The great hubpages stats crash.
The day the traffic stopped.
One day in September 2009, I was checking my account only to find that I had, had no traffic, not one single person had popped in to check out my work. I had never had a no traffic day before and it left me feeling pretty sad. Although at first I didn't get a lot of traffic, as I was still pretty new to the hubpages experience, I really did appreciate any traffic I got, every single one, even if it was not that much.
Before my no traffic day I was finding as I continued writing my hubs, promoting them, learning keywords, seo (search engine optimization) and interacting with the hubpages community, my traffic had always steadily increased. So to see my stats in such a sad state was confusing, what had I done wrong?
One thing was for sure, I really missed my traffic.
Threads of despair.
I decided not to dwell on it and work on a hub instead, hopefully one that would attract some traffic.
After I finished working on my writing and published my hub, I took a trip to the forum. I discovered while I was there, I was not the only one to be suffering the plight of zero visitors. There were post's a plenty, it seemed like no one had had any traffic that day and not just me. I felt less downhearted about my situation after that. A lot of people were rather perplexed with the whole situation, no traffic is almost unheard of, what was going on?
It was not long however until I came across an official hub announcement thread, and after reading through it, cleared everything up. Turned out that hubpages was suffering a miner technical hitch. We were getting traffic, only it was not showing up on the stats. Fortunately it was already being dealt with and soon thing's would return to normal.
That did not stop the ever continuing barrage of threads mind you, as soon as the official hub announcement had slipped of the forum radar, yes low and behold more 'help I have no traffic' threads popped up again and again.
The stats came back.
Everyone celebrated and took a deep sigh of relief, hubpages was soon back to normal.
Why the blip was a good thing.
Although not knowing how many visitors you have had and not being able to track or compare your progress, was at first a little inconvenient. Especially as it's something I had gotten into the habit of checking routinely and had taken for granted.
But for me the technical hitch actually turned out to be a good thing, I found myself concentrating more on writing and less on traffic and earnings. I also spent more time in the forum, which was fun. I played around with the groups hub tool which ordinarily I ignore. I read more questions and one even inspired me to answer it, which lead me off to write another hub.
I was also aware how the blip brought the hubpages community together, united through our common dilemma. Everyone helping each other out and making jokes, which was nice.