Cracking the Idle Hubs Formula for Fun

1. 57

   janderson99posted 6 years ago

   It is interesting to try to work out the formula, if for no other reason than to keep ahead of the game and to identify which hubs are threatened so you can fix them. This may of course be counter productive as editing ZZZ hubs seems to give them a 'second chance'. Many hubs that were recently edited still got ZZZ. 
   Some observations:
   => Traffic expectations - minimum average is one hit every two days
   => Various 'quality' aspects trigger ZZZ - spelling, too few capsules, saturated topic with certain ones targeted, links to external sites
   => Hubscore seems to be involved. One weir thing is that hubs that get edited after ZZZ get a boost of hubscore by about 10 (in the 70's). Perhaps this is the way of giving hubs a 'second chance' boosting the score artificially and setting a 'don't revisit' flag for a month or so.
   
   So ZZZ if average hits over a 6 month period less than one ever two days
   ZZZ if quality test triggered
   ZZZ if hubscore less than 70 and Google external traffic in last three months less than one hit every two days
   
   Anyone else have any theories?

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   1. 57

      janderson99posted 6 years agoin reply to this

      The other aspect of this is to learn to write hubs that don't go to sleep. Without clear detailed guides it is all hit and miss even if you do all the keyword research etc. I had one hub approved for publication in July 2012 and ZZZ in September. Its tough when you don't get any advice on what to fix! Two months is not much time to see if it will attract traffic.
      
      It is interesting that the advice to awaken hubs is all about 'improving quality'  - nothing about boosting traffic e.g. changing the title.
      
      "A Hub need not be permanently Idle - you can quite easily change its status back to Featured (and even better) by:
      
          Updating the Hub with fresh content (Hubs sometimes fall into Idle status because they have not been updated in a long time and have grown stale)
          Adding additional photos and media
          Editing it and catching any typos you may have missed
          Sharing it with your friends, asking for feedback, and updating it accordingly
      
      After an Idle Hub has been edited, its status will be reevaluated by our internal algorithm and given a new status in about 24 hours."
      
      The expectation is that after the 'second chance' the hub my get sleepy again if it gets little traffic.

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2. 80

   jacharlessposted 6 years ago

   Zzz interesting, jander.
   The Scoring plays a role, as @75 a hub becomes "follow"...
   
   James.

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   1. 57

      janderson99posted 6 years agoin reply to this

      I think the test applies to the average score for the subdomain not to the hub itself

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      1. 84

         Aficionadaposted 6 years agoin reply to this

         
         Why do you think that?

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         1. 57

            janderson99posted 6 years agoin reply to this

            To have the HubPages nofollow tag removed from your links, two criteria must be met. First, the author's score, known as HubRank, must be above 75. Second, the individual Hub must have a HubScore over 40. (The HubPages guides say that this number is typically 50, but has been lowered to 40. No word on if the required Hub ranking will be raised back to 50 in the future.)
            
            as stated in various hubs and forums - I haven't seen any other advice.

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            1. 84

               Aficionadaposted 6 years agoin reply to this

               I misunderstood what you meant. I thought you were talking about the average of the Hub scores, shown at the top or bottom of the stats page, rather than the Authorscore.  You did say "the average score for the subdomain."  Authorscore incorporates a number of factors.

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               1. 57

                  janderson99posted 6 years agoin reply to this

                  sorry for the confusion.

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            2. 92

               Millionaire Tipsposted 6 years agoin reply to this

               I have hubs that have hubscores in the 70s and 80s that are idled. I don't the score is the contributing factor, or at least not the only one.

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      2. 80

         jacharlessposted 6 years agoin reply to this

         Am not so certain.
         
         Nearly 3/4 of my hubs are "do follow" @ 75 or higher.
         One new hub was Zzzed, went Pending and was cleared.
         An older one was -and still is- Zzzed because I refuse to edit it.
         James.

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3. 84

   Aficionadaposted 6 years ago

   Your criteria do not correlate with my experience.
   
   I think you are ignoring the "freshness factor."  In another account, I had three Hubs that were fairly similar in most respects (date published, hubscore, amount of traffic) and one of them was ZZZ'ed, but the other two were not.  The ZZZ'ed one actually had more traffic - not enormously more, but enough to notice - but it had not been updated as recently as the other two had been.
   
   In my opinion, it is the combination of low traffic and lack of freshness that triggers the ZZZ's. I do believe quality plays a part, but I'm not convinced that it is more important than freshness.
   
   In this account, I do not see consistent correlation with your guidelines; it has numerous Hubs that all fit your criteria, but some of them are ZZZ'ed and some are not.

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   1. 57

      janderson99posted 6 years agoin reply to this

      I modified all my hubs over the past two months and many still got ZZZ. Other people have found th same thing. The changes only make a difference if they address the quality test. Traffic + quality + diversity of capsules seems to be the key.

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      1. 84

         Aficionadaposted 6 years agoin reply to this

         As I stated before, your theory does not correlate with my experience. I do not deny that it reflects yours and that of other people. You asked for other theories, so I was under the impression that you were wanting some additional data to either support your theory or not. Never mind.

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         1. 57

            janderson99posted 6 years agoin reply to this

            No worries, just trying to work it out.
            From MikiS on another forum
            "Each Hub in each Topic can be very different. It can be lack of traffic, poor quality, out of date, lack of media/capsules (especially original media), poor grammar and spelling, duplicative content, and any and all combinations of the above."

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