Introducing Idle Hubs
My most popular Hub yesterday was one that is in Idle Status because I used some of my other resources to get it some attention. Now, I want to see how that affect's its Idle Status.
Those questions about how Google will view the age of Hubs taken off of Idle Status are good ones. I suspect that Googl will restart the clock for these Hubs, as that is their policy when websites undergo major changes. A website that was created 10 years ago that does a total makeover in 2012 is viewed by Google as a 2012 website, at least that's what I read in the SEO books, so the same may apply to Hubs coming out of Idle Status with major revisions, but not sure about that.It seems as if the most serious situation associated with this new Idle Hubs policy is what some have pointed out as the possibility that others will steal their work during the 24 hour limbo period and post it as their own and get first publish rights with Google. HubPages needs to clear this one up fast. They should have seen this coming.
I've had loads of work stolen, but seldom if ever on its first day of publication. Having said that, I would still file a DMCA against the thief and hope that HP put a time stamp on the publication time as well as date.
I think the worry is that some unscrupulous publishers would see what's going on here with the publishing delay, follow hubbers who are known successes, and steal their work as it hits the feed. It would be specifically targeted and deliberately timed, whereas up to this point it there has never been this easy-access window of opportunity to get in on someone else's work well before it is indexed.
Yes, needs clearing up quickly. Especially if you have one going on 87 hours in pending mode.
That's a serious delay time, Alastar Packer. I would definitely be concerned, because there ARE thieves out there who are oh so happy to steal your stuff while it is "in waiting". I have had stuff stolen. It is not a good feeling and I get sick just thinking about it happening to other good people. That time lag concerns me. I think after 24 hours, the hub should be published or banned. One or the other. It gives the author at least a fighting chance of protecting their work.
All's well as of Sat. MarleneB- thanks for the concern.
Believe Paul E explains down the thread how one could get held up past the initial pending period.
The spiders have come! According to Google, HP has 3.5 million pages in its index. Last week they had 4.7 pages. According to HubPages stats there are (were?) 1.3 million hubs published (the rest of the pages in the index were forum posts, questions and answers etc.). What does that mean about the number of hubs de-indexed?
I really can't imagine that 1.2 million (like moret than 90%) of the pages went idle. Maybe when a hub gets de-indexed, that takes out a few 'associated pages' out of Google as well?
Now all we have to do is wait for next Panda to come and see whether it will give the new slimmed down HubPages and prizes in the content beauty pageant.Not sure if this has been addressed earlier in the thread (I've read many, but not all 40 pages), but what is the theory for the removal of the "link to this page" feature from the bottom of the page of a de-indexed hub? Does it benefit anybody? It certainly harms the authors' ability to promote their work, especially in the first hours after a new Hub has been published.
It does seem strange that the 'link to this page' feature has been disabled. Not sure exactly how this particular linking facility worked, but as I see it there are two types of hub which may be de-indexed:
1) There are hubs which have low traffic because they are poorly written, hastily put together and lacking substance, and these perhaps deserve to be de-indexed until they meet the required standard. These hubs genuinely do harm the reputation of HubPages. The way to get these hubs back into circulation is to 'improve', 'update', or 'expand'.
2) Then there is the second type of hub which has low traffic. These have low traffic because they are of specialist interest. Such hubs may actually be of extremely high quality and there may be no real way in which they can be improved, updated or expanded. For such hubs, which should be available to all to read, the only way to get them into the search engines again is to promote and publicise them through links. For these hubs, any linking should be encouraged - not disabled.I had a few of the second type you're referring to. I went in and tinkered with them only slightly and they are now not sleeping any more. They don't get much traffic, though, so I don't know how long it will be before they are put to sleep again.
I had exactly the same experience SmartAndFun with two hubs on which I carried out very minor tweaks - just changed a few words here and there - and they are now OK. But of course that won't increase the level of traffic long term.
Presumably, whereas hubs which go into 'idle' mode go there via automatic filters, hubs which are then put into 'pending' are subject to manual reading to check the content? Otherwise they'd surely go straight from 'idle' to 'featured'. If that is the case, and they are reviewed manually by HubPages staff and seen to be of good quality, is there the possibility that HubPages could permanently override the de-listing on that particular hub even if traffic does not pick up?.
I think they are not link to other hubs as they are deemed low quality according to HP algo, they will affect others which are considered acceptable Q
So, did a test.
Created a Hub, 2000 words of organic content {a tutorial} yesterday, which held pending for 24hrs.
Has come out of pending with the green dot showing.
Score up 21 points since release.
Not showing in internal search by Title.
Not showing on front-page of Technology or sub category of Technology.
Not showing in "best" list, after 15 pages deep.
Not showing in Google Search for exact Title input nor Keywords or Link.
Is showing in "latest" list slot 1, Technology, as published 22 hours ago.
Is showing in "hot" list slot 5, Technology, as published 22 hours ago.
James.RB, am not worried either way.
If needs be, have a P7 developer site that will buy the article outright.
I wanted to see the analysis of these integrations firsthand before making any decisions...
72 hours post green dot and no results? Yeaks & Keating!
Would definitely be a wee bit perturbed, yes.
James.My articles published on 28th August have been indexed and show in search with exact title.
lucky John,
Maybe when you published it, the one day pending rule - 24 hours is not "in effect" yet
How about this: Published one Tuesday, the day before the new system went official. It got indexed by G quickly. It's still in pending mode as of the following Sunday. G re-crawls your site in the meantime, sees the no-follow tag and the story is de-indexed. Bing Yahoo etc never get a chance to index it in the first place. Meanwhile the piece isn't showing up on new topics or related hubs. Basically the only views it's getting come from certain followers as a result of all this. It maxs out with a hub score in the 90s and then begins the plunge back down as views, feedback, comments trickle off. Does anyone know or have a guess how it'll be treated by the new IH system if it's at a low point when it comes out of the processing period?
Same thing here except I published on Wednesday, the day of the change, Google has never had a chance to see mine . I am working on content, but not work for HP, I will not place anything else here until this is resolved. I have at least four hubs that I was going to work on over this long weekend. Now my attention is on different paths!
Hey RB, it's unfortunate with our hubs but it's nice to know your not alone in pending purgatory, right..I've always felt HP is a smart and on top of things org and still do but this is disheartening. Maybe there's no immediate solution for it, maybe there is, who knows. Hate to think it's because of apathy, there are always things to work out in implementations like this so hopefully it'll be fixed on Tuesday at the latest.
Good news RB, hope so for you too. Standing in line for the pearly gates and Big G.
No idea Alastar, maybe the staff can answer your q
Maybe included per category only so that they will know if there is duplication??
What I mean is that it is only showing when you search for date under the category "technology" for duplication check purposes. It means the system just accepted it on that date in that category.
Which is an inevitable stagnation of all content driven sites, yes.
At some point, too much information will cause a system-wide slow down in linking, position and relevance to the search engine. It is one reason BigG has been working feverishly to clean out a depleting system and has cuased much frustration for UGC.
Here is the breadcrumb for my recent hub:
Explore » Technology (28,264) » Internet and the Web (6,752) » Web Page and Web Site Development (523)
Note the Taxonomy closely. The main Category {Technology} has 28264 articles.
The sub-categories at L1 has 6752 and L2, where my article is niche, has 523.
It could be the overall Category is slowing the visibility, due to saturation, but this should be bypassed by the existence of the sub-cats. But, 28264 out of over 1 million published articles is not a lot.
It does not appear to be happening as it should.
And again, this is strictly Internal as I cannot get anything from the external.
Will wait another day and see. No hurry.
James.am sure yours is unique
what I mean to say is that HP just accepted your hub as submitted on that date in that category to check for duplication purposesTo my understanding, the dupe filter is run immediately upon publication and takes upwards of 72 hours to respond -as there is a lot of content on the web. The algo is from Hubpages original analysis and advert tracking program called yieldbuild. A very savvy, sexy program
Internally, it should not take long to test the hub for duplicity. A single script run against the database would reveal any similar elements between on-site hubs.
If there is an automatic delay written into this new part of the yieldbuild solution, then it makes sense, as it is crawling the web for duplicity before releasing it to the search engines. However, I noticed earlier this morning, while still under pending, the hub meta-tag read NOINDEX. As of release, the index has been activated. So, something between is blocking the spider from picking up the link.
James.ah well, we just have to wait, give us a feedback here about how long you waited
That "something between" should be known!
Yieldbuild is sure sexy, I don't know about if it is that good in maximizing for adsense etc..
But you know more than me in terms of these things and I am learning from your explanations! Thanks.Well, 48 hours in and still nada. I actually found janderson's "Best Image Optimizer for Websites", so that is good news for him/her.Yes definitely and definitively explained to Hubbers, which would clear up much confusion.
It is. I actually was introduced to YieldBuild prior to coming to HP. Tested it on a site, and it did increase valuation for AdSense, Chitika. Essentially, YieldBuild the main reason the HubAd Program {YB Premium Ad Displays} pays more than plain-old AdSense. As a now DoubleClick-partner, HP can further tune that maximization using the YieldBuild algorithm.* blush * glad to help -that is, if it helps.
James.Wish I had better news, Pretty, but no, nothing.
Oddly, another article outside of HP -much like this tutorial- is doing great on the numbers//feedback fresh out of the gate. One more cycle {24hr} of nothing, am pulling it down and selling it to the Developer Site.
James.So, that is that. Almost four days post idle, and nothing. My guess is this goose is cooked. Am not seeing the "wow factor" of said improvement to the algo for indexing, traffic nor ads actually. Before the algo change, my Articles were indexed tout de suite.
C'est la vie, mon ami
James.
EDIT: Might be considered more productive to Unpublish the Articles rather than Suspended Animation, based on these results. Which case, the Article does not appear anywhere on HP or Search Engines, versus revving its pistons on HP, to gain traction, causing lot's of smoke and mirrors and then speed off into the brick wall of Google.
I made sure it was published prior to the holiday weekend. Very frustrated, I cannot even find the hub in edit mode to insert links. I could do it manually, not sure if this would damage already published hubs.
Not that it means anything, hubscore is currently at 83!Will a new page with the whirly circle thing be immediately available to followers?
I think so, because I published a new article about an hour or two ago and just received notice that there is a comment from a follower.
Yep, and I just noticed that too, thanks. My keen marketing mind tells me I can do something with that knowledge.
Not sure what.
Do you think any of the HubPages staff is still following this forum or are they all off (idling!) for the 3-day weekend?
I sincerely hope they are idling and recharging. lol. If this feature doesn't have a noticeably positive impact on traffic they will have a monstrous amount of work to do to keep this site moving forward. They will need all the strength that they can muster.
I do hope that you change your mind about idling of hubs. There are hubs that are well written but just didn't take off in terms of page views. By putting them on idle, they would never get the chance to have traffic at all. If there is nothing wrong with the hubs to begin with, it is almost impossible to edit them.
Seeing as a change like this affects so many people, is it wise for HP to just set it and forget it on an alteration of this magnitude? Or should someone have been responsible for monitoring this change against adverse effects?
Let's just shake up our members worlds, and enjoy the long weekend! This seems like a case of negligence on the person responsible for technical glitches on the site, as well as their management. Or just a severe case of apathy!- SirDentposted 12 years ago
0I just noticed something on one of my poetry hubs that had been idled. Today, so far, it has received 16 views, which is out of the ordinary for that particular hub. I checked the stats and one came from HP but the other 15 came from Bing.
Hey there!
How are you? I notice that Bing is the choice of search engines at Ohio State and many other colleges and universities. I began to receive more traffic from Bing over Google on some Hubs a year ago.
Cheers!That's interesting. Is there anything that your Bing-friendly hubs have in common (like subject matter, for instance)?
College-level students (Bing) and text book writers (using Bing and Google) use my Hubs as reference and several Hubs have been included in books and undergrad/graduate/business classes in US/Canada with my permission. I would guess that SirDent's poetry is read by students and faculty and people that prefer Bing!
I also have one hub which is how to make British Christmas pudding. It's been on idle and I haven't updated it, just left it there. Yet, apparently, it is still indexed and has received 3 visits from Google today. No updating necessary it seems.
If you view the source file you will see the dreaded "NOINDEX" tag. The hub is still indexed, as confirmed by a search for the exact title. My guess is that just as it takes time for Google bot to come on by and index the hub, it takes time for it to be de-indexed. My guess is that next time the googlebot visits your page it will see NOINDEX and will remove it. Not sure how long this will take (several days). Just my opinion.
Ah, hadn't thought about that. I've written a new hub which hasn't been indexed. Suppose they'll index one and de-index the other. Still, as it has received 3 hits today, might be worth updating.
Hollie: The last time Google indexed your subdomain was on 18 Aug 2012 13:40:44 GMT.
Oh good point, Writer Fox! I never thought to look at the cache to see if my hubs are de-indexed yet, and they won't be seeing Google last swung round on the 20th.
The change took effect on Wednesday, 29th of August, so very few of us will be seeing any change yet.
To anyone reading here wondering how to check the cache - go to site:username.hubpages.com and look for the word 'cached' to appear when you mouse over the arrow to the right of your page result.
Open that page and check the snapshot date at the top.
Will all new hubs be "pending" before they are published? I just published a new hub that shows up in my own feed page, but it says "pending" on my accounts page. Can I assume that others can't read it yet? I have to admit that one of the things I love about writing on this site is the instant gratification I get when people read and comment soon after I hit "publish." Oh well, I shall be patient. Just wondering how this feature works with newly published hubs.
Your Hub is published Donnah, I just saw it come up on the feed. Looks good.
Thanks. It still says "pending" though, which I guess I don't grasp. Maybe the accounts page hasn't updated yet.
Hi Donnah, If you read all 42 pages of this forum you will get some idea what 'pending' means. And you may also get a headache.
I am assuming this is for Hub Pages' information. I'm just irritated because I have read everything I could find about this site. I chose it after considering several others. I also remember reading an article where I was told that hubs have to have time to mature and that they don't "age," or mature, for at least a year. Now you are saying that my hubs need to be idled because they don't have traffic when I haven't been writing here for even six months, much less a year. I have 38 hubs and three are idle. I think the time and effort taken to institute this new process would be better spent finding a way to police blogs that are riddled with grammatical errors, spelling errors, and sentences that aren't sentences. Those are the sites that are hurting all of us. I try to do my share and hub hop as often as possible, but there's no end to the work of writers who shouldn't be on Hub Pages at all. I make grammatical and spelling errors myself. Sometimes I have two or three and my sister calls me at some point and tells me aout them. I'm sure most of us do, but not to the extent that I see them on some writers' sites. I suggest you have each prospective writer submit several samples of their work before they are allowed to write here and that they pass some sort of remedial word knowledge and grammar test. I accomplished this with distance learning students when I operated my school by having them test with a notary and have their work notarized, at the students' expense. That way, you'll know they didn't have help.
Some writers seem to like the idling of hubs. For them, why not take a look at your own hubs and work on the ones that need work. It's easy to tell from the stats.
Thanks for listening, and I hope to goodness I haven't made a lot of errors!!!
MarseiHa! That is not likely to happen. I am just glad my hub is published. I did read some of the forum, but I don't have that much time in my life. I appreciate your feedback.
Hi there donnah. Here's a quicker way that should help you with understanding the new program: go to your accounts page and scroll down to the bottom. You'll see in blue, a line with Featured, Idle and Pending. Click any link which has a brief explanation and a further link for FAQ.
Oh Man! Now you tell me, after I read all 42 pages. Thanks Alastar, that is much quicker.
Thank you, Horatio.
Of course, it would be necessary to ensure people acting in this way can offer good advice. That is why I suggested that HP staff would need to award the status that would enable people to offer their services. This would have to be done on the basis of track records on HP (scores, views, earnings, quality of writing, etc), with different aspects having different weightings depending on the type of help the person wished to provide.I seem to remember that HP are bringing in a system where users can edit other people's hub with the permission of the owner; the owner then has to approve the changes. Not quite what you are suggesting, but does give the top writers the ability to assist newer writers and help mold their hubs into very good hubs.
Any venture where you help other writers be it through mentoring, collaboration etc is always going to be tough though because there are some members who simply don't want to promote 'competition'.
There are many other people here, who are not on and never likely to enter the apprentice scheme, for one reason or another, but who could provide excellent assistance to others should they choose to do so.
Yes, but they would need to be regulated. Hubbers would know that writers who have come through the apprentice scheme would be qualified to be able to give good advice. Your idea is a good one WriteAngled but falls down because it lets any old "Del-Boy" Trotter type character give advice. Hubbers who have come through the AP would have reached HP's exacting standards and could be trusted to give good assistance.
HoratioHey. Del Boy is my hero. If you don't identify you will never make money here. At the same time you need to be a little sharper than the average Peckham dweller. And I should know I lived a year or two Peckham.
Ha Will! LOL! And to think I had you down as more of a "To the Manor Born", type of a character.
A question: would your regulation scheme apply to the forums as well as to any off-forum mentoring programme? In other words, are you advocating that people must be HP apprentice scheme graduates before being allowed to give relevant advice in the forums?
I think they certainly should be graduates. And of course they should wear HP Graduate uniforms at all times during posting. I have sent an email to Paul pointing out that we don't yet have a flag. So we can hardly be expected to run it up and salute every morning. Which is slack.
We'll need a song too.
We can sing it every morning after we log in.
I'll write the first line;
"Oh say can you see,
By the light of Paul E."Will, Do you think some of us, who have been long time hubbers with some questionable success, could possible get some sort of t shirt or something? Not anything like the grads' uniforms of course...
I'm lovin' this. Perhaps there should be a category for graduate students, such as they are, and stellar achievers, such as you are!
Will, my man, you are too cool! If you are issuing uniforms, I want one of yours.
No, but perhaps you are on to something there Felicity. As well as an officially recognised (and paid for) Apprentice Advice Scheme maybe we could have a special Apprentice Advice Category listed. That way people would know where to go if they wanted good, clear advice. After all the staff don't always have time. This would be free of course, as opposed to WriteAngled scheme which Hubbers would have to pay for.
It's a great idea Felicity!
Horatio
x
If such a scheme existed, I would prefer to get advice from people such as Sunforged and Thisisoli.
Neither of them are in the apprentice scheme, but I feel both would be of far more help to me than any apprentice.
I'm sure that they would pass any vetting system operated by HP staff as well!I totally agree WriteAngled. I am in the AP, as you can see, but I no way feel like I know more that the seasoned hubbers or the experts on SEO, or many other skilled people, no matter if they ever applied for or were accepted in the AP.
There'll always be hubbers that know more than me, and I'd be happy to hear their advice.I agree with Robie - I've learned so much from everyone on the site, and I am certain that will continue, no matter how much experience I get in the future.
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The sooner everyone realizes "SEO" is an ambiguously interpreted myth, the better off this entire site would be -
The majority of "SEO Experts" are the equivalent of "Real Estate Experts" who made their tainted bucks by selling fraudulent "How To" books to gullible, unsuspecting, naive "Students" - Not by actually applying their flawed methods in practice -
In my opinion, the only valid "SEO" strategy in existence today involves writing quality articles and following search "Guidelines" - Anything above and beyond this common sense approach is purely speculation -
If so called "SEO" was a legitimate, tangible strategy, don't you think HP would have paid dearly for the "Secret Formula" and subsequently as a result, all entries would have been conveniently placed in a favorable position with permanent status? -
Back to the subject at hand, this desperate tactic of unilaterally "Putting Hubs to Sleep" is deplorable to those of us who take great pride in producing quality experiences - It is however a fantastic way to once again discourage the best writers and ultimately drive us away to our private domains where we have exclusive control over "Publishing" aspects of all entries in which we've worked so hard to create - It's my belief that nobody has the right to "Play" with hubs by reeling them in and out of published/un-published status based upon a non-existent or chronically inconsistent connection between "Views & Quality" -
Like others here at HP, I have several venues from which to launch, introduce, and showcase my work so limiting or even ceasing to publish future contributions originating from this site is not a major concern - However, I sincerely hope the time I've spent to date will not have been wasted -
I have one more Hub that has been in the works for several weeks in a holding pattern under "Unpublished" status, when finished, I might launch it as a final HP chapter but will absolutely re-evaluate any additional future contributions - I find it impossible to work diligently in a creative mode and then publish from this platform with such ambiguously uncertain circumstances looming -
If HP re-considers and or reverses this seriously flawed policy of unilaterally "Napalming" the fields without notice, I might find a way to revitalize my enthusiasm - Until then, I will always continue to offer my uniquely original contributions via innumerable upper echelon online and tangible venues -AP, Why don't you join the Apprenticeship Program? You would learn all about putting together a great quality hub that is also search friendly.
You also have the correct initials!
Horatio"Forum Rules and Etiquette
Below are some basic guidelines to live by.
Stick to the topic. Please stay on the thread’s topic when replying to an existing thread. If you don’t see an open thread about something you’d like to discuss, please open a new thread.
"http://hubpages.com/learningcenter/site-features-forums
Perhaps you would be better suited in opening up your own thread to discuss the benefits of the apprentice program? You could recruit from there as well!
The OP of this thread is the discussion of "idle hubs".
I would appreciate my inbox not be filled with clutter on this thread.
Thanks
RBActually, the thread was hijacked several pages back when various posters began attributing comments by members of the Apprenticeship Program (which were on-topic) to their affiliation with the AP. Horatio and other AP members who have posted comments related to that program are responding to those rabbit trails.
I agree with you - using this thread to bash the Apprenticeship Program (as well as those who are in it) is certainly off-course from the original topic.I'm so sorry. You're absolutely right. I was just laughing so hard the way the discussion was going that I misbehaved. I apologize. I'm writing a Hub right now about why Google hates HubPages and how that can be fixed. I'll get back to work now.
Horatio Plot,
Simple, concise answer to a simple question, because there is nobody here at HP who has the credentials to teach me "How To" create a "Quality" hub - Not an egotistical answer, just stating fact -
I currently tutor some pretty high profile acquaintances both online and off so I would be considered the "Teacher/Trainer" by the majority, not student -
If HP were truly interested in progressing forward and raising quality standards, they would have asked me to help in this critical area long ago - But then again, I've continued to offer "Pro Bono" advice via these forums for some time -
I've trained almost everyone in every demographic over the years with superior results - Essentially, joining the "AP" program would be a major step backward for me and a huge waste of invaluable time, hours which could be allocated elsewhere to make a substantial difference -
Moreover, if HP knew how to create "Quality", "Search Friendly" hubs, why is the site desperately trying to avert a waning or overall crash in views? Or, is it just a natural progression or adjustment back to reasonable expectations? - And if they are in possession of such a magical formula, why not share this "Secret" with all members in unison so the entire site would benefit including HP Employees? - Simple, logical answer, they have no formula, and that I would bank on as fact -
Not trying to be argumentative Horatio and I appreciate the suggestion, but you definitely got the wrong person to recruit at $6 per entry -
I do hope you appreciate my honesty and nice to meet you BTW -
P.S. - I just sold one of my exclusive photos for in excess of $5,000 - A check which I happily received from the buyer then immediately endorsed to the name of a very worthy cause -
P.S. II - Use your common sense and adhere to search guidelines for best "SEO" results -This might be off topic, for which I apologise, but I just want to express my admiration to you Alternative Prime. Not only do you tutor offline acquaintances offline and in real life (any famous Hollywood actors that we would know about?), and write high quality content on several venues, but you still find the time to share your thoughts with us at length on this forum, pro bono. How do you do all this?
As to HP, they think they know how to make this site Google friendly, and they have not only shared their secret with us, they have positively rammed it down our throats. Their secret is to de-index under performing content. Whether it will work or not, we have to wait till the next Panda update to see what happens.
RegardsYou're welcome aa lite-
My euphorically enjoyable work with high profile "Acquaintances" is strictly confidential and I have not requested nor received expressed "Releases" from any of them to share literary or visual works which include their specific words or images - Therefore, identities will remain protected with regard to Hubpages although I have revealed my celebrity related works at various other venues with explicit permission and consent -
Unfortunately, when you have a small unpredictable element here at Hubpages which seems to enjoy "Attacking" those of us who have achieved a certain level of success which transcends all boundaries both online and off (Petty attacks which I never experience elsewhere), hesitation to share what some would consider amazing, intimate stories and experiences I'm sure would be understandable -
HP has a very user friendly publishing platform which makes it easy to build a page then subsequently launch it, hence the primary reason for spending some time here - However, at the risk of wasting this precious time, if the latest nonsensical policy remains in place, I will allow all hubs created to date to remain active, but will absolutely suspend all dedication toward making new hubs and concentrate a little more on launching from other venues -
If your assumptions are correct, HP should call it what it is "Under Performing Hubs" not "Poor Quality Hubs" because as we all know, there is very little if any direct connection between the two - Moreover, I don't think they have the right to implement such a flawed, aggressive strategy, but even if they indeed continue, how about a reasonable notice to fix whatever they think needs fixing before automatically "De-listing"? - And if this unilateral, blanket removal strategy remains in place, ALL hubs written will be at risk of "De-Listing" regardless of "Quality -
It's disheartening to see my latest hub on Online Reputation Management (ORM) going to sleep immediately after publication. It is also my first hub with a Zzz. I hope the HubPages Team could do something to exclude newly published hubs from Zzz status. Anyways, now the hub is showing pending status.
Mr. Edmondson address that in an earlier post. http://hubpages.com/forum/topic/102577#post2185378
You can also read about it on the learning center hub. http://hubpages.com/learningcenter/Feat … -Idle-Hubs
"Pending
For a 24 hour period after first publishing a Hub or editing an Idle Hub, a Hub’s status will be Pending as our internal algorithm analyzes its content. After this 24 hour period has passed, your Hub will fall into one of the statuses described above."So does this mean there will now be a 24hr delay in getting our hubs indexed by Google as it's held up in the pending queue?
Apparently so. Of course, HP staff will be better able to answer your question. Someone should be along today to check this thread out I am sure.
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This sounds like HubPages is moving backwards, rather than forwards to me....
If the Idle Hubs algorithm is so well thought out, then why is my third highest ranked Hub "Why Microsoft Invested In Barnes & Noble", which has received over 60 hits over the past 4 days, on Idle status? Makes no sense. I have some really well written Hubs about Home Buying and Selling Tips and advice that are also on Idle Status. At least if they're going to implement an Idle Status policy, it could make sense.
Humm. This is a good question Rock_nj. My best guess, and it is a guess, is that there is part of the algorithm that looks at how many different types of capsules you use. HubPages bangs on about that all the time. Try putting in a few more pictures or a table or a poll and see what happens.
I am not insinuating that your Hub would be improved by such a move by the way, or that the gratuitous use of such a tactic in any way relates to a quality improvement. In fact your Hub is a fine piece of writing and stands up very well as it is (as your hits show). You should be proud of such a piece.
I just believe that HP is reacting to what it believes Google is beginning to look for. That is variety of content within an article and the use of different types of media beyond just plain writing
The algo is an ongoing project, so it can change.
Once again I should emphasis that I'm just guessing and I'm also not saying that hubs are improved by the addition of such media. I say that just in case anybody comes along and whacks me round the head with a wet fish and the old, "you're confusing quality with popularity" argument again, which quite frankly I'm tired of.
I just believe that this is the way the Internet is going, for good or bad, and we have to roll with the punches or get out of Dodge.
Horatio
More capsules. Jesus F Christ. I guess it all makes sense in a marketing way, but for pities sake.
MORE CAPSULES.
Is that what it is all about?
First we had words, then original thoughts, then perhaps some art and something... anything... to lift the human spirit, to tease, inform, or mislead - whichever might lighten the dull crushing monotony of our silly little pointless lives.
A chance to BE something - if only as a writer or a reader - for a few precious moments away from the social sell, the deal, the profit and the point.
More capsules.
God I'm depressed.It's just a thought.
Anyway I would have thought your keen marketing brain would have jumped at the opportunity.
I can't imagine a better writer to brighten up our days with a funny little quiz or too.
And I bet you could work wonders with the map capsule.
Go on.....I challenge you. A Hub with a quiz and a map capsule!
HoratioA quiz AND a map? Are you mad? Look HP (hmmm... coincidence or what?) your hubs are glamour models compared to the sluts I churn out. Useful and attractively formatted, etc.
I am still learning how to put one word in front of another. I suspect I am not far off writing the worst Kindle in the world.
Poor Mark,
I think you can buy capsules for that at the pharmacy.Lol. Well with a map to find it and then a practice quiz "yes I'm depressed" "no I'm not a druggie" I should be well set. Maybe I can just change my profile pic to one of those implausibly attractive females...
You're killing me, Mark. You're just killing me.
I've been up all night writing my new Hub, Why Google Hates HubPages. And things were going just fine, the muse was visiting and all, and then I hit this big writer's block when I found out that I had to include a map and a quiz. But, I tell you what, I'm going to do that. I really am. The thing is, I just have to sleep on it a while.
But I do have to ask, about the quiz - will there be a test on Friday? If so, can it be multiple choice? Do I have to write that, too?
I hope you can help me with this. I know that you never went to Apprentice school and all, but you have the best answers (next to Marye) on HubPages.
Thanks for listening.Perhaps you could add a map showing the location of the evil wizard that put a deception spell on Google making them think that Hubpages was actually the enemy (in order to create chaos on the Internet and eventually become ruler over all). You'll have to ask Mark about the quiz. He is more logical and linear than I.
Hey Miss Marye,
I've got you covered. I've got that map and I figured out who done it. You wouldn't believe what I have discovered in the underground network. I've got the guy's name, his address, and pictures of his children. (Mossad, eat your heart out!) Stay tuned.
About the quiz: Do you think Mark knows who is supposed to grade the quiz? I think I should know that before I publish my Hub, Why Google Hates Hubpages.
The sun is about to rise in the wadi and that's when the muse rises in the vapors of the morning dew and all foxes must go to sleep.
I will hit the Publish link on my Hub tomorrow, Fox's honor. Is it OK if I use your picture? You're the hero of my Hub.
Pawing off.
I think several of us are frustrated at Google driving the bus by increasing rankings on articles with more bells and whistles. HubPages is just responding to what Google claims the readers (as in consumers, in every sense of the word) want. It's indeed a stretch for those of who have our hearts in the writing part to suddenly hear you need quiz capsules, original video, whatever, to be competitive on search engines.
It's also discouraging that Google apparently will ding an entire subdomain if people don't jump through those hoops. And even more extreme, it will ding the entire site.
I don't blame HP for all this, I blame Google. I think the site is trying to respond to the tricks Google is pulling. But at the same time, we do have issues if there are (as mentioned earlier) three-sentence hubs getting indexed.
I agree with Horatio that you (Mark) could do some hilarious things with the capsules, quizzes and other tools. I understand if you don't care to do those things, but I know if you did, we would all be spewing our herbal tea over our keyboards.
Way back when they used to assign 'demonstration speeches' in English (and I thought those were dumb assignments), I brought a container of dirt, got some water, and demonstrated how to make mud pies.
I am following HP's guidance on the Idled Hubs system and criteria for getting the hubs awake and visible again. But I'm also very new, and I know I might feel more frustrated if I'd been here for several years. As I said, I think the site is simply responding at the administrative level to the things Google is doing. I can't blame them for doing that, and I truly feel they will tweak the changes they're making as needed,
Just wanted to say I believe in your talent, Mark - that's all.I just can't believe this is really what Google want. I have just spent three nights researching a couple of topics (and I found loads of internet content on them.) I must have literally viewed about 400 pages+, but not one single page showed a quiz or a map, and maybe three showed videos (which I did not watch). I started (in each case) at the top of the search results and worked my way down to page 10-15 +. Surely if Google wants these unnecessary 'extras' it should be more obvious when all of us do internet searches and end up looking at 'non Hubpages sites'. I just don't see this at all when I view the sites that pop up in my general search results. I can honestly say I perform various Google searches daily, and I have never yet seen any evidence that sites are moving towards this 'quiz's, maps, video' format. I wonder if this isn't just an HP idea of what Google 'might' want, as opposed to what they actually 'do want'.
As a reader I see much of that stuff as useless bloat. Whereas a map or a video might give additional useful information, IMHO those quizzes and polls are just silly and mostly useless, and provide the reader with little value. While I realize that they may serve to keep readers on our pages longer, I don't think they add much value to the reader's experience or the knowledge they take from the article. I don't think I've ever bothered to actually answer a quiz or a poll.
I totally agree. Whilst I confess that I have voted on the odd poll (mostly Mark Ewbies' humorous ones lol), I confess I do not arrive on an article and immediately think, 'what, no poll, I am out of here'. They are simply a means to keep people on a page longer, and they are mainly time fillers.
Agreed
I assume I am not the only person left on earth who wishes to search the Internet for information pertinent to my work.
If Google is now in the business of providing infotainment, it no longer has any relevance for my professional needs.
With respect to the information I need, a poll does not validate it, nor does an entry in the anarchic Wikipedia, where truth is defined as the majority vote on any given topic.
I need ideas to be presented in closely argued written discourse with full bibliographic references, not in a blurred video with a mumbled narration full of errrs and aaaaahs and in an accent I cannot understand.
It seems to me that the time is ripe for a new search engine, along the lines of the original Alta Vista, before it was bought out and ruined by Yahoo (the meaning of yahoo is coarse or ill-bred person, and it was the name given by Swift to a brutish race encountered by Gulliver - most appropriate!)Unfortunately I think you are in the minority WriteAngled, and Google will always define "good" as that which pleases the majority of its users. I do believe that a lot of people use the internet for infotainment,or at least very easily digestible content. Presented to them in really short paragraphs.
A person on other site I frequent mentioned a forum in Germany that apparently tried to correlate various page characteristics with Google ranking. One of their conclusions was that lots of photos was good, but a lot of text was bad! I didn't believe that because it goes against everything HubPages etc. were saying.
However, I've been looking at some of the pages that outrank me, and a lot of them have little writing, lists and paragraphs of 2-3 sentences really seem to dominate. Another thing that I noticed is that ehow articles now seem to rank really well again. To me they personify the very easy to absorb, shallow content that is really not "informative" or "authoritative", but is probably very unchallenging to read.
Google is not in the business of improving people's minds, or even making sure that the pages it serves them get the facts right. It is in the business of giving people the results they want.In a pre-freelance incarnation, I was called on a number of times to provide lectures to members of a department within the UK Home Office, and also to others affected by rulings from this department, on how to use the Internet to help them find answers to pertinent questions in this subject area.
Were I to be asked to do this today, I would have to reply that the Internet can no longer supply anything close to a trustworthy answer to such queries.Well the stuff is still all there, you just need to change your search strategy. Type query into Google, then go straight to page 10 and start searching from there.
Unfortunately, I believe the human race is moving backwards into the barbarism we mistakenly believe was left behind during the Enlightenment. In general, we (I say we, meaning collectively as a race) have taught, and continue to teach about instant gratification. Each new generation seems to have less ability to think critically, to maintain an attention span of more than 30 seconds, or to read words with more than 4 or 5 letters. They are the ones who are dictating what "sells" on the internet. I abhor the idea that I may be required to add to the destruction of all culture in order to exercise my own passion for expression.
I was just browsing the "Latest Hubs" and came across the shortest Hub I've ever seen. This Hub consists of exactly three short sentences. I did a quick check on Google and found it had already been indexed into the search engine. I do not understand the point of placing new Hubs into a pending state if such a tiny and low quality Hub is able to easily pass through the new system.
If it is bad for a hub to be "idle", surely it would make sense to tell us *exactly* what causes a hub to be "idle"? I has assumed it was simply traffic levels, but apparently this is not the case. So we are left grappling with an unwritten rule.
I agree, I would like to understand the logic behnd idling them. That's the only way to fix them.
Having a lot of ads posted can make a hub Idle I think. I have had several of mine that way. It used to be OK here to post a lot of ads but not any more.
I have done some reading about SEO, and Google frowns upon pages that have too many ads, so that makes sense that the Idle Hub formula might try to idle Hubs that have more ads than Google likes to see.
My experience is... it's not ads. If anything it's my boring up myself content with few capsules and no ads that ticks the idle box. I must say that the algo is a keen judge of non commercially useful content.
I will also say that so far I don't really have a problem with it. I have so far deleted 20% of my content and it didn't hurt at all. Waste of time writing for my own self indulgence.Write to love. Love to write. F@ck the rest of it...
I agree, of course. I love it.. the writing thing. But I get the HP angle and it makes sense. After all... 40 articles... that's roughly 20,000 words. Hmmm.
What a pity that you deleted them! I bet some of them were very amusing.
The thing about idle hubs, is that you don't have to delete them, even if Google in its great wisdom, considers them low quality, they will not affect how it sees the rest of your site, because it doesn't see them. So you might as well leave them. Unless you don't like them yourself, of course.
Guys am I missing something?? I am really confused as to what you are meaning in terms of ads. HP controls how many ads show up on a hub. As writers we don't control that. I'm on the HP Adprogram and all my hubs have the full compliment of ads. If what you are saying is true then wouldn't all of our hubs be on Idle and would also be completely outwith our control.....
Yes, you can add lots of Amazon or eBay ads, and indeed, there were high earners here who used to do a lot of this. I copied them but am now having to undo my efforts.
Ah I see what you mean. Sorry, I never think of those as ads. I always think of them as products. I generally don't write product review hubs etc so probably why I haven't come across that issue.
The Google Three Ad Max is not effected by YieldBuild Premium Ad displays.
Pages having least 250 words per Ad {one Ad per paragraph, generally} are considered clear by all SEO guidelines.
Amazon & eBay Capsules are INTERNALLY regulated by HP only. Ex-number of capsules permitted per paragraph.
Infolinks, Kontera, Vibrant, Chitika, AdMedia Ads do not effect page valuation, else these companies would be out of business.
In addition, the recently released Slide-Show Ads do not exceed the Three Ad Google Rule, as the photo display is considered a New Page. However, if HP, who integrated the Ads, Capsules and zZz system, as apart of their YB algorithm, are Idling their own content because of this, then they shot themselves in the foot. lol.
JamesThe question is, what constitutes "too many ads"? That's what Google does not make clear.
Anyway, Google's main concern is too many ads above the fold.
HubPages has an automated program which controls how many ads are displayed. They also have controls on how many eBay and Amazon ads are displayed. Some Hubbers persist in panicking and thinking they must reduce their ads even more than HubPages advises. I see no evidence to suggest that's the case.
I thought staff was supposed to let Google know when site was rid of bad content per letter in late June. James what do you think?
They should have already.
If each sub.domain was tested by HP then resubmitted to Google, along with the main.domain, then everything should be peachy -else each sub.domain is in need of tweaking.
But, this upgrade {Idle Hubs} seems to be a different solution.
It appears to essentially be an Internal Automated Moderation formula. Like CAPTCHA for the entire Hub, checking duplicity, organic verbiage, style, layout, elements, images, links, summary, keywords and matching that against permissions for ad volumes, typography/spelling, punctuation, grammar, etc. Upon clearance, should be immediately released to the Search Engines for indexing, released for viewing in the Hubs respective Category, internally and the share elements activated.
Sounds like there could be an issue between when the hub comes off idle {RPM} and those two points of visibility. As if the Hub was given the green light, but still chained to the wall, spinning its wheels as fast as possible {causing lots of smoke too} yet not getting anywhere fast -imo.
James.@James - While your list of test elements may be true - I have a feeling that the Grim Reaper test is based on hub score + date last updated. Why? If you click the heading 'Idle Status' twice (get an up arrow) the hubs are sorted by hub score (lowest at top). Probably does not help much, but may give a hint about which hubs may be feeling tired and yawning. Updating hubs seems to revive them - not sure what the "staleness" period is?
Hey J,
Right, there should not be a stale period, which -am guessing- is the purpose of the Idle function, once the Green Light is given. If the algo is holding back the release to the Internal Category display AND to the Engines, then there is something not correct in the command line, or information Hubbers have been kept from, regarding edits within the Hub that are necessary for complete release. It may just be a waiting period post "snooze" that HP feels is necessary, giving the Hubber once last window to make whatever alterations they need before letting it run. But, my new hub is stale after nearly 4 days. That is quite a long time.
Educated guess here, but since the YB prog is directly connected to many functions in Hub, and is designed to learn over time, and a series of glitches happened over the last two weeks for traffic numbers, stats, capsules, warnings, payment delays, etc indicates this feature was being integrated. About this time also, the Taxonomy, Breadcrumbs and such started changing. So either several upgrades were put in place simultaneously or this particular part of the solution is the reason why the bugs occurred as it has not completely learned/completed the cycle. Again, not certain.
James.Just to clarify - the staleness I am referring to is 'not been updated for the last 6 months' (or some other period) - ALL my ZZZ were stale using this test. Updating them seems to gve them the 'green light'. The reason why it would be good to know if your hubs are yawning is that the ZZZ imposes the NOINDEX tag and if they get de-indexed it may take a while to restore them and it probably affects all sorts of links and of course traffic. IMO
Gotcha.
This then is two elements at work:
Evergreen Hub
Pub Date 31 July 11
ZzZ'ed 1 Sept 12 for editing. De-Indexed [NOINDEX] meta applied.
That hub is now viewed by the spider as gone. So between 3/30 days that link will throw a 301/304 error or possible a 404 until the spider crawls again and determines that link is officially gone or does exist. *
Updated 3 Sept 12
De-Z'ed 4 Sept 12
Now, that hub has to wait for the spider to crawl again, pick up the link and see the NOINDEX removed. The time difference, then, is the issue. No matter when the hub was updated, it will have to wait until it is picked up again -and if the 301/304 or 404 are cleared out of the system. Else manual indexing.
New Hub
Pub Date 4 Sept 12; automatically Z'ed pending internal clearance.
De-Z'ed 5 Sept 12
This Hub should automatically be picked up by the spider, else have wait for an internal command for release, manual entry or the next crawl cycle of 3/30 days. When submitted for publication, the NOINDEX is automatically applied, so the spider ignores it until release. Which again means whenever the crawl comes around again. New Hubs would not through a 301/304 or 404, as they do not yet exist -technically- to the engine {and apparently to the Internal Taxonomy system as well}. In short, the New Hub, even being released, has to wait between 3 to 30 days for indexing. **
*WordPress had this problem not long ago, after upgrading the CMS to 3.4.1. The issue still has not been resolved. Thousands of slugs are now in limbo somewhere, throwing errors or just completely ignored by the spiders.
** My New Hub has been in "green light" queue for four days now. The only place it shows up is on the latest or hot areas of HP Main, not even in the main topic viewport for the sub-category.
James.Exactly - excellent summary
So its important to know when a hub is yawning and getting sleepy to avoid the time in the 'sin-bin' - likewise to know how to get a new page indexed once the NOINDEX tage is removed. Its a shame HP does not provide details to help hubbers with these issues. In an ideal world HP would have an extra 'idle status' = Yawning
- which would be a warning that a page has been flagged for ZZZ in 7 days!, but has not been given the NOINDEX tag.It would but that would reveal too much info about how their solution operates. A risk, am certain, they will not take, especially where ad revenue is concerned and possibly a patent on the algorithm. I recall HP was the premier case study for AdSense and somewhere around that time, YB was built by Paul E, Paul D and Jay R. AWESOME SUGGESTION. Submit this to them, its brilliant!
James.
For the evergreen hub (idle) and those in transition for indexing promote it in diff social sites according to Paul E
Did you sell your hub or wait for it to be indexed?Sounds reasonable to promote in the social sphere, as search related UGC is coming from these areas, as equally from traditional engines.
I am awaiting approval by the Tech site for upload before scrubbing the hub(s). Takes a day or two for them to read it and green-light.
Now 5 days and still no visibility in G, nor in HP Category > Technology nor L1 {Internet/Web} nor L2 {Web Page and Web Site Development}.
James.maybe it is the topic of your hub????
I read in another thread some were able to published and get indexed after 24 hours..
Good luck with that hub, it seems a well written but I can't comprehend programming hub - programming is alien to me in web development I did Stata and SPSS before, not anymore (social stat packages)
BTW, don't you like to put it in your own website? :-)lol. I read this wrong at first. Thought you said, "I did Santa". lol. Naughty little elf.
Right, this particular sector is very, very niche and caters to data programmers for LAMP stack [Linux And MySQL PHP] which is my strongest language to date. No doubt reason the two tech sites want them.
Yes, am loading a bunch of Tutorials on my new site. Been hella busy with a web-software program for Image Uploading, Reordering and Internal-External SEO. After the 15 Sept will have more time to dedicated to them.
Am curious about Social Stats packaging. Does it monitor social networks collectively for data mining -like say HooteSuite or Ping.fm, individually developed platforms, or something else entirely?
James.Santa??? :-) Seems your very busy and knows what you are doing. Geeky..
They are used mainly for analyzing socio demographic data - census and surveys. It spew out statistics, mean, median, regression - causal. The data is ASCII.That is debatable. But yes, am perhaps the geekiest geek I know to date, supposedly. But nonetheless really good looking.
ok, that settled it :-) TY for the information and nice talking 2 u!
G+ , Pinterest + shareaholic (digg, reddit, etc.) works for me
Perhaps it isn't the quality of the hub that is called into question, but rather the quality of the ads it can attract. That is to say, if a hub doesn't attract high paying ads, it is put to sleep. Lower traffic, low paying advertiser, and few if any bells and whistles may make a hub appear too weak to live.
No that isn't what is happening. Definitely not.
I have another subdomain writing on a niche that is very low paying. Perhaps thanks to that very factor it doesn't have a lot of high quality competition.
None of its hubs are 'idled'. They all receive traffic daily.
Thanks Marcy, and HP. I don't really have a problem with losing the dross, anything I cherish I'm giving a temporary spruce up just in case. All that I removed was my choice... I didn't feel forced to do it.
I'm still learning... very very slowly.THE 30 HUBS IN 30 DAYS CHALLENGE - ITS RELEVENCE TO IDLE HUBS
If HubPages is concerned about substandard hubs, hubs which are poorly written and hastily assembled, why do they persist with the HubPages Challenge of 30 hubs in 30 days? If HubPages are concerned with raising the reputation of the site on Google, why do they encourage members to write as many hubs as they can as quickly as they can?
I am all in favour of competitions and incentives on HubPages to encourage members to push themselves and diversify their range of writing, and no doubt there are professional writers who are quite capable of writing 30 excellent in-depth articles in a month, but the vast majority of Hubpage members cannot manage this output and maintain a standard of real quality.
It seems to me that this Challenge encourages members to put together short pieces with litttle research, little rewriting, little attention to grammar, and little attention to presentation. If HubPages are interested in quality hubs, then surely they should be encouraging members to spend a long time over getting a hub right, not encouraging members to churn out as much stuff as possible as quickly as possible?
Surely it is the presence on the site of so many substandard hastily scribbled articles which damages HubPages reputation - NOT the presence on the site of high quality articles or pieces of creative writing which may be of minority interest and therefore low traffic pullers?
I am actually quite proud to say that - despite writing or researching every evening and sometimes all day when not at work - I have never yet managed to write more than 7 hubs in a month. But what exactly do HubPages want? And what do Google want from HubPages? As many hubs as possible? Or quality hubs that people take time over?Greensleeves - I agree that challenges based on quantity encourage the production of hubs that can end up being Zzzzs in the future. The few challenges I've seen on 30/30, though, were started by Hubbers rather than the site. I'm sure early 30/30 challenges were site-sponsored activities, but I'm guessing they've stopped promoting it as much for the same reasons you mention.
Some people can indeed produce a high number of really great hubs in a short time, but since many people can't maintain that pace, exercises focusing on productivity rather than quality can be problematic.Marcy; if it is indeed the case that HubPages doesn't promote these 30/30 challenges (or even more extreme challenges like 100 hubs in 30 days) anymore, then that is good news to hear.
These speed challenges do still feature prominantly, and of course individual members can test themselves in any way they choose, and write about them in the forums, but HubPages shouldn't have anything to do with them, and should discourage them. Hopefully they will. They should only promote contests or challenges which focus on quality, and they should emphasise the need to take time over a hub, to re-read it after it is finished and to amend as many times as is required so the hub is as good as the hubber can make it before it is published. I hope that is the way it will be in the future. Thanks for your view. Alun.
Greensleeves, you make a very valid point. I'm sure many of those hubs are idling right now.
I think with those challenges, etc., the focus is on getting it published in a certain time frame rather than producing a quality, unique hub which adds value to the online search. I don't know if they work now in the post panda, penguin world.G killed open publication
Creativity is killed because even if you are just writing for the sake of writing you still want your piece to be read and thus you want to know what makes it rank
The G algo is like the Da Vinci Code, everyone is deciphering itHas anyone published a hub and gotten it done and indexed in a decent time frame. I have one ready that is thorough and has a pie chart, but I spent a lot of time on it. Do you still just hit publish. My traffic is up a little.
The last hub I published was on 29th August, just after the idled hubs were introduced. It went out fo the twirly zone (pending) about 24 hours later. BUT I've just checked and it hasn't been indexed by G yet, which is unusual previously my hubs were indexed very quickly. Perhaps Google is very busy noting all the changes to the site, and doesn't have the time to notice the new stuff.
Interestingly its been indexed by Bing, since I've had a bing visit and a yahoo visit already. Previously I always found bing to be much slower at indexing than Google. But I would still publish hubs, in fact I'm starting to write one now. This was a big change for HP so I think it is wise to suspend judgement until the dust settles.
Misty I know what you mean. Is it worth it to do things no one else does? I will also check some out.
Take a look for sure, it is interesting to see how few sites actually have polls, quiz's and maps on them. Even without trying this out, just think about your last few months of Google searching and ask yourself how many of those search results had these on them. It is a real eye opener, especially if you bear in mind these are the articles at the 'top' of the results and well into the pages afterwards.
Must be best practice as Simone has 2 polls on hers
http://simonesmith.hubpages.com/hub/Con … tent-Sites
and
http://simonesmith.hubpages.com/hub/Gre … ation-TipsI have to admit that the things I search for personally rarely have maps, polls, etc. But I am usually doing research of some sort, either for the university courses I teach, for consulting or for writing, and my searches probably don't resemble those of the average Internet user. My guess is that many writers here fall into the same category - we are not the demographic Google caters to. This is why we see 'trending' topics on things like Kim Kardasian (sp?) and Twilight, which means those are the hot searches, and they're likely being done by the demographic that loves interactivity.
Encouraging polls and quizzes (in hubs where they'd make sense) is a strategy to offer things that will attract that same (very active) audience that generates 'trending' searches for the shade of lip gloss some teenage singer wore on MTV or something. That doesn't mean we should write about lip gloss, it just means when that audience clicks on and stays on an article, it's likely to have some sort of feature where they can interact or watch a video, etc.
So, the logical step for content providers is to pay attention and add those features where possible.
Of course, this opens the door for future 'factual' stories by anyone in the world saying, "An Internet poll shows that the majority of all women say they feel naked unless they wear fluorescent coral lip gloss." Or some such crap.
At least do not de-index hubs that get few traffic from search engines. I have hubs that get very few traffic in a month but now that they are de-indexed, they don't get any traffic at all.
I sure hope HP staff will reconsider their decision about this.You can just edit them and re-submit, if you think that they are capable of getting decent traffic? Although, you may find that leaving them de-indexed actually improves your overall traffic in the medium to long term?
I have deleted under-performing hubs and seen improvements in overall traffic, so what HP are doing doesn't seem like a bad idea to me. It's possible that it won't work out, of course, but I am fully prepared to give it a chance, even if losing hubs to get more traffic might appear counterintuitive.But Paul, surely editing and re-submitting is (or should) only be of value if the hub is poor or out of date. If the hub is already well edited and composed and is on a topic which doesn't go out of date, then editing and re-submiting should not make any difference (or am I stating what should be the case in an ideal world as opposed to what is actually the case where a little bit of inconsequential tinkering makes all the difference because to Google and/or HubPages it makes the hub look like a whole new fresh page?)
Again, the emphasis seems to be on traffic and an 'underperforming' hub is deemed to be one that has low traffic. Lets face it though - some hubs are on subject matter which is never going to achieve much traffic however brilliantly they might be written. Are we saying that there is no place for those minority interest hubs on HubPages? And that quality hubs which people have spent a lot of time on should be deleted? The only way to try to improve traffic to such hubs is through extensive linking to reach the relevant market, but even that will probably not greatly increase traffic. It shouldn't be necessary. Quality hubs should not diminish HubPages's or the hubber's reputation, whatever the level of traffic they receive.I think you've hit the nail on the head - what should be isn't what google wants.
A well written hub should get some traffic even though there aren't many searches for it, but google won't let it. Google can't truly recognize a good hub - just one that Google defines as "good". As such there probably isn't a place for those hubs, as google claims they are of low quality and penalizes the entire subdomain or site for them.
No, quality hubs should not diminish HPs reputation, but they DO. It's not right, it's not fair, it's counterproductive to the web, but it IS. We have to live with it.
Actually, Google's stated claim of trying to improve the web as a whole is admirable - they just don't know how to do it, and HP must follow along in their misguided efforts or suffer the consequences. HP may be right in that taking this step will improve overall traffic or they may not, but they are trying. That, too, is unfortunate but it is what it is - as writers on HP we have to go along with it just as HP has to go along with what Google wants.You are correct in a lot of what you say, Greensleeves. Each hub has to be judged on its own merits. I have hubs on local travel, which are perfectly good, but will never get a vast amount of traffic - those ones are definitely worth editing and resubmitting if they should ever idle.
Making an assessment can be very complicated in some cases, however, as there are so many factors to consider - so as far as I can see HP have brought in a (blunt) instrument to try to make it very easy for the average hubber to work out what might, and might not be working.
If you don't visit your site and check up on what's happening, then the default status is that your weaker hubs remain idled - that seems reasonable if you look at the site and see how much spam etc. gets posted on here.
It is better to use a blunt instrument and gradually improve it, than not react to Google changes in my opinion.Thank you Paul. I can agree with some of what you say, but not all. To give a couple of examples:
This is part of the problem - a hub which is perfectly good CANNOT be edited to make it better! It can be edited, sure, and played about with, but not necessarily made any better. If a little cosmetic surgery is all that's required to register an 'update' then we can do that, but it will not make the hub better and it will not attract more traffic if the hub content is minority interest.
I think I can agree to an extent with this. Certainly if the new policy quickly weeds out downright bad hubs and hubbers who show no inclination to make an effort to produce good hubs, then that will help. If the blunt instrument is fairly quickly - not too gradually - improved, then that will be good. But will it be improved? At the moment it does seem like a very blunt instrument indeed because it literally only targets low traffic. Nothing else at all. Now if during the 'pending' process HubPages can override the low traffic filter and ensure that good quality hubs are not subject to continued delisting due to low traffic, then fair enough. Good quality low traffic hubs will then only be idled once before being reviewed and allowed to stay visible. But I worry that such an improvement to the instrument will take place. Alun.
Hello Paul, thanks for your suggestions. Since many of us here are left with no choice anyways. I'll have to try your suggestions although I really don't have a good feeling about this.
I still think that hubs that get little/few traffic should not be de-indexed especially if those few are really coming from search engines anyway.
As far as I can see, Google last visited your hubs on the 9th of August, therefore your hubs are still indexed according to them.
Someone correct me if I am wrong, but in order for Google to act on the 'noindex' tag, it has to visit your subdomain first.I think that's correct. I noticed that one of Paul E's hubs has a noindex tag but is still indexed.
So, that means our estimation was correct, the spider is set to re-crawl every 30 days.
Evergreen Hubs Z'ed between, still exist, as confirmed by several of hubs.
If still in Z Mode when the spider passes again {in this case 9 Sept} they will be de-indexed until the next crawl date of 8 October.
So that is resolved at least information-wise.
New Hubs, auto Z'ed/Pending:
Should be indexed. If not the crawl rate has been changed for the sub.domain and set to 30 days.
So all New Hubs are staved until crawl date {8 Sept or 8 Oct} to be indexed.
Makes better sense now. And also why it was highly recommended to use sharing/social media outlets for traffic interim.
James.My gut feeling is that posting links to 'sharing/social media outlets" actually triggers the googlebot to come on by, because the bot crawls these sites and books a visit to the links. The same applies to a link on another site that the bot visits, especially if someone clicks the link. Posting these links speeds up the indexing ( 1-7 days ) in my experience. If the spider happens to come by when the NOINDEX tag is displayed it may take more time for the spider to revisit it and index it (no experience with this). My oldest hub yet to be indexed was published in 31st Aug. One publsihed on 2nd Sept has been indexed. So it varies.
It does, which has me buggered.
Not that I am encouraging this in any way, but wonder what the Black Hats think about this technique of Zing Articles. Am going to pop over to Moz and see what come up...
James.
Yes, the page needs to be re-crawled and even then there appears to be a delay from the time google crawls it and when it doesn't show in the index.
We'll add to the faq the questions about long pending periods. This happens because the author edits a Hub in pending status. Then we reevaluate the Hub which restarts the 24 hr time period.
- Marye Audetposted 12 years ago0
One thing to keep in mind is that society is used to getting things fast. Attention spans are short - watch any television show and you will see this in action. Scenes change more quickly than they used to, the seasons are just not as long as they used to be, commercials are fast and rapidly firing visuals, audio, and information at the viewer.
When someone looks for information they want to find their answer quickly but they are also open to having their senses stroked with video, interesting images, etc. I know that I am going to have to start doing video on my personal blogs to take them to the next level... I am not thrilled but there you are. It is the balance of personal ethics and making a living.
If you can grab them with a great image in the first module, give dry bones information in an interesting way in the second, and grab them with a video in the third, I am willing to bet they will spend time reading the rest of the article. At least that is the direction I am heading.I think you're right, Marye. The world and web are evolving and if we don't keep up we will go down.
I'm with you on videos. I don't like them, don't watch them, and don't want them on my hubs. Nevertheless it seems that they are becoming more and more necessary to keep readers and we'd best learn to use them. Making and using my own videos may well triple the time it takes to write a hub, but if we want that hub to be well accepted videos are probably necessary.Well, the videos thing came in after Google bought Youtube. Not long after the takeover, video results began appearing high up on the Google search results page. Call me a cynic, but...
I think videos work well with some topics, for example: recipes, how to fix something, etc. and not so well with other areas. However, as I said in the first para, there is certainly a lot of scope for getting a prominent position in the search results if you know what you are doing.
However, I am wary of putting in lots of energy into HP until I get a better idea of how things are panning out with traffic levels etc. If the idling does help (which I think it well might), it won't probably have much effect until the next panda run at the earliest.I'm glad you mentioned that about Google buying Youtube and the videos. I don't call that cynicism, I call it realism. I think you're right.
I'm with you, Paul, about the Youtube/Google/video... Here's the problem for me: Google is playing around to try to force us to use things like video, because they are making money from the ads placed on them. They really don't give two sh*ts about who's viewing because they'll make their ad money.
For us, we know our targeted audience. We need to be attracting people who will stay long enough to read. We also need people who have money to spend on the ads seen on our pages. Most of the people I know, my age, are not interested in taking some silly poll to see what the rest of the world thinks about their opinion. They also aren't interested in staring at a video of something they have had the opportunity to see on their televisions. They are looking for information.
However, I see a lot of kids playing mini-games inserted into webpages, and taking polls (because teenagers worry that they may not fit in with everyone else), and the younger generation watching videos. But again, how many of them are spending money on the ads?
I don't write fashion, music, or hubs relating to celebrities. Mine tend to be more informative about things like chemicals in our food, environmental issues, veterans' issues, etc. I have used videos when appropriate. I have used polls, too. I certainly haven't noticed that they do any better than those without.
I'm angry that I feel like we're being strong-armed to be a part in yet another attempt to "dumb-down" America. Let's not forget that Larry Page and Sergei Brin, founders of Google, are in bed with the gov't. If you don't believe me, take a look at public info regarding their financial portfolios, political contributions, etc. These guys are sleeping with the guys who wanted to be permitted to take control of the internet on their own terms.
Don't discount your own preferences and taste when it comes to deciding what kinds of doodads you litter your hubs with. Many others find annoying and tacky what you yourself find annoying and tacky.
It's not about discounting others' preferences. As I said, I've used videos and polls when appropriate. I realize there are differences in opinions regarding what's tacky and annoying, but our writing and the design of our pages is supposed to be about targeting the right audiences. A video may lend value if it serves as a "source", can add additional information to what's been written, or if the hub is actually a commentary of the video or others of its type. If people start using them indiscriminately, just to rank, there's going to be a lot of junk traffic that doesn't provide the desired results.
I definitely agree with you, Marye. I may just want to write, but I have to realize who I am writing for. When I'm on the internet, searching for information, I am exactly like the customer you describe. I want the information and I want to be able to find it fast, without having to read a whole lot of garbage. The photo draws me in, then I want the answer FAST. Once I get the answer, if the subject matter is interesting and if the writer is a good writer, then I will stay on the page longer. If there is a video, I might also watch it - but only if the author edifies the video first, because I don't want to waste my time watching a nonsense video. I appreciate when the author tells me what the video is about, the length of the video, and where critical information can be found in the video. It all makes the experience more rewarding. I'm just one person on the planet. I can't imagine I'm the only one like me. So, when I write a hub, I try to keep myself in mind.
I had three hubs that were idled. I redid key words, renamed them, changed paragraph names, etc. For one day after, they had the whirly arrow thing, now they are back to just the green dot. Of course, I don't know how renaming them affects them in search engines, but at least they're not idle. I'm hopelessly inept with the technology part, but didn't like seeing those zzs.
I asked a couple of readers and they all said they never ever watch videos when reading
articles. I certainly never do.It depends upon the subject matter, however. For a complicated set of instructions, I appreciate a good video guiding me through the steps. Especially when it's learning software, or something computer-oriented. I learned Inkscape and Gimp primarily through videos- found it easiest this way. I think videos have their place, in other words. How-to's can be enhanced with a good video to assist the reader in understanding the steps. Some people learn best through demonstration. So, it depends upon the user, really. If I feel a video will be a good adjunct to what's already been mapped out in a hub, I will use one. It would be really difficult to properly describe say, certain hair styling methods, without one.
Yes. And if you are after lots of traffic, videos serves two main purposes. They can potentially get you high up on the first page of Google, plus they can keep your visitors on your page longer, which help with your standing, as far as Google goes. Ironically, even if the majority of visitors don't actually watch your video(s), but read the text instead, videos can still help you to get more traffic.
I think its great, Hubpages are really doing us a favor, i had not considered how some of my lesser performing hubs would be affecting my standing with Google and by automatically shifting them to idle, it saves us the leg work of manually doing it.
What is the actual rough length of time that constitutes as lacking traffic, cos i do have hubs with 0 hits in 30 days, that havent yet fallen into zZz mode, so it must be greater than 30 days, so fair enough, surely anything that hasnt had a hit in 30 days, doesnt stand much chance of getting many hits ever.
I was even wondering whether Google would frown upon Hubs with only 1 hit in 30 days and have began to unpublish some within this quota.
A nice feature would be to put the unpublish button on the stats page, rather than having to click edit, then unpublish, it would make less time consuming to unpublish stuffOMG It's working!!!!!
Just looked at realt time view on Google Analytics, and I had 2 minutes in the past half-ah hour which had 100 views each!
Ok I know this is not real, and it must have been some kind of bot attack, but it was fun to see it. Can't actually see where the views came from, but if there was nothing, than 100 than again nothing, I'm sure it's not human.Yet another example of the HubPages "Ready, Fire, Aim!" mentality. About half of my hubs have been flagged as Idle. I don't have a problem with some of them, but many of them are recipes, like how to cook a Thanksgiving turkey and how to make side dishes. Others are detailed travel hubs with tons of original photos along with surveys, Google maps, and reviews.
I do understand the desire to weed out poorly written or useless hubs, but you're throwing out the baby with the bath water.@Bill - Out of interest - when were the ZZZs last updated?
I know you asked Bill, but my zzeed hubs were last updated in June of this year (almost 3 months ago). I went through all of them removing feeds, keywords, updating, adding paragraphs, interlinking etc.
Took me best part of a month. What a waste of time and effort that was!Try minor edits again to some to see if they awaken.
Nah...I'll just wait to see what happens to traffic after Google bots send them to sleep.
If my traffic ever comes back, I will re-awaken them one by one, slowly.
If not, I'll find new homes for them. At least once they are de-indexed, they'll be easier to move.
Some of the hubs were updated within the last 4 months, some of them less recently. I don't think that has anything to do with it, nor do I think quality has much to do with the equation. It comes down to total page views.
I have a travel hub that I broke up into three separate hubs due to length. Each hub deals with a different part of a 21 day trip and has original photos. One of the hubs (#2 of 3) was flagged as idle. Huh?
Nearly all of my hubs that are not DIY articles have been idled.
This appears to be yet another knee-jerk reaction by Hubpages to a perceived Google change.
Yet another change that promotes delay for time sensitive articles. I have started posting elsewhere about 50 percent of what I write because of this delay. I can publish elsewhere and go to Google Webmaster Tools and have the article indexed within a matter of hours. What is here will sit here. The overall concept that you have to go through a continuing cycle of editting at various times simply to keep your hub "awake"...well, that does away with the main theme that was thrown out there by HP when I joined.... "passive" earnings.
I have 40 idle hubs but my total viewings has gone up, so I am conflicted whatr I think about it.
At what point will HP be able to announce this experiment has/has not worked?
Figures would be nice.Nice to hear your traffic has increased, but the Google bots have not yet visited your subdomain (last cache version 21st of August), so too early to tell yet.
Thanks Izzy.
When will HP be able to tellus whether the project is successful?I think we might all have some idea at the end of this month.
Yes, HP are (sensibly) talking down expectations - but I think many of us are hoping for a positive boost the next time that a Google panda update is run, which typically happens in the 3rd week of each month nowadays.
That is impressive.
I suppose I ought to do something about the 40 idle hubs. I have a couple of sites I run for myself so I may move some across.
To get round the "duplicate content" issue I rest them for three months before moving them.A week is enough. If they have potential, you don't want to miss out on 3 months of traffic and earnings.
You can have them manually removed from the cache through Webmaster Tools. It's very fast- often just overnight. No way would I bother waiting.
How can I possibly have an idle hub mark for a hub I posted yesterday that already has several comments???? http://pamela99.hubpages.com/hub/Removi … etch-Marks
That seems just a bit unfair!Morning Pamela, you can read the blog about some further announcement about idle hubs : -)
http://hubpages.com/learningcenter/Feat … -Idle-Hubs
Read the last paragraph if that applies to you!
On the other hand, there is no law to say you can't put them straight onto your own site even though they are 'copies'. The originals will disappear from the index soon enough, and you can unpublish as and when you feel like it.
I like this idea, also. Thanks for pointing it out.
I would like to see the idle warning just to give us the option of updating and addinf fresh material if we choose to. I don't like that our work will no longer be indexed.
- Hovalisposted 12 years ago0
I have several seasonal hubs on one of my other accounts. They only really get traffic at certain times of the year (hence the seasonal nature of the hubs). I noticed that they've gone to idle. Is Hubpaages indicating by the Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz that they no longer want seasonal traffic?
I would like to know if they are going to continue with this also. I am happy to report the idle hub mark disappeared. I had 71 views in the first day and a half, so I think it must have been an error. It is hard when you have 398 hubs and (I have taken several down) to keep up with these idle marks. I am upgrading some of them but other are seasonal and I don't think they would last anyway.
I have a hunch this will have the opposite effect on traffic. Fewer lures in the water are likely to attract fewer fish. I hope I'm wrong, but either way I don't intend on making changes just for the sake of making changes. If they all go to sleep then so be it.
Sigh. I keep adding more hubs but my earnings have gone down again.
Me too. My views are about the same but the $$ is down.
I noticed that too! Decent (for me) amounts of traffic but earnings are practically zip.
My views are down to about a third of what they used to be. The money is down as well. I've noticed that views from other hubbers seem to be climbing while Google views are declining. Back in August, I saw a slight dip that turned itself around in a couple of days. Then the idling of hubs started and my Google results are dropping rapidly. Seems I'll be spending more time on my other sites. I might as well start thinking about moving hubs to my own site where I'll have more control.
Yep, mine are down by over 75% now, a massive loss when you consider I was on over 10,000 views a day about 6 months ago. Now this latest change does not seem to be helping as my income has dropped again, (and previous layout changes already knocked my Adsense income out of the window without any visible rise in HP Ad program income). Today I logged in to find two more hubs had the dreaded 'Zzz' by them, yet one of them had received 13 views in the last 7 days!! I have already removed most of the hubs that had previously been 'Zeed' to other sites, and if this continues I shall continue to remove future 'Zeed' hubs to sites that do not require constant and unnecessary tweaking of articles that are of high quality already.
As someone who has suffered a 90% loss in traffic, I sympathise.
It's strange and funny how this traffic variation only seems to affect some subdomains and not others.
I have still not found a causative effect.I am already on several other sites so am not keen to add yet another one without having some excellent evidence that it would pay better than the others. Right now Wizzley is my preferred alternative site, and this is where I have moved some of my articles to. Others on vegetable gardening I have moved to my own website.
I have heard mixed reviews on Wizzley, but due to recent events here am getting more and more motivated to try it. How is it working out for you views-wise?
It seems to be going okay, although it is a bit too soon to tell properly in fairness because the articles I moved there need to 'age' all over again from scratch now. Still, I am seeing the cents starting to trickle into my Adsense account again and as I have set up Wizzley in my URL channels I can see the income is largely coming from there. I have not yet moved enough articles to see a dramatic rise in my income as a result, but will no doubt be forced to move more due to this 'Zzz' thing becoming a total nuisance. I will have a better idea of overall performance after the articles have been on Wizzley for 6 months or more.
Thanks for the input. BTW, I have been meaning to thank you for the advice on backing up hubs using firefox and scrapbook. I'm totally terrible at computers but thanks to you and Eric Graudins/The Internet Bloke even I was able to download firefox and scrapbook and save all my hubs. It took maybe 15 minutes to sort it all out and get it done the first time but will be a fraction of that from here on out. Thanks!
You are very welcome. Scrapbook is an excellent 'Add On' for Firefox as you now know, and it definitely makes backing up all your hubs quickly really easy. Eric's (The Internet Bloke) video on You Tube certainly shows how easy the process is for anyone willing to at least have Firefox as an optional browser on their computer (whether they use it all the time or not).
Blogger.com is just a place to have your own blog, not a writing site - so you're quite right. If you already have your own website, you don't need another one. These days, people are being advised to concentrate on creating one or two larger "authority" blogs, rather than spreading their efforts over several smaller ones.
Unfortunately my own website is on growing vegetables only, so this makes it rather unsuitable to move many of my articles to, e.g. articles on health, humour and pets etc. Another site I have is the one on coarse fishing, but this is for a business we have, so not really an article site. I am not convinced the way forward is to create a writing site that is full of articles on numerous topics all written by me. Very tricky call, right now I feel I need a good place to move lots of my 'random' hubs to e.g. Wizzley, some hubs should be combined with others and converted to ebooks and the subjects I have written a large amount of hubs on might well be suitable for newer websites I create in the not too distant future, (all of this is unless things change here of course, but right now HP seems to be dying a death, and even on Quantcast the traffic to HP is apparently dropping daily so it isn't just me).
I agree. All the advice I'm getting is that if you're going to have a blog, it needs to focus on one subject - although it should be a broad subject, because the goal is to create a large, information-rich site (an "authority blog"). For instance, I've been told I should really have one big "dance" blog, rather than individual blogs on each dance style.
So you're right, all your other articles must either go to other sites like HP, or (if you have a good bunch on one topic) form the basis of another new blog somewhere.
Just a thought - if you do have a bunch of Hubs about one topic, and you know other Hubbers who write on the same subject, maybe you could join forces on a shared blog? You could each place your advertising in your own posts, rather than in the sidebars, so you don't have to worry about shared advertising revenue?As more and more Hubbers leave, there are less viewers to support pay-per-view advertising. Remember, Hubbers don't click on Google ads – so, if your income is falling it is probably due in part to the diminishing Hubber audience.
Here is a sample of new blogs that won the Weblog award for 2011:
http://thepioneerwoman.com/
http://lifeasrose.ca/
http://smittenkitchen.com/
http://www.bloggingdangerously.com/
http://thebloggess.com/
Maybe you will find an idea or two by looking at them.But Pay Per View advertising does not only rely on hubbers (in fact they only made up a tiny proportion of the views even when things were going okay). Anyone who finds the articles and sees those adverts contributes to the impressions that make up the figure HP Ads pays us.
Hi MistyH: Are you sure that there are more page-per-views from other visitors than from Hubbers? Or, are you basing this on your personal statistics, perhaps, from your sources of traffic? I would really appreciate knowing this, if you have some information on the total site views and sources of traffic. Thanks.
My views certainly come mainly from outside sources and not from HP. There are various ways to confirm this, either from Google Analytics, basing it on the comments received i.e. the notification tells you if the person is a hubber or not, or from going into the 'Traffic Sources' section of your account page on HP and looking at where your traffic is coming from.
If you want to check out the entire HP traffic sources for the site I am not sure of the best way to go about this. I am sure someone else can answer this, and maybe even the HP staff can answer the question. I do believe however it has always been well known that only a small proportion of traffic is internal compared the all the outside sources.
Edit: Just did a quick check on mine for the last 24 hours. Out of over 2700 views, only 15 were from HP.You're doing great! According to Quantcast, total pageviews for HubPages.com is down 8% in the past 30 days.
The figures for yesterday's page views were just added to Quantcast:
Aug 9, 2012 — Sep 9, 2012 Page views are down 13% for the past 30 days.Yes, HP views keep dropping week by week and the overall graphs look depressing on Quantcast. I am not really doing well at all if you consider my traffic used to be over 10,000 views a day here. This is not good news
The point is that you asked me about traffic sources, and basically what I am clumsily trying to explain is that it is generally considered as 'accepted' that the majority of traffic is external and not internal (unless you focus on poetry or creative writing possibly). Look at your own traffic in your HP 'account' and check out 'traffic sources' on the left of the page. I would be surprised if you find anything different unless you write in the 'creative' niche. Let me know what you discover, I would be interested The more important point is that unless the majority of your traffic is external, you won't be earning any money.
On HubPages, you can expect to make between $2 and $5 per thousand views. If you rely only on internal HubPages traffic, the community is too small to generate thousands of views - so you can't possibly hope to earn more than pennies. It's only when 80% or more of your traffic comes from outside, that you can hope to earn a decent income.
The majority of traffic you receive should be organic, if you are receiving views mostly from hubbers, who are less likely to buy something than an organic search visit, then you are actually lowering the earnings per view for the rest of us.
But surely those in the HP Ad program don't need 'buyers' so much Oli, just lots of views! I don't believe it matters if the the source is internal or external, but what does appear to be the general rule is that the traffic is mostly external in nature, do you agree with this?
You're right, the HP Ad program is about views not clicks. But as I said above, the HP community is so small that no one can expect to get enough views to make money from the community alone, no matter how active they are.
I am not disagreeing with you at all Marisa, what I am referring to is that HP traffic is mostly external. My reply was to Oli and not referring to what you said. I was saying that if you are relying on 'views' alone to make you money (as in the HP Ad program) then it really doesn't matter where they come from, however, (as Oli will know) the majority of views are generally external, not internal. I hope this clarifies what I meant, (Writerfox seems to have got the idea money is mostly made internally when on the HP Ad program, and that most traffic is also internal in source, I just wanted to explain why this assumption was incorrect).
