Traffic Nose Dive

1. 67

   theherbivorehippiposted 12 years ago

   Has anyone else experienced a ginormous drop in traffic? On this profile, mine was cut in HALF yesterday and today, that half has been sliced in half. I usually see a small drop on Friday and Saturday and up on Sunday, but nothing like this. Everything is blue arrows. Am I alone down here?

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      suziecat7posted 12 years agoin reply to this

      Nope - you're not alone.

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      healthmanagerposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      Same here. I am expecting 0 views tomorow. Guess its another google update thing

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      Jenn-Anneposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      I'm still fairly new so I don't get tons of traffic, however yesterday views were up by a fair amount and today I've gotten almost no views at all. Normally my traffic ticks up a bit over the weekend.

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      hazelwood4posted 12 years agoin reply to this

      Deleted
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         theherbivorehippiposted 12 years agoin reply to this

         Great job on self-promotion to a Hub that does not even answer the OP.

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            hazelwood4posted 12 years agoin reply to this

            I wrote this the other as a humorous attempt to explain these drops in traffic.  I too have seen many drops in traffic, but it seems to always pick back up after a few days.

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            dhannyyaposted 11 years agoin reply to this

            mine also have dropped...i used to get 1600 views..now its just 800

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   5. 91

      mactaversposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      Yesterday with 2 page views on 52 Hubs was my worst day ever and my Hub Score is 93!  Something is beyond wrong, yet Hub Pages has not explained what's going on. I'm not writing or commenting on anything after this until this drastic drop is explained and fixed.

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   6. 61

      umar.shehzadposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      Well, It affected traffic on one of my hubs. from 200 vpd down to 30 vpd!!
      Other hubs are almost unaffected. don't know if it falls into the same category as yours, but still it's a big drop and it might get to my other hubs too.

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      1. 61

         umar.shehzadposted 12 years agoin reply to this

         I found this in my inbox, sent by a blog I've subscribed to.
         http://www.seroundtable.com/google-peng … 15577.html

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            prettydarkhorseposted 12 years agoin reply to this

            I read the blog and he (Matt Cutts) answered it in the comment section. G can't scare me anymore, LOL!

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               Sally's Troveposted 12 years agoin reply to this

               Thanks for that info, Maita. Like most net readers, I dashed through the short article and barely skimmed the comments.
               
               "G can't scare me anymore..."

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                  prettydarkhorseposted 12 years agoin reply to this

                  

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   7. 85

      nanderson500posted 12 years agoin reply to this

      Traffic has definitely dropped for me as well, blue arrows everywhere. It just seems to go in cycles.

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      caninecrtiticsposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      I went from 400-600 views a day to 30-50 views a day.
      
      Whats going on Hubpages!!

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      urmilashukla23posted 12 years agoin reply to this

      Same here. Sad.

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   10. 61

       imgreencatposted 12 years agoin reply to this

       Just checked the violations thing to see if they had my views or something.  It's like when I just started out.  Does anyone know what's going on?

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       Dale Hydeposted 12 years agoin reply to this

       In a downhill spiral here! I figure yet another tweak on Google or something.  I am done trying to please Google. I have made so many changes with each burp they do that it is getting to the point of no longer "enjoying" writing articles, lol.

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          imgreencatposted 12 years agoin reply to this

          I guess I don't know enough of what to do.  Things were going along fine and yesterday I noticed all the blue arrows and it just crashedl  I have had about 40 hits today from around 300.  It was never great but it was going up.  Now I don't know what to think. 
          Because if you are counting on this as a side line income and you can't count on it, what good is it?

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          1. 71

             Jenn-Anneposted 12 years agoin reply to this

             My views yesterday were pretty low. However I checked my top-performing hubs and they are ranking well on google for their key words (the best they've ever ranked - not sure if this is related to the new idling process or not - hope so!). I have to assume that people just weren't searching for my topics yesterday. I guess there will be days like that - especially since I don't have many hubs published (yet).

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   12. 60

       swb78posted 12 years agoin reply to this

       I finally came here to see if there was a buzz about traffic. I was averaging about 200 hits a day whether I wrote a hub or not in June and July. Then, al at once, I mean in one day, my traffic dropped by 100 hits and has remained below 100 hits a day since. I have done some revamping as suggested, and I have published more hubs. Nothing!! It is quite discouraging.

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   13. 68

       WesternHistoryposted 12 years agoin reply to this

       I have gone from 100 page views per day to about 8 per day. Every so often I'll get 60 page views in a day and then the next day and afterwords it's in single digits.

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2. 60

   europewalkerposted 12 years ago

   Same here, traffic has dropped considerably!

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3. 67

   theherbivorehippiposted 12 years ago

   Fantastic...I'm in good company.

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4. 82

   eddiecarraraposted 12 years ago

   Yup... mine tanked too, I was creeping up to 1500 vpd, I Had my best day ever as far as HP ad revenue on 8/9/12  and now I'm at 180 vpd (views per day), it makes me sick to my stomach,  just when you think things are good, Google lets you know how powerful they are   The last time this happened, my traffic came back within 2 weeks and skyrocketed, so I'm crossen my fingers Good luck to everyone!

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      theherbivorehippiposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      I'm keeping my fingers crossed too.

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      MargaritaEdenposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      That sounds encouraging thank you, I so hope it goes back up, my views decreased by about 200 views today, very depressing, I was just getting excited, and now this

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5. 60

   paradigmsearchposted 12 years ago

   These threads depress me; more than that. I want to know; but I hate knowing.

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6. 0

   DigbyAdamsposted 12 years ago

   Yep, I'm in the same boat. Traffic just tanked today. Thanks for starting this topic, I was afraid it was just me.

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      Faybe Bayposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      Maybe it has something to do with HP saying they are late on calculated earnings? I only keep track of traffic on the HP accounts page.

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         theherbivorehippiposted 12 years agoin reply to this

         No, my Adsense is reflective. I rarely log onto Hubpages much these days, but I knew something was wrong when I checked my Adsense yesterday and today.

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         relacheposted 12 years agoin reply to this

         Calculated earnings and the timeliness thereof has no bearing on how search engines rank the site nor on site visitors.

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7. 91

   Will Apseposted 12 years ago

   I've seen a small uptick overall but some important pages got hit yesterday. Doing some updates.

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8. 35

   anujagarwalposted 12 years ago

   same here... traffic goes down by almost 70%... thanks to yet another google update...

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9. 95

   PaulGoodman67posted 12 years ago

   No major changes for me, except a few hubs have got abnormally high traffic in the last couple of days.  However, my traffic was hit 4 months ago, so was already halved.  It's improved a little since that slap, but still way down.

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10. 80

    classicalgeekposted 12 years ago

    As most of you already know, I got slapped back in early 2011 and went from over one hundred views per day to thirty views per day. As of late June of this year, my traffic increased from 30 views per day (on just under 100 hubs) to 150 views per day. Alas, I made the mistake of publishing a few new hubs, and now I am back to 30 views per day from a couple of days ago, mostly from hubbers looking at my new hubs. It's very discouraging to go from 50+ Google hits per day to 3! *sigh*

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11. 0

    Marye Audetposted 12 years ago

    There was a new change... http://www.webpronews.com/new-google-al … ns-2012-08
    
    But it should only affect sites that have copied content...it targets copyright violations.

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    1. 67

       theherbivorehippiposted 12 years agoin reply to this

       Thanks for this. Yeah, unfortunately (or fortunately!) I don't see how this update would apply to me. I can't figure it out; it was literally overnight, but nothing else seems affected other than this profile. This poor profile has been really abused over the past year. If you find any other info, please pass it along to me!

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       molometerposted 12 years agoin reply to this

       Hi Marye,
       
       I think this link may help to explain, some other aspects that may have affected traffic in an adverse way.
       
       Hubpages really has no control over these types of events.
       
       I have seen many threads in the forums, complaining that their traffic has dropped.
       
       This video by Matt Cutt's, head knob twiddler over at Google HQ, is quite revealing and interesting.
       It may shed some light, on the concept, and need or not, of 'freshness', in hubs and websites.
       
       Hope you all find it useful, and share it with your followers.
       
       http://youtu.be/o4hH4ZQ_19k
       
       Michael

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    3. 77

       Ms Deeposted 11 years agoin reply to this

       The latest Google algorithm change was to make searching for porn on Google just got harder. http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa … z2FECfaFzF
       
       So, this huge drop in my traffic, the biggest in 16 months, makes no sense at all.

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12. 72

    jacharlessposted 12 years ago

    A definitive change in PageRank did take place 2 August 2012. Sites ranking 7 are now showing 3.
    In addition, changes to copied content claims/complaints, will also effect PageRank.
    
    There was a Penguin Refresh on 25 July 2012. These items effect traffic, keywords and content tags -both in-page and off-page SEO- via links, inbound and outbound.
    
    Also, be advised a huge push for Google+ is underway, as well as eCommerce/Product display/relevance changes in SERP, a relaunch of something like Buzz -only now to use your private email, mobile stored content, information to increase ad targeting.
    
    James

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       theherbivorehippiposted 12 years agoin reply to this

       The 3.9 update in July did not affect me. My traffic drop just happened on Friday. Also, a huge push for Google+ has nothing to do with my traffic dropping on one profile, but not on my other profiles or my personal sites.

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       Bedbugabscondposted 12 years agoin reply to this

       I found a site that is stealing a ton of hubpage content. I tried to be helpful and start a thread. Maybe this is why so many of us have ad a traffic nosedive. The new update will only effect those with coppied content.
       
       Sad thing is this guy in my thread is accusing me of being a spammer just because I posted this link. Now I am sad because I have filed my DMCA but, and I am not kidding, hundreds of people have been ripped of and no one will believe me

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          Horatio Plotposted 12 years agoin reply to this

          Everybody believes you Bedbug. Don't let him get to you. He's just posturing. Ignore it. He'll go away.
          Horatio
          x

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             Bedbugabscondposted 12 years agoin reply to this

             I will. I have just returning for looking for stolen content. Especially of the people who are having traffic problems. How would one get a whole site taken down? I mean, I am new to this, but it seems like every article was stolen from someplace. It would be impossible to go through them all.

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                sharkfactsposted 12 years agoin reply to this

                Don't worry about getting the whole site taken down. It is possible, but it means looking up the host and emailing them DMCA forms and other stuff. Most are great and really helpful, but the odd one is a PITA!
                
                Just file your DMCA to Google and let them worry about de-indexing the offending material. Oh and thanks for letting us all know about this site.

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                   Bedbugabscondposted 12 years agoin reply to this

                   No problem. As you can probably tell, this is the first time it has happened to me. I am sure it will be taken care of. I will just breath now.

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                      theherbivorehippiposted 12 years agoin reply to this

                      P.S. That user has been banned from Hubpages.

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                         Horatio Plotposted 12 years agoin reply to this

                         Blimey. That was quick.
                         Short and sweet. Just like Kentucky Chicken.

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          theherbivorehippiposted 12 years agoin reply to this

          I just found your other thread....just ignore the troll. No sense in arguing with a sock puppet. It does happen from time to time; I've had plenty of content stolen, but filing a DMCA typically gets it taken care of quite quickly. If you watch the forums, you'll see that there is always a site stealing content. You did the right thing in sharing as other Hubbers also do.

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          jacharlessposted 12 years agoin reply to this

          Copied Content, or Farming, is becoming so commonplace, most people just ignore it or battle to prove theirs is the original, and suffer the loss of traffic an. Same thing is happening with photos as well. A shame really.

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    kimberlyslyricsposted 12 years ago

    Yes Traffic is really bad!

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    Dame Scribeposted 12 years ago

    My traffic tanked at the last update was seeing a upswing and now I'm afraid to look at my stats in analytics. What bothered me most about this latest update and a interview with Mr. Cutts was mention of 'no way to prove date of content' ? how can they not know that?

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       theherbivorehippiposted 12 years agoin reply to this

       I read that too. How can they NOT prove which content was published first? With how advanced technology is....I struggle to believe this

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          IzzyMposted 12 years agoin reply to this

          I seem to remember something about when Panda first came in, and duplicate content was first frowned upon, Google saying something to the effect that they would endeavour to award the original author but that they sometimes make mistakes and reward the plagiarists instead.
          
          Obviously they do know who published first, else they would ignore all the DMCAs I have filed!
          
          But their algorithm doesn't seem to get it right.
          
          Loads of hubs on this account have been copied by others, and they all rank higher than me. That just shouldn't happen, but does, and Google will do nothing except take them down when I file DMCAs.
          
          Then the article just disappears, of course, because Google will not rank anything I write on this account. I take it their algorithm has me marked down as a plagiarist!

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             theherbivorehippiposted 12 years agoin reply to this

             Izzy I can't help but wonder if when you and I (and others) were hit hard that first time, if we wouldn't have been better off scrapping these profiles and moving these Hubs to new profiles. This is the only profile that continues to take constant blows, and this plunge has been the worst of them all. My sites continue to stay unaffected, despite the fact that they are severely neglected.

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                Bedbugabscondposted 12 years agoin reply to this

                How much down time would you have to take between taking it down and putting it back up?

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                   IzzyMposted 12 years agoin reply to this

                   Could do it next day if you use webmasters tool to de-index the hubs right away. This is not advisable as manually de-indexing is supposed to be for emergencies only.
                   
                   But in general, you would have to give it a couple of weeks to clear from the cache, then re-submit the hubs under a new username. (After having checked for duplicates on the web and submitted DMCA' take-down notices to Google, of course).
                   
                   I moved only a couple of hubs. One of them could not be re-published because I had missed a stolen copy out there on the web.
                   
                   It took me ages to remember the original hub url (I had deleted the original by this time), but when I did, I found the hub in the wayback machine and submitted that url to Google alongside a DMCA. They accepted it and removed the copy, allowing me to re-publish.
                   
                   It still doesn't get traffic LOL. I should have re-written it! It's on my To Do list.

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                IzzyMposted 12 years agoin reply to this

                If I knew a year ago what was going to happen, I would have scrapped this account and started again.
                
                But whatever is causing those enormous traffic fluctuations is still happening, so if its a site-wide problem it's something staff need to address.
                
                This account went down and stayed down. My second subdomain suffers from occasional plunges, then goes back to 'normal' traffic levels (no big rises).
                
                My third has just experienced a 5 fold increase in traffic, when it was already my most-trafficked subdomain. It is a lovely feeling (I never got those massive spikes in traffic other people have experienced, until now, that is). This happened roughly the same time yours collapsed, so its been one of those HP traffic shift things (we all seem to get traffic changes at the same time, even when there is no announced Panda update).
                
                So, what goes up must come down, so I expect the traffic won't last which is a pity!
                
                But it is odd that this is continuing to happen. I thought older accounts may be suffering because with the subdomains being under a year old,  they may be hit by the sandbox effect.
                
                A year has gone by, and continued traffic fluctuations on older accounts rules that effect out, although you would expect newer accounts to suffer from it at some time in their first year.
                
                So, not sandbox, not affiliates (hardly any affiliate advertising on my soaring traffic sub), not duplicate content, not standard of writing nor content, so it looks as if there is something in the architecture of the site that is wrong.

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       jacharlessposted 12 years agoin reply to this

       The only way to prove content authentication/authorship and dating is to have the Meta Tags and Taxonomy clearly established on a per page basis. A second method is the UNIX Timestamp of the file at creation date stored in a database. Files updated server-side or content loaded from databases often alter/change the UNIX Timestamp of the pages themselves. So pages look as though they were created yesterday, due to updating, when the page is loaded and then crawled.
       
       For example, if you publish an article on 30 June 2012 and the page -for whatever reason is updated server-side afterward, on the next crawl date, the updated-page-date is determined as the original creation date. Unless the spider sees other data that says when the page was first created. It will then note the content within was updated between the crawl dates and change SERP, Rank, Rating accordingly.
       
       With the above assured, the only issue remains in the Spider Crawl. Determining when the Page was first indexed by the engine. Again, I am still seeing pages created or indexed in 2006 popping up in SERP on certain topics. So, if the page was indexed six years ago, the engine knows all pages after could potentially be Farmed Content. It has to check content and links to determine this. And if the Meta & Taxonomy elements are not clearly defined in-page, when crawled, the engine cannot establish authenticity. This is one of the largest issues with standard CMS platforms like WordPress and why many Spinners, Content Farmers use said platform to duplicate content. Essentially it does not know who published first because there are no authentication benchmarks in place, else the links, content and title have been force-indexed.
       
       The engine will look for the first appearance of the link then the Title. It will either be like "Hey! that link already exists." Is it from this domain already indexed? If yes, it re-reads the content for authenticity. Then says, "Hey this content looks like another pages content. Someone is being naughty!" It will then suspend all pages, titles within range until it finds something that it feels is organic. This is why Author, Canonical, Description, Taxonomy (Category, SubCategories), organic tags, images, links etc are so vital to avoid these kinds of issues.
       
       James.

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          Dame Scribeposted 12 years agoin reply to this

          Wow, great info thank you. Took me a few readings to get my head around it all but think I least got a sense over all. nice to know we have some from the 'nerd herd' who can help explain things to us

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    prettydarkhorseposted 12 years ago

    Let us brace ourselves for a roller coaster ride!

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       theherbivorehippiposted 12 years agoin reply to this

       I  need a break from the roller coaster ride. I would like to just float down the lazy river in a raft....after a peak of traffic of course.

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    Stacie Lposted 12 years ago

    I noticed a drop but not a ginormous one as stated...maybe it's the summer vacation season...

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       Bedbugabscondposted 12 years agoin reply to this

       I know Google rolled out its new algorithm that will mine gmail to help bring up relevant search results. Since I have no mailing list, the only people who would be mined are people already on hubpages. Is it against the TOS to ask people to opt in to a mailing list?

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          kimberlyslyricsposted 12 years agoin reply to this

          

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17. 0

    Vincent Mooreposted 12 years ago

    Hey Kim, I just checked mine. I have 100 Hubs and blue down arrows, although I've had more from time to time, they seem to fluctuate.

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18. 0

    Vincent Mooreposted 12 years ago

    Let me correct that, I meant to say I have 4 Blue down arrows against 4 Hubs...

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    mactaversposted 12 years ago

    While my Hub Score remained in the 90s this week.  My views are beyond pathetic. (I thought 2 views was bad until I had a day with 0)  Last Sunday I had 0 views on 52 hubs and sadly last month I did great.  My material is mostly on AZ and antiques and I have continued publishing books and artilces else where.  I can prove my material is my research and original.  I feel violated that someone probably stole my research, and I also feel violated that as far as I know, the Hub Page staff has not done anything to resolve this. Ebay, Amazon and Google have already made money off my writing, so I'm the only one who has yet to make a dime.  At a penny or two a day while I'm within 4 dollars of a check, I will reach my goal of $50 a year and a half from now.  I'm thinking about deleting my 52 Hubs, to stop the stealing and to chalk the whole Hub Page experience up as a waste of lots of time and effort.  Discouraged!

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       paradigmsearchposted 12 years agoin reply to this

       Being within $4, if it was me, I'd start tweeting, pinning, facebooking, etc. And blogging my hub links.
       
       I'm also of the opinion that August is the worst internet traffic month of the year.
       
       Don't be the runner that falls down just before the finish line.

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          paradigmsearchposted 12 years agoin reply to this

          And start filing DMCA's if needed.

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             Bedbugabscondposted 12 years agoin reply to this

             I have been trying that, and it helps. But my traffic is still dropping. Oh well, i am not at 0 yet.... Ill just keep on keeping on. If other people are as buys as I am with school starting for everyone, then I am not surprised less people are searching.

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20. 0

    CatsPageposted 12 years ago

    I haven't had any traffic updates in over 16 hours and my numbers are dropping on my hubs. This is the first time I have had this happen. How long can this last?

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       Jenn-Anneposted 12 years agoin reply to this

       It's the weekend so it might take awhile for the hubpages techies to fix the problem.  If you aren't using Google Analytics, now would be a great time to set it up and use it (there's information about how in the Learning Center).  Lots of great info there.

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          CatsPageposted 12 years agoin reply to this

          Thanks for your help Jenn-Anne, I am going to check out Analytics now.

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       Aficionadaposted 12 years agoin reply to this

       Matthew Meyer says they are checking into this: http://hubpages.com/forum/topic/100714? … ost2178965 .

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          CatsPageposted 12 years agoin reply to this

          Thanks Aficionada, This is good to know. I will check out the link.

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    theherbivorehippiposted 12 years ago

    After about 4 weeks of being at rock bottom with this profile, I deleted about another 25 hubs this weekend.....and traffic has more than tripled in the past 24 hours. Loads of double red arrows. Apparently last time I cleaned house, I didn't clean well enough. It is still nowhere near what it was last year, but at least there is a glimmer of hope.

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       EmpressFelicityposted 12 years agoin reply to this

       My traffic's gone massively up over the last 24 hours as well. But all I did was delete three of my idled hubs and tweak a couple more, and that was a week ago. Still, traffic eh?

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          theherbivorehippiposted 12 years agoin reply to this

          Yay for you too!! Yeah, started deleting on Friday, then removed more on Saturday and Sunday. All of a sudden, traffic started picking up late last night, and it's consistently rising. Cherishing it while I have it!

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             isenhower33posted 12 years agoin reply to this

             Could this also be to you changing your comments to turned off? I noticed that in previous months your comments were on, but in the past 7 Weeks no body can comment on your stuff. I noticed that everytime someone comments that it poses as a link and keywords. So if you are someone that gets a lot of comments thats a lot of links as well, making google think that it is spam. Maybe this could be a reason for the traffic going up? Let me know what you think and how your hubs with no comments are fairing out

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       umar.shehzadposted 12 years agoin reply to this

       Doesn't hubpages idle hub feature covers that already??
       I mean do i have to permanently delete the low traffic hubs??

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    wordscribe43posted 12 years ago

    That's awesome news, theherbivorehippi!  How did you figure out which ones to delete?  Was it from idle hubs or something else?

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       theherbivorehippiposted 12 years agoin reply to this

       I just did the ones that have been seeing the worst traffic this year....and yes, quite a few of them had Zzzz by them.

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          umar.shehzadposted 12 years agoin reply to this

          Guess what I unpublished some hubs and 2-3 days later, the traffic increased. thanks  theherbivorehippi

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    formosangirlposted 12 years ago

    Theherbivorehippi, I am so glad that deleting hubs works. However, I look at my traffic at both Squidoo and Hubpages. For the first 8 months (pre-August 19, 2012), Hubpages traffic was consistently better. Since August 19, 2012, I have triple in traffic at Squidoo for no apparent reason, and I still have numerous red "WIP," Work in Progress. My understanding is that Work in Progress like the low-trafficked Hubs should have adversely affected traffic. So, at this point I cannot conclude any correlation between low-trafficked hubs, despite what Paul Edmundson had recommended with his Hubpages, weeding out his low-visit ones. However, I also noticed that my traffic dropped after adopting the new Profile. Had I known that I would have lost all of the hyperlinks from the old Profile, I would not have switched. Oh well, learn from experience.
    
    Further, one of my two Squidoo lens that is receiving over 20-30 visits per day was a WIP about 6 months ago because it was not receiving any traffic. I am just glad that to offset the terrible traffic at Hubpages, my traffic went up at Squidoo. However, because of Squidoo's unfair ranking system, I am sure that this will not make a big dent on earning, since they won't rank under 5,000 or 10,000 due to the fact that they are not about Moshi Monsters or other faddish topic.

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    paradigmsearchposted 12 years ago

    A peculiar week for me. It was the best of times. It was the worst of times. Nothing consistent.

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    paradigmsearchposted 12 years ago

    I'm actually looking forward to the next google update. With all the turkey hubs I removed, I am looking forward to many brownie points.
    
    (Famous last words...)

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26. 0

    DigbyAdamsposted 12 years ago

    Even if you rank high in Google and it's a term that people search for, there's no guarantee that anyone will visit your page. Lately Google has placed so many paid ads and photos between the first 5 rankings and the searcher, that organic traffic almost has to decrease.

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       EmpressFelicityposted 12 years agoin reply to this

       That's a really good point, which gets lost in the discussions about traffic we have here.

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       molometerposted 12 years agoin reply to this

       It is a good point, when you look at all those 'organic views' they seem to be the ones where searchers come across our pages, from whatever search term they have used. Find that it is not what they are looking for and promptly leave.
       This skews our statistics for 'average time on page' and can give the impression that most people leave after just a few seconds. This is not reality. But it does affect our overall averages.
       Direct and referral traffic is what we need to develop and let the organic traffic go.
       This means being really tight  on titles and using much fewer but more highly targeted, relevant  and related keywords.
       I know most of you probably know this already but thought I would mention it, for anyone who didn't.
       I tend to consider my traffic on a monthly basis rather than daily but even on a monthly approach. it is definitely trending down.
       The good news is that I am getting more Direct and Referral traffic and most of the losses are from the organic search.
       I sold my first 2 items on Amazon this week after 13 months of absolute zero sales. So the traffic drop, in my opinion is not all bad news.

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          IzzyMposted 12 years agoin reply to this

          I'm not so sure that is good news.
          
          I'd also seen a big increase in direct and referral traffic, especially referrals from Google which I was still trying to puzzle out, when Google suddenly withdrew all its organic traffic from my account again.
          
          I don't get it at all, but the net result is that my traffic and therefore my earnings have collapsed again.

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          1. 82

             molometerposted 12 years agoin reply to this

             I am assuming that Google is referring more traffic to your hubs as they see them as closely matching searchers requests. That would make sense. The organic search system was supposed to do that but it seems not to be the case.
             True you can still earn from 1000's of organic based pageviews but it will be on the margin. If you are using eBay and Amazon capsules then these are the items that are being targeted, and search for. 
             It is disappointing to see traffic drops but that is the nature of any internet business. Marketing is also a constant in any business. Sadly.

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                IzzyMposted 12 years agoin reply to this

                No, because if Google was sending traffic to your site through their search engine, regardless of the keywords searchers used, it would still be organic traffic, not referral.
                
                I've done yet another search and from what I can learn Google referral traffic is from a place on Google that is not their search engine, like Google images, maps, readers or groups.
                
                Google referral traffic also comes from Adwords, but I've never used them.
                
                It's probably through Google images, but I'm not sure that these people ever actually look at the hub, just the image.

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                1. 82

                   molometerposted 12 years agoin reply to this

                   The tricky thing about Google search is, that it can determine what the title of a hub is about (to a point) and if the same words and term are used in the hub it will assume that it is relevant and related.
                   So even though you may not use Adwords as such. Google is making the associations for you and sending organic traffic your way. Or not as the case may be. If you haven't got any keywords in your hubs they may struggle.
                   Referral traffic is coming from 'other humans' who have either seen one of your hubs, or someone has shared your hub to their friends. This is where social sharing comes into it's own. 
                   In my own case I get a lot of referral traffic from videos I post on my YouTube site.
                   I also get quite a lot of traffic from other hubbers recommending my hubs. As I do theirs.  As this type of traffic grows you will see longer average pageview times. So although it may produce less traffic the quality and duration of the page views are much better than organic.
                   It just takes a longer to get established.

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27. 0

    DigbyAdamsposted 12 years ago

    Yep, it's really depressing to look at the Google SERPs now.

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28. 90

    Daughter Of Maatposted 12 years ago

    I just lost about 250 hits in the past 24 hours. Did Google tweak Penguin again? I was doing so well, traffic was building; things were looking better. But now I'm back where I was a month ago, which isn't horrible, but it's not going to pay the bills. I know it's the weekend, but I've never seen traffic plummet his bad Friday to Saturday.

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29. 91

    mactaversposted 12 years ago

    My traffic is really rotten too.  Hub Pages has changed so much in the last 2 months.  While I check my Hubs almost daily, and love reading what Hubbers write.  I'm not motivated any longer.

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30. 87

    Nell Roseposted 12 years ago

    I have lost over half my readers. I got to a point where I was quite happy with the amount each day, but now its dived so low I just wonder what I am doing wrong. Drives me mad!

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31. 60

    Hollie Thomasposted 12 years ago

    As from today I've been completely buried in the SERPS, depressing.

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32. 55

    Dame Scribeposted 12 years ago

    Oh, one more thing. Yeah, 'G' sent out a new algo. Something about showing more 'paid' adverts over organic. So, there will be slams all around the blogosphere I guess
    
    http://smallbiztrends.com/2012/09/googl … +Trends%29

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33. 0

    Arlene V. Pomaposted 12 years ago

    UP!!!  But let's see how long this lasts.  My account has priors when it comes to going down, but not all the way down to zero traffic.  LOL!  I have been a delete, delete, delete fool since the weekend.  I unpublished 100+ Hubs over the summer, so deleting them was no big deal.  The ones I could still stand have either been tweaked and published again or are on the way to finding new homes.

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34. 89

    Redberry Skyposted 12 years ago

    There was some kind of 'diversification' algo tweaking last week from google, might not be relevant, but any tweaks might affect traffic.  It's meant to stop any site showing up in the SERPS more than once in a search, but maybe it needs to settle down before it works properly, and in the meantime it might be creating traffic ups and downs.  If anyone's interested, there's a little bit of diiscussion here > http://www.webpronews.com/some-webmaste … ty-2012-09

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       Hollie Thomasposted 12 years agoin reply to this

       Ah, ok. Rolled out this morning then. Still, I can't find any of my hubs at all, they're completely buried. Hope this is just going to be temporary.

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35. 0

    Arlene V. Pomaposted 12 years ago

    Thanks for the info, Redberry Sky!  For now, I'll enjoy the ride.

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    1. 89

       Redberry Skyposted 12 years agoin reply to this

       Long may it (your traffic increase!) last, Arlene!

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36. 78

    GmaGoldieposted 12 years ago

    I took my real name off my profile and it seemed as if my traffic plummeted - could be coincidence? I don't know. I just added my name back and used HP tools to include my social networks. Hopefully my traffic and earnings will turn around.
    
    I plummeted so many times and then I was rising from the ashes and then BANG shot dead once again.
    
    Oh, Google, how I miss thee....let me count the ways...traffic, earnings, traffic, earnings....please Google come back and STAY!

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37. 60

    paradigmsearchposted 12 years ago

    I checked my traffic this morning. 40% of it had disappeared.  But it's going back up now.

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       paradigmsearchposted 12 years agoin reply to this

       And now I know why.
       
       http://hubpages.com/forum/topic/104137
       
       All is well.
       
       

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       1. 98

          Gordon Hamiltonposted 12 years agoin reply to this

          This is what I was banking on...
          
          Unfortunately, more than twenty-four hours on, my traffic is still falling rapidly to lows I haven't seen for a long time. The one day stats should now have compensated. Traffic now less than 30% of what it was a couple of days ago. Almost every Hub has a blue downward arrow.
          
          Has some major Google tweak coincided with what was of course an unfortunate brief occurrence?

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38. 94

    Marseiposted 12 years ago

    Mine hasn't been affect so far.

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39. 82

    kaiyan717posted 12 years ago

    I seen a big dip yesterday, about half, but today it has rebounding with a little extra.  I try not to worry about it, I just pin a couple hubs and hope tomorrow is better.  I hope yours rebounds soon.

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40. 60

    paradigmsearchposted 12 years ago

    I did an hourly analytics chart of the 28th. The flat line was from approx 3:30 AM to 6:30 AM, HP time. Not too bad...

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41. 82

    eddiecarraraposted 12 years ago

    I noticed my traffic rising from the dead on 10-22-12, I had been hovering around 100 VPD (views per day) It had dropped from 1300 VPD on 8-23-12 and basically flat lined. On 10-22-12 it jumped to 152 VPD and this morning 10-23-12, it jumped to over 500 VPD, I'm not complaining I'm just updating this thread, hope everyone else is have the same jump in traffic, looks like big G must have made an algorithm  tweak or something, I just hope they keep tweaking in our favor.

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    1. 83

       IzzyMposted 12 years agoin reply to this

       I seem to badly time everything I do!
       
       My traffic was recovering nicely after I unpublished all my health hubs.
       
       In the past day or two I republished them to see what would happen.
       
       Today traffic has fallen substantially, but if there has been another algo tweak at the same time, I no longer know if my health hubs are to blame or the algo tweak.
       
       Hmmm!
       
       I think I will play about with their tags to see if linking is the issue.

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       1. 81

          CMHypnoposted 12 years agoin reply to this

          Hey Izzy, I don't think its your health hubs - my traffic dropped again today, so maybe they were just mucking out our sandbox and now they have got it nice and fresh they can drop us back in it. Hope they have put some decent rocks in it for the snake to hide under

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       Rosie2010posted 12 years agoin reply to this

       Eddiecarrara, that's awesome!  Nice to hear that someone's traffic is improving, and yours is a big jump.
       
       Mine has not improved since Penguin slap back in April. 

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       1. 82

          eddiecarraraposted 12 years agoin reply to this

          Hey Rosie,
          Sorry to hear you traffic never returned since April. I was hit with the penguin too, but within 7 days my traffic bounced back and tripled. This time it didn't seem like it was going to return, Google is in control and we must learn to play by their rules, but I noticed, even if we play by their rules, we can still lose everything in the blink of an eye. So my philosophy is to learning every thing possible about  good content and how to rank well in the search engines, the rest is up to the big three (Google, Yahoo, and Bing) Hope your traffic returns soon Rosie

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          1. 68

             Rosie2010posted 12 years agoin reply to this

             Your traffic bounced back within 7 days after the Penguin attack? ... and... and tripled, to add insult to injury?  I hate you!  ... ok I don't hate you, but I'm so green with envy.
             
             I think Google and I have fallen out of love.  Thank goodness I'm having love affairs with Bing, Yahoo and Pinterest on the side.  They are keeping my traffic afloat by at least  50% of my pre-penguin traffic. 
             
             Take care, Eddie, and I hope your increase in views continues.  Cheers!

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42. 0

    redwhiskeypeteposted 12 years ago

    my traffic has nose dived

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43. 59

    Dale Hydeposted 12 years ago

    Well one thing about all this drop in views is that soon, very soon, my hubs can not drop any more in views, lol.  A fall from over 1,600 views a day to under 200 views a day on over a total of 100 plus hubs....well, that don't leave too much more dropping space, lol.

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    1. 79

       JayeWisdomposted 12 years agoin reply to this

       Dale...You probably keep your blood pressure normal by laughing about it rather than raging. It's very frustrating to lose so much traffic (and earnings) without being able to reverse the trend. Every day I hope to see an improvement in my stats, but every day the news is still bad!
       
       Jaye

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       1. 65

          hazelwood4posted 12 years agoin reply to this

          Mine is still down about 65%.  I hope we see a rebound soon!

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    2. 82

       eddiecarraraposted 12 years agoin reply to this

       Hey Dale, it was the same for me back in August, I went from about 1300 VPW down to under a hundred, every day I would check my stats and it seemed to be getting worst every day, now, 2 months later almost to the day, my views shot back up.
       Last night I saw a sight rise, but I didn't want to get excited, then this morning I was up over 500 VPD, now tonight I'm over 1100 VPD.  One thing I noticed though, it's all my automotive hubs, but those are the ones that were doing good before this all happened.
       One thing I have learned through all this is, Google is in control, so don't tweak your hubs, don't get rid of hubs, just wait a little while, focus on something different for a month or two, until there's another algorithm update. It seems like good hubs always bounce back, so before you do anything drastic, let the dust settle. 
       I was going to remove all my automotive hubs and transfer them to a new domain because it seems like this hubpages sub domain is a problem, but instead I just started building a new website with fresh new content to keep my mind occupied until my traffic returned on hubpages. I'm glad I didn't remove my hubs because now I have my hubs and a website.
       So be patient and eventually your traffic will return, I hope

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44. 60

    RichusFridumposted 12 years ago

    isenhower33 may have a point there

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45. 72

    jacharlessposted 12 years ago

    Steady as she goes, cap`n.
    
    From The Tech News Wire:
    
    
    
    
    
    
    

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    1. 78

       psycheskinnerposted 12 years agoin reply to this

       Someone can't add

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       1. 72

          jacharlessposted 12 years agoin reply to this

          lol. typo, fixed!

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46. 98

    bdegiulioposted 12 years ago

    Yep, same here.  I even remember the date, Sept 12th.  Went from 150-200 views per day to maybe 20.  Pretty disappointing.  Since then I have updated many of my Hubs and published new ones.  The traffic has come up a little to maybe 30 - 40 per day but still a long way from where I was.  I know it's the Google update, but I'm just not sure what to do about it now?

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47. 77

    alphagirlposted 12 years ago

    Yes, I noticed very little traffic. I was checking daily two weeks ago and then i started seeing things just evaporate. Why is it like this? There is no consistency.

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48. 60

    swb78posted 12 years ago

    Ok, I`m gonna try one more time to adjust, then, I`m done. I have deleted, un-published, rearranged, and prayed (laughing) over my Hubs and each time the traffic falls. I was averaging over 200 hits a day. I thought I had finally found the keys to driving traffic to my Hubs. Then, all of a sudden--a game changer! The sad part is that I really like the Hub pages. I have written in a number of places online: The  Examiner (yuk!), Squidoo, Blogs, Helium, Yahoo voices, and I also write content; however, none of them (in my opinion) were as fun, relaxed, and supportive as the Hub Pages. I guess some of us will either have to write simply because we like to write, not for profit, or just quit. Ok, I`m done venting.

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49. 70

    Angie Jardineposted 12 years ago

    From nearly 300vpd down to 90vpd now … it has been a steady downward trend for the last three weeks or so for me. These things usually clear up quicker than this but this slump seems to be deepening.
    
    Whatever is causing it is not clear so I think the thing to do is to sit tight and see if it eventually recovers.
    
    I guess if it doesn’t there will be a mass exodus of the best writers from HP to somewhere else.

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    1. 74

       JanMaklakposted 12 years agoin reply to this

       I attended a webinar recently and the authors (very credible) stated there was about 514 incremental updates including Panda and Penguin this year alone.  One big one was the devaluation of sites like hub pages.  They stated that it is all about the user experience. From what I have been reading on hub pages I think most authors give the reader a reason to be here.  SEO is definitely a moving target.

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          Angie Jardineposted 12 years agoin reply to this

          Ah, that would explain a lot of things …

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50. 60

    paradigmsearchposted 12 years ago

    I dropped by Quantcast again.
    
    Two target audience items got my attention.
    
    Women visitors outnumber men approximately 2 to 1.
    
    Over half our visitors are poor people.
    
    http://www.quantcast.com/hubpages.com?country=US#!demo
    
    Mulling over hub ideas...

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    1. 76

       Barbara Kayposted 12 years agoin reply to this

       That means we should write articles targeted to young women with children.

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