A timely reminder about Panda
"One other specific piece of guidance we've offered is that low-quality content on some parts of a website can impact the whole site’s rankings, and thus removing low quality pages, merging or improving the content of individual shallow pages into more useful pages, or moving low quality pages to a different domain could eventually help the rankings of your higher-quality content." Google
This applies to HP as a whole AND to individual subdomains.
HP is trying to address the issue at the level of the entire site, and in a sense it has little concern about the subs which are the hubber's responsibility. My understanding is that HP wants to move towards the Squidoo model with only 500K pages indexed (about half the number currently published). It also appears that HP has a quota of traffic of around 1.1M page views per day. It wants the pages indexed to have good quality and to get traffic. Subs with good quality content that can keep their pages indexed and fresh will do well (get a bigger share of the HP cake). Subs with better overall ranking will do well.
Time to focus on your Sub if you have a reasonable number of pages. Freshness matters, quality matters, getting rid of low quality pages matters at the level of the Sub, as does the retention of quality pages that do not currently get traffic. Look after your sub!!! first and foremost.
HP works at the level of the entire site and in a sense ignores the subs. Suggesting that HP do this, do that, change this etc., clearly doesn't work because they don't listen and they do what THEY want from THEIR perspective. So my suggestion is that hubbers work on their subs to get a bigger share of the cake, and to remain part of the cake, as HP halves the number of indexed pages. This is a win win - improved traffic from Google and a bigger share of the HP cake so traffic will improve going forward.
OVER and OUT
I'm all for everyone focusing on improving the overall quality of their subdomains!
That said... regarding us not listening to what Hubbers say... ouch.
So... nothing we do to address the community's requests and needs means anything? I shouldn't be getting up at 5:00am just to make sure I can answer Hubbers' Forum posts and make notes on their feedback and suggestions? We should not be having meetings in which we go over community feedback and discuss means by which we can more properly address it?
If you don't think we're listening... just... ouch.
My point is that the perspective and focus is different! Hubbers can make improvements to their subs.
I find the HubPages Team to be working hard at keeping the field of writers updated on changes, or newly implemented criteria. In my almost three years hanging out here, I have watched as the team tirelessly read, reviewed, and then responded to the thousands of author input and suggestions. And, just to be clear, Simone (and many other Team HubPages staff) has helped me personally with a number of things ranging from the most mundane to the more technically difficult aspects of online self-publishing.
I feel as though you drastically underestimate the goals and drive of this team. The changes brought to the site (suggested by the community) have been many. Some for the better, and some,...well, at least they tried. I have met the HubPages team face to face and I can tell you there are few companies around that carry the spark of integrity and devotion for a single entity as does this team.
It really bothers me when someone whom you know is trying to keep things great for all, ends up sharing the word, "ouch." Try taking a look at the fantastic things going on around here, you may find your perception less than accurate. I know for a fact HP is listening more than any of us imagine!
Thanks to Simone, Robin, and Team HubPages for working hard towards our future success on HP.
That means a lot to me (and us) K9keystrokes!! Thank you!!!
I honestly don't get whatever would make you think that HubPages has "little concern" or "in a sense ignores" sub-domains. I believe HubPages is concerned about all content on their website, be it on sub-domains, topic pages, or wherever. Whether or not you agree with the featured/non-featured status, it's obvious the intent is to help sub-domains and therefore, HubPages overall. Actually, it seems to me that the featured/non-featured status is a response to what Google said about quality in the quote you listed.
And if they ignored sub-domains, as you suggest, why would they continually give us new tools to use to create the best Hubs possible? Video Hubs; and recipe and ratings capsules, all new in the last year, come to mind as ways in which HubPages helps us have the ability to have our Hubs show in a variety of types of search queries, which can only help our sub-domains.
Finally, while maybe you don't agree with the decisions that HubPages makes, ultimately I would much rather them make the decisions for their business since they are the ones with all the data and knowledge upon which to base decisions. But I have to say, I find the staff to be very responsive to the individual questions, requests, and complaints from individual Hubbers, often tirelessly responding to the same questions over and over. On multiple occasions I have read where a staff member has written that he/she would bring up something in one of their community meetings. If that's not listening, then I don't know what is.
I believe your point about individuals improving the quality of their sub-domains is very valid; I'm glad HubPages provides us with many tools to help in that effort.
+1 Couldn't have said it better myself. I totally agree.
Well-put, ktrapp. Topclass does make a very valid point, though I appreciate your acknowledgement of our work (and your patience with us!).
I don't think that is a personal criticism, just an expression of frustration that things like QAP remain vague and constantly changing. So we don't know what we are meant to be doing.
It's a bit like dealing with my immigration attorney. She always seems to have a good plan and be doing the best she can, but when she neglects to keep me updated about these things it is very stressful for me.
I totally get that- we're all a bit delicate because of everything we've been through with Panda and rolling out a new paradigm on the site with the Quality Assessment Process. Great comparison, BTW!
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