scores will be low.

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            1. 72

               William F. Torpeyposted 14 years agoin reply to this

               It's unfortunate, Marisa, that the quality of writing is not considered important in evaluating hub score. That fact encourages writers to "fluff up" their hubs to raise their scores.
               I understand that many short hubs are mindlessly thrown together and deserve a low score, but an incisive, well-written hub that provides helpful information should not, in my opinion, be punished merely because of the number of words. As they say, the Gettysburg Address -- one of the most memorable in history -- had only 272 words.
               It also is understandable that HubPages favors commercial hubs because it is a commercial enterprise, nevertheless part of HubPages promotion encourages hubbers to write whatever interests them. Low scores on hubs, I would think, encourages hubbers to believe their hubs are undesirable. That would seem to discourage hubbers from writing about "what interests them." Perhaps what is needed is a separate scoring system for noncommercial hubs that would enable hubbers to feel pride in a "short" but well done hub.

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               1. 87

                  Marisa Wrightposted 14 years agoin reply to this

                  Unfortunately, I can't see any way that quality could be considered.  The HubScore is calculated automatically by robots, not by people.  I doubt the HubPages team would have the manpower to manually assess Hubs for quality of writing - and if they did, as in the recent contest, there would be differences of opinion. 
                  
                  In theory, it might be possible to run grammar and spell checkers over Hubs as part of the scoring process, but as you know, they are pretty mindless things and throw up all kinds of silly results at times, so the outcome would be unreliable.

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                  1. 72

                     William F. Torpeyposted 14 years agoin reply to this

                     C'est la vie.

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2. 72

   William F. Torpeyposted 14 years ago

   Hi, SunSeven. Good to hear from an old friend.
   
   I have an unpublished hub I'm nearly ready to publish that has climbed from a score of 52 to, at present, 66, which is higher than the average of all my hubs.
   
   I don't pretend to understand the process, but it appears to me that the hub scores are purposely made to fluctuate as sort of a trial balloons to see whether the higher ranking will help them catch on. Naturally, HubPages wants to get the most out of all those latent hubs that are mired in the lower levels of Hub Land. I believe the hub score has little to do with the intrinsic value of it and everything to do with whether it can be pushed to the top to attract more buyers to the ads.

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   1. 62

      SunSevenposted 14 years agoin reply to this

      Neither do I. But I guess it has to do with the dollar signs!

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3. 57

   ITSecurityAnalystposted 14 years ago

   I also see the same phenomena with my hubs.

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4. 60

   Originposted 14 years ago

   As strange as it sounds, I don't really pay attention to hub scores unless they are abysmal, I just avoid those. I guess it's from having websites for over a decade that I only concentrate on one simple thing, traffic.
   
   Although, I have noticed a bunch of my unpublished pages fluctuating too. I just assumed it was an internal ranking system mechanism, that even unpublished hubs are still a part of. The fluctuating of the score reminds me of riding a wave, if you get high enough you may get snagged (aka enough attention to stay high).

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5. 90

   Urbane Chaosposted 14 years ago

   I have a hub that I haven't published that's been sitting around for awhile.. it has a very low hub score.
   
   On the other hand, I have a hub that I haven't published, but I edit it all the time.  It's a "test" hub, for where I keep information about new tricks and notes I may need later.  Sometimes, I'll edit it for quite awhile, and suddenly the hubscore jumps way up for that hub - especially if I preview it a lot.
   
   I think one of the key things is how active the hub is - published or unpublished. I may be way off, but in my experience here, that seems to be the case.

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