Hubber Score Update
A month ago I announced some updates to HubScore: raw traffic is deemphasized, reader satisfaction is emphasized, and overall, the scores are a more accurate reflection of the quality of Hubs than they used to be. Today, I'd like to talk about the subsequent update to Hubber Score — the score associated with your profile — which will be pretty similar to the HubScore update. The new scores will roll out this afternoon and here are the changes you can expect:
- As with HubScores, traffic is no longer as much of a consideration, but having traffic is still beneficial because reader interaction can be measured more accurately (i.e., more traffic, more data).
- Having many Hubs with spammy elements will damage your score.
- The way readers interact with and consume your Hubs is now a significant factor. Reader interaction includes activities such as the amount of content that gets read, relevant polls and quizzes that engage your readers, thoughtful comments left by readers, etc.
Some of you may see your Hubber Scores drop considerably as a result of this update. Here are a few potential causes:
- If you have at least one Hub that gets traffic, I recommend that you review and improve that Hub. Because reader satisfaction is now weighted more heavily in the scores, it is possible that your one or two top-traffic Hubs are bringing your collective score down, even if the majority of your low-traffic Hubs are high quality.
- If you have many Hubs with spammy elements, they may have significantly contributed to your drop in score. If you remove spammy elements from your Hubs, your score should improve.
- If your score dropped from the 90s to the high 80s, don't fret. A score in the high 80s is well above average (in the 93rd+ percentile)
To further illustrate this last point, take a look at the distribution of Hubber Scores across the site:
That's it for now! Expect to see your new scores later today, and please let us know if you have any questions.96 is still an excellent score!
I have not been active for a few years , when my Hub score was over 90+
but then my poems (20 +) were engaging at the time and I had a lot more traffic and engagement on my hubs compared to now.
So now that the baby has grown and I have some spare time I am back and you have just explained to me some of my worries. I think it is time to consider my hubs carefully so that I can bring that percentile a tad higher.
Thanks for posting this , I could have missed it then be 'buggered' until someone answered my question
.
And as some people have mention above, or below. The Score merely means something to the writer not to others however I would like to bring mine up so I need to start working and leave my 'procrastination mode' .
I love to write, especially my dark-y poems and have loved HP since the very beginning. I must admit, HP is full of most talented of writers and it will be rather difficult to keep up to the standard.
Regards xIf I understand the OP correctly, HP wants us to fine tune our top traffic hubs to ensure that there is satisfactory reader engagement on the page. A hub can get high traffic without necessarily being a high quality page while lower traffic hubs may be of better quality. It does seem to be an odd juxtaposition.
Ah, yes, that is a very good point rebekahElle, thank you. Traffic + Engagement = Stellar Hub. My new mantra.
This afternoon!
And yes, scores below 85 will have their links nofollow (no change).
I'm zero spammy and my readers love me.
Though I'm warming up the rant machine just in case... But according to the graph, we are elite!!!! For now anyway, lol. We shall see.
Lucky you, Solaras. I hope yours stays up. I think I'll write a new hub.
Alas, me and that neverending topic idea brick wall. I don't suppose...???
I'm looking forward to this. I could use a pat on the head these days.I was surprised when I noticed it went from 83 to 89.
Didn't know what to expect.
I see in your post below you went up too.
I wonder if all this new programming had something to do with the site being down for a short while this afternoon.PDS
You have a blogger score in the 90's before you created another account, if I remember...
Hark! I do believe it has happened.
This account jumped from 78 to 82. My other account went from 88 to 93. Happy camper here.LOL, looks like it did.
P.S. I am so excited for the new GoT season to start!Congratulations!
Agreed. If I were to come up with an Amazon/eBay item that actually sold, I'd keep it, too. Believe me, I've tried.
Exactly, it is beyond demotivating. It is immobilizing, even psychologically/psychically paralyzing. These updates have a very deleterious effect upon those whose hubscores dropped significantly, especially to the 70s, 60s, and below. It is analogous to the hubber being given a dunce cap. Such hubbers are going to have their hard earned credibility destroyed, if not ruined. They will no longer be respected. What outside reader is going to read their hubs? It is a very sad state of affairs now at HubPages indeed.
They're going to at least want to get that critter to 85.
Not to mention getting themselves put in more Related Hubs lists.
My hubscore went from a 93 to an...........80. Quite Unbelievable to say the least.
I'm down from an average 96 to a nofollow (whatever that is) 84. Happy Easter everyone
I was so ensconced in my 93 hubscore and then yesterday......................80..................
It is analogous to being cast out of heaven...............into the PITS of hell. No more glory, only.............ignominy..................IGNOMINY of the VERY WORST kind. A total persona non grata. Welcome to.......HELL, where one is no longer a person but ............reduced to UTTER NOTHINGNESS.
No, I am feeling quite venomous RIGHT NOW!
I am.........RUINED.........RUINED.......I tell you............
@HP Any chance of HP updating the http://hubpages.com/my/hubs/violations program to give us more clues?
- RTalloniposted 9 years ago
0 - calculus-geometryposted 9 years ago0
I agree, however, I think banned and flounced members should at least get a point for their dead profiles if they go out if a fiery blaze of glory.
I think you got it right the first time!
Next week's stats will show at least one less hubber who left. I guarantee that!
Well, I don't know that it will help, but rumor has it that the next Panda update will address this very issue from an SE placement standpoint. I for one do NOT want to see my traffic halved yet again because Big G doesn't like the way it looks on a phone. *sigh* A never ending battle, on a forever changing battlefield. And when I signed on I was looking for a passive income I could set up and walk away from.
I definitely agree with this. While I may not agree with everything here (when does everyone agree anyway?) I do have a great deal of respect for HP and their efforts to keep this site going despite the numerous challenges these types of sites have faced in the past few years. HP has withstood and overcome a lot of it and are willing to make some tough choices and I respect that.
I try to be patient and roll with the changes for the most part. If I have an area where I disagree; I state it but try to be respectful about it. The scoring thing I find to be a bit frustrating because I am the type of person that wants to know "what are the specifics and why?" I find that not to be the case with the scores so much and I think that is what troubles a lot of hubbers more than the scores themselves.
That being said, if the scoring is ultimately going to keep HP alive and well (and hopefully restore it to Google's good graces eventually) - good..
I also agree with diversifying content. I have a few niche sites and blogs and they do very well. HP is a great way to supplement that though and I never would put all my "eggs in one basket" as the saying goes. It doesn't make sense to not diversify because we never know what could happen.
Your post got me to wondering... So I decided to do some calculations.
Turns out I didn't have to be a rocket surgeon to figure out HP's approximate monthly revenue versus expenses.
The bad news? Yep, it really would be a good idea for HP to get rid of the author referral program and keep that extra 10% for themselves.
The good news? If there is a monthly net loss, it is a relatively small one. A simple reduction of expenses will give them a positive cash flow any time they want it. They've done it before and know how to do it again. With everything that HubPages has been doing, I don't see Google suddenly being mean to them. And as long as Google isn't mean to them, the Squidoo scenario isn't plausible.
Oh BOY, BOY oh BOY oh BOY............
Wish you the very best of luck in your future endeavors. You will be sorely missed. Many more esteemed hubbers WILL be leaving because of this "change". Great hubbers are having their overall hubscores severely downgraded which is a blow to their reputation as authors on the site. People are not going to tolerate this act and will be leaving in droves, then what is HubPages going to do? Methinks that there is going to be a REVOLUTION among the hubbers-something like a psychic tempest, hmmmm.
gmwilliams, here's a tip for you. I suggest you get out of the habit of putting words you want to stress in caps.
Go to your profile page and look at your hub summaries. There's way too many words in caps. I don't know how often you use them in your hubs, but I strongly suggest that your next 'tweak' on your hubs is to get rid of all those words in capital letters ... especially in your summaries.
I'll bet your hubber score improves significantly when you can look at your profile page without seeing extra emphasis on specific words. (You'll just have to trust readers a bit more. They'll figure out what you're saying without out giving them extra hints.)
Thankyou for your help!.
I will start working on it now.
Hi Jan. I looked at two of your information hubs - both were excellent.
My tip for you would be to make reference to your experience/professional expertise on topics right at the start. Instead of beginning with a general statement about the topic, introduce yourself as an authority figure on the topic. (Which, of course, you are.)
The other word I think that might help you is 'focus'. You need to focus on exactly what you are trying to achieve with each specific hub. One that I read seemed to lose its direction a little ... although the writing was still very good.
I suspect you may be right about your poetry dropping your score, because your info hubs would merit (in my opinion) a higher score than 90. But that really doesn't matter. Individual hubs can stand alone in the world of google.
lol. I guess you didn't look at the hub, csmiravite-blogs. It is not about me hating my dad.
Well, I deleted one of my slacker hubs (hubscore 65) on my other account. Be interesting to see what the Hubber score does when the hub disappears tomorrow.
I, too, would avidly follow the mentioned new LTM thread.Welcome to HP, Gek Aka. I see you've been here for six weeks and are already producing hubs. I wish you every success.
Jean, I really enjoy the way you write!
I haven't read all of your hubs, but I've read quite a few. I think your knowledge is awesome.
I guess the main thing I'd suggest for you (and I know you won't object to me suggesting it, because we're friends) is to create more paragraphs within your capsules. That would make them 'easier to read' and presumably raise their score and hopefully their performance in the search engines.
You know you can always email me if you have one or two you'd specifically like feedback about.TOS or TOU has not been updated since November 18, 2011.
"I read that "lack of engagement" doesn't matter now, but had a half circle on a hub just yesterday. So the admin isn't even up on their own rules."
Where did you read that?
Please provide a link so we can read that too.Hi Jean,
Okey, I see it and understand now. -- "These days, we want HubScore to be mostly a reflection of the quality of a Hub and not the amount of traffic it receives."
What Barbara Kay said above is correct.
Traffic used to be a big part of what hubscores reflected, but hubs can still be defeatured for lack of traffic. More correctly the lack of any search engine traffic, even though a hub may get traffic from other sources, (social sharing sites, blogs, etc.)
That was a big change for hubscores, but the TOS did not change.
Thank you!You're welcome
I agree. Hubpages seems to forget that most writers here aren't fluent in SEO jargon and it would be helpful to many if they took that into account when explaining things. There should be an easier way to catch up with important changes too. Forum posts are easily missed, as are weeks old blog posts. I think it would be easy enough to have a statement and link on the My Account page directing people to the relevant information.
Hello Alternative Prime. I don't think we've crossed paths in the past, so I went to your profile page to learn more about you. (I think that's useful when engaging in conversation with someone new.)
My visit has left me somewhat puzzled. You say you've taught 'advanced writing techniques' (among other things), and yet you seem to have a penchant for being verbose - and using inappropriate capital letters.
Surprised, I counted the words in one sentence ... over 120. Another ... over 150. I didn't bother counting any more.
So I visited one of your hubs and was greeted with a block of text with over 100 words in the opening sentence.
So now I'm wondering just what you meant when you said, 'You’re talking to a successful, authoritative ”Expert Writer” right here Nate'. I was under the impression you considered yourself an expert writer for the internet, but perhaps you were referring to a specific field of writing.
When you insisted earlier in this thread, 'You cannot use “Traditional SEO“, a term which is excessively subjective to say the least, Exemplary Writing Ability, nor Depth of Knowledge to overcome, re-emerge, and rise above, it just doesn’t work within the HP domain', what were you meaning exactly? The HP account linked to your username certainly doesn't follow the best writing techniques associated with attracting search engine traffic - which surprises me, because many of your hub titles should potentially draw a lot of traffic from search engines.
Of course I couldn't see how many hits you've had on your hubs because, as you explained on your profile page, you chose to conceal your 'showcase full of illustrious platinum plated awards' - a very creative way of describing your HP accolades and badges. There's no doubt you're very creative, Alternative Prime ... but I would encourage hubbers to view your style of writing before accepting the conclusions you've highlighted in this thread.
Is your conclusion perhaps drawn from a different HP account where you write in a different style? If not, I suggest you try shortening your sentences, getting rid of the incorrect use of capital letters, and seeing what kind of result you get.
Nice to meet you.Lots of things about HP and the scoring system annoy me, Jodah, and I think we have a right to voice our frustrations.
It doesn't help, however, when people offer unjustified criticism. All AP could possibly hope to achieve on this thread is to shake the confidence of hubbers who don't go to the trouble of looking at his writing before accepting him as any kind of authority.
Mind you, I have to wonder how many hubbers actually went to the trouble of looking at those ghastly hubs we were offered as examples for effectively editing our work. lol.
Have you noticed how many Aussies appear in threads that challenge authority?? I don't know what percentage of hubbers are Australian, but there's lots of us on the forums.
I miss Wry Lilt. The thread Jayne provided reminded me just how much I miss her!Be Afraid ~ Be Very Afraid Jodah ~
You'd better be quick and write that screeenplay AP, before someone steals your great idea.
Let me know when it is time to google for the reviews.
Hi Organised Kaos. Your hubber score is a pretty good label. You obviously deserve it. A million views in just two years is very impressive!
I contributed one view, for what it's worth. I still haven't made it to Tasmania ... but when I do, I'll be reading your hub again.
I agree. I am tired of the guessing game. As long as my income from HP keeps climbing I am going to pay as little attention to the hubber score as possible. That doesn't make it any less annoying, but it helps me rationalize not making a big deal over it.
Hi TimeTraveler2: I remember that forum post. It was from 10 months ago. Since that time, HP has made all of the links in photo capsules "NoFollow", so the problem about distributing link juice was solved, because NoFollow links don't flow PageRank.
That said, you still don't want to link, even with a NoFollow, to things unrelated to the subject of your Hubs. This is one reason, and rightly so, that HP harps on only using highly relevant products on a Hub.
So, this still applies to unrelated pages on Wiki. If the image attribution only requires a link to the cc license, then you can give one NoFollow link in a text capsule at the bottom of the page and just put Wikipedia* with each image as an image source.
Each image from Wikipedia must be checked for the required attribution, because the requirements are not the same for each image. You do that by clicking on this icon on the Wiki page:
