HubPages Site Outage Friday Morning

1. 84

   Simone Smithposted 12 years ago

   Hello everyone!
   
   I want to apologize for the site troubles we had this morning. Our main data center had an outage this morning that impacted all of HubPages.com.
   
   Your traffic stats and earnings will most likely be lower today because of the outage. 
   
   We work hard to keep the site available and are disappointed that something outside of our control caused the site issues today.
   
   According to Jay Reitz, who we all have to thank for seeing the site come back so quickly, the datacenter is reporting that the outage was caused by some corruption in a routing process running on one of their two core routers.  They're following up with the vendor and trying to determine how the corruption occurred and how to prevent it in the future.
   
   We will update you when we have more information, but in the meantime, I want to thank all of you for your patience and concern. Rest assured we do everything we can to keep hiccups like this to a minimum!
   
   At any rate, we are sincerely sorry for the inconvenience!
   
   Outages... heheheheh.... ^_^;;

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      Denise Handlonposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      Outage?  Problems?  Sorry, Simone...I was, ahem...busy doing other things and didn't notice.          Well, happy that all's well that ends well.     
      Enjoy your weekend.

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         Simone Smithposted 12 years agoin reply to this

         Now THAT'S what I like to hear!!! Yeehaw!!! 

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            Denise Handlonposted 12 years agoin reply to this

            

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      Deborah Brooksposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      Thank you so much For doing are you could get it up .   I really appreciate Your hard work.

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      tammyswallowposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      Thanks for letting us know that.

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      paradigmsearchposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      Darn, I missed it.
      
      Thanks for posting. Like others, I thought my traffic drop meant that I was finally doomed. Glad it ain't so.

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   Sherry Hewinsposted 12 years ago

   Thanks for the information. It's nice to be kept informed when these thing happen.

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   Faith Reaperposted 12 years ago

   Thanks so much for informing all of us here about what had happened.  Appreciate you very much.  Hooray for Jay!

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   Rochelle Frankposted 12 years ago

   I'm an early riser-- so I did notice that the site was unavailable.( Dang those core router outage things... though I have no idea what they are) but I knew you would be back.
   Thanks for the update,

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   David 470posted 12 years ago

   Thought my major traffic drop was Google related. Looks like it was not, thank god. I am still holding my breath, though.

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      LucidDreamsposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      I thought so also, I am hoping it is just Hubpages and the traffic does come back. Looking at my daily stats for Hubpages, I was freaking out a bit.

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      scoopposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      It may be Google related because Google made changes to their algorithm, again. Other sites are reporting a drop in traffic too. The changes seem to have went into effect on Friday.

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         IzzyMposted 12 years agoin reply to this

         One seems to be happening now, but shouldn't affect hubbers.
         
         http://www.webpronews.com/matt-cutts-ju … ge-2012-09

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      Novel Treasureposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      I thought the same thing, so it's good to know that it was only a temporary drop...well hopefully

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   vespawoolfposted 12 years ago

   Thanks for letting us know! Looks like my traffic problems are coming from all sides! Oh well...it'll all work out in the end. Enjoy your weekend!

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   Rosie2010posted 12 years ago

   I missed the outage this morning, but I'm glad to hear it's all good now.  Thanks for letting us know, Simone. 

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   cclitgirlposted 12 years ago

   Aww, who doesn't get hiccups from time to time?  Thanks for all the hard work in getting things back up and running. 

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   Barbara Kayposted 12 years ago

   Thanks for letting us know. It is always nice to know what is happening.

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      PegCole17posted 12 years agoin reply to this

      Ditto. The "oops" messages I got today when I was editing and the sluggish results make sense now. Thanks for keeping us informed. That is very much appreciated.
      Peg

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    twentyfiveposted 12 years ago

    Thank you so much for telling us

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    mary615posted 12 years ago

    Gee, I just thought it was my computer!  I blame everything on my computer....

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    Azure11posted 12 years ago

    When I worked in IT in a largish company we had many external client liaison websites and if any of those had gone down for 4 hours we would have been in big trouble. Hence we had a disaster recovery and back up plan to get them back online ASAP. Much as I appreciate that people would have made a big effort to get the site back up, firstly why did it take so long, secondly why was there no communication from any of the HubPages team pretty much until the problem being fixed and thirdly are other measures being put in place to make sure this doesn't happen again?
    
    The reason this really affected me was because once every 2 years my traffic multiplies by 10 for 4-5 days and this of course was the day it should have started doing this :-(
    
    HubPages is one of the biggest sites out there, surely it should not have been able to go down for 4 hours?!

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    lobobrandonposted 12 years ago

    Lost around 15% of my traffic that day But, thanks for the info I was on when the site was out

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    Good Guyposted 12 years ago

    Looks like you people in the USA were lucky it happened in early hours.  Here in Malaysia it was peak hours from late afternoon till night.  Got me worried, as I was editing my hub and it failed to complete when I hit "done". Only managed to open this morning!!
    Thanks for the info.

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       rebekahELLEposted 12 years agoin reply to this

       But we receive traffic globally, so it was still a loss of traffic/earnings regardless of it being the wee hours on the US west coast.
       
       I was very surprised a staff response was not issued at an earlier time.  It would have been nice to know what happened.  In my three years here, the site has never been unavailable for over 4 hours, only for short maintenance time periods.  It's great to have it up and running again, but if there should be a next time, please let us know sooner than later. Thanks!

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    rfmoranposted 12 years ago

    I am shocked at the tepid response and cavalier attitude from Hubpages to this problem. Simone Smith contacts us some 12 hours AFTER the event to blame it on Cisco. Has anyone given an explanation to the broader HP community, not just people on the Apprenticeship program? It appears that management chooses to let the wee folk handle the problem by chatting among ourselves. Will any further explanation be forthcoming, or are we left with the report that Cisco did it so don't blame Hubpages?

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       Doc Sonicposted 12 years agoin reply to this

       I understand your frustration about the outage, but what more is there to explain? Simone has told us what happened, why it happened, and that they are working to put systems in place to prevent it from happening again in the future. She also apologized on behalf of HP. Like you, I think it would've helped to get the information out sooner, but other than that I don't know what else they should've done.

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    internpeteposted 12 years ago

    Thanks for keeping us updated about this.

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    scoopposted 12 years ago

    I don't think the outage had much effect on traffic. Google did another change to their algorithm, and many other sites have experienced a big drop in traffic. It's really unfortunate.

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    scoopposted 12 years ago

    I still think its Google related. There other articles on sites that are reporting major drop in traffic  I think Google went a bit overboard with this latest update

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       IzzyMposted 12 years agoin reply to this

       Hopefully it will sort itself out soon

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    paradigmsearchposted 12 years ago

    

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    WryLiltposted 12 years ago

    I just thought it was my crappy internet connection again

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    IzzyMposted 12 years ago

    I don't know who wrote this piece, but it is interesting. http://expertscolumn.com/content/anothe … thm-change
    
    I thought it was just my more successful subdomains that had been hit, but it's not. It is across the board, so the site as a whole has been badly hit again.
    
    Here we go again.
    
    In case anyone missed it, Greekgeek posted the latest Quantcast results - http://www.quantcast.com/hubpages.com
    
    Let's hope it is only temporary.

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       Just Historyposted 12 years agoin reply to this

       My second sub domain has collapsed! The main account is ok ish just 20 per cent down- here we go again

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          Just Historyposted 12 years agoin reply to this

          whoops was in the wrong account when I posted, sorry
          
          It is this account that has colapsed- Case1worker seems to be  20 per cent down

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          Azure11posted 12 years agoin reply to this

          My second account has also collapsed from 2000 a day to 100+ right from when the outage hit. This is what I was afraid of.

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    Greekgeekposted 12 years ago

    I've seen Hubpages connection hiccup this morning, kimberlie. If it caught you while you were editing, you may need to copy whatever you've written to a space window, close the hub editor and navigate back to it to get things reset. If that doesn't work try logging out and logging in again.
    
    What's odd is that the outage was on Friday, yet my daily traffic was also down by 2/5 on Saturday. Or were stats stuck?
    
    I am really not liking the look of Hubpages traffic this week on Quantcast. Hope it's just a temporary sag.
    
    ETA: cue twilight zone music; the post I was replying to seems to have disappeared.
    
    And while I'm at it -- expertscolumn.com is a very low-paying imititation of the Hubpages/Squidoo/Infobarrel model, so anyone could have posted that article. i would take it with a grain of salt, since it cites no official posts from Google or people who generally know what's going on in the SEO world. It might be true, but I want more evidence.
    
    It claims there was a Google algorithm change Friday, but that's not the whole story. Friday's algorithm change only targeted exact phrase domain names with lousy content. For example, someone might register a domain like "cheap-t-shirts.com" and then create a landing page with nothing but Adsense blocks on it, trying to cash in on a popular search.
    
    Source:
    http://searchengineland.com/low-quality … get-134889
    
    I haven't seen any SEO news source say that the exact-match algo change also targeted subdomains, and even if it did, by and large, I think most hubbers aren't doing lousy content + an exact phrase match for their username. So HP should be immune from that Google algo tweak.

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       IzzyMposted 12 years agoin reply to this

       Thanks for that info, Greekgeek
       
       I must admit that the latest algo change should not have affected hubbers, yet it seemed to, as the traffic drop happened on the same day.
       
       But judging by this thread, http://hubpages.com/forum/topic/104227 , it has just been an accidental time collision that an algo change happened at the same time as a site change that may have impacted traffic.
       
       Fingers crossed the unravelling of the changes work!

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    scoopposted 12 years ago

    I doubt that Hubpages was immune from this tweak. Many other sites, including sub-domains have felt the impact of this recent Google change. Check out the official Google forum, and you will see plenty of website owners, with top level domains and with no keywords in their domain name, complain that their sites have dropped within Google search results.
    
    Unfortunately, nobody, not even SEO experts, can say for sure what is going on and what sort of sites have been affected due to this Google update. They can only speculate. Sure, Google said exact domain names would be the main target this time around, but judging from the decrease in traffic on many different sites, including sub-domains, I think this Google update went a bit too far.

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    Mmargie1966posted 12 years ago

    Thanks for the update.  I was wondering what in the world happened!! ?

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    Peggy Wposted 12 years ago

    Thanks for the update Simone.  I know that if the site is down it hurts everyone, so know that you guys at headquarters do everything within your power to avoid glitches like this.  Cute photo of consternation on your face! 

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    mistyhorizon2003posted 12 years ago

    No worries, I am sure HP will be compensating us all financially for the lost hours as a goodwill gesture

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       Rik Ravadoposted 12 years agoin reply to this

       Good point, misty. I'll tip Paypal off to expect a hefty transfer in the next 24 hours!

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    waynetposted 12 years ago

    Well my traffic has halved on this account and my other 2....ah well!

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    brettbposted 12 years ago

    My Google traffic is 90% down and I can't see it ever recovering.
    
    What's the problem? Well there's just much better content out there these days.

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    dhannyyaposted 12 years ago

    my traffic also have been reduced to 50% after 28th sep....

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    Azure11posted 12 years ago

    I'm not surprised that a lot of people's traffic is down - surely if hubpages was down for 4 hours Google would pick up that a page that you were trying to find didn't exist and relegate it in the rankings. From what I have read if you back page from a google search very quickly (which you would obviously do if you got a page does not exist error like what happened on Friday) then you would be downgraded.  We just have to hope that Google forgives us at some point I guess (and it doesn't happen again...)

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       WannaB Writerposted 12 years agoin reply to this

       Maybe that explains why I'm only getting a fraction of my traffic this week.

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          Imogen Frenchposted 12 years agoin reply to this

          me too - traffic reduced to around half of its usual level in the past week. And it seems to be getting worse. What is going on? Hope it improves for all of us soon

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    Doodleheadposted 12 years ago

    Mine was moderate over the weekend and completely crapped out today.  I think I'm finished.

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