Indexed Pages

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LeanManposted 11 years ago
Having just started to look at webmaster tools this may be in the wrong section and it may be just my complete lack of understanding but;

Google webmasters tools and the "index status" tab should return a graph according to their description that should continue to grow as pages are indexed etc.. However with over 100 hubs with only one un-featured it only shows 50 pages indexed. The graph shows a sudden drop from the end of March where it showed 127 pages indexed to hit the current 50/51 pages indexed within a 2 week period.

Now am I just completely misunderstanding this graph or are less than half of my hubs within Googles "index"??

I hope that someone can explain...
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  Susana Sposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  From what I've read recently, it seems it's to do with whether Google indexes a hub via your subdomain (in which case you will see it listed in WMT) or via HP's main domain (in which case you won't).
  
  Paul E has said that it's something Google is doing independently and there's nothing they can do about it, though on the upside hubs that are indexed via the main HP domain are getting more traffic.
  
  http://hubpages.com/forum/topic/112722
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  LeanManposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  That thread is around 5 weeks old and does not appear to be in anyway resolved so maybe this will serve as a reminder.. my question is will this be an issue? Will be affecting my traffic or anything else?
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  Matthew Meyerposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  The issue is all on Google's end and they do not believe it is a bug.
  Unfortunately, we have no control over when or what Google chooses to index and on what domain or subdomain.
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  brakel2posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Is that really true that Hp indexing results in more traffic? Have you checked it out? I have a bunch of hubs that are indexed like that. Have you fetched them in Webmaster Tools to try to get them in the subdomain?
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  Susana Sposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  That's what Paul Edmondson has said. As he has access to detailed sitewide stats and I have no reason to disbelieve him I guess it's true.
  
  My traffic from Google search went up about 100% towards the end of March. That was just before people started noticing the url indexing changes. There wasn't any other reported major Google algo change at that time and I can see that 99% of my hubs are indexed via HP's main domain.
  
  So do I have concrete proof? No I don't. I hadn't checked or recorded what url my hubs were indexed with near to the end of March, so I have nothing to compare to, but it seems a reasonable assumption that the indexing changes could be responsible for my traffic increases.
  
  I don't use WMT for Hubpages as I really haven't needed it. Even if I did use it I wouldn't be trying to get Google to index my hubs under my subdomain based simply on what Paul E said and the positive changes I've seen to my traffic levels.
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  Bendo13posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I guess that depends who you ask. because around March 5th I had a HUGE drop in traffic... and it took until March 13th to almost come back to that level. But by March 25th my views just kept dropping and dropping and have never recovered.
  
  And I just recently found out that only FIVE out of my 400+ hubs are being linked to correctly, through my subdomain.
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  Susana Sposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  A lot of people in the SEO community have noticed traffic drops before a big Google update which is what I'd suggest was responsible for your March 5th drop, as I've seen this too. Then there was a Panda update 13/14 March which would fit with your observations.
  
  If your account has been panda'd then that's something you can work on, whereas the other stuff (what url hubs are indexed under) you have very little (if any) control over.
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  Will Apseposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  You are up against it Susana, because blaming the urls is much more comforting.
  
  There is a mountain of evidence that Panda is pretty much the only thing that ever causes big traffic shifts but presenting that would make no difference.
  
  Let's face it, it took Paul Edmondson years to accept that the sites' problems revolve around article quality. The 'we can fix it with that elusive SEO magic bullet' theory will always be more appealing.
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  Bendo13posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I would agree that the drop and recovery in early March was probably from a Google update - or two. But if the indexing problems happened near the end of March and there wasn't another Google update, then it is what it is.
  
  It seems to me that the Panda update on March 13th or 14th helped me, so I wouldn't say I've been Panda'd in a bad way. It brought me right back to normal traffic levels. But whatever happened at the END of March is what took me back out of the game.
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  Bendo13posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  PS - Go into Google Webmaster Tools and click Health and then Index Status and you can see when things dropped off for you.
  
  I had over 1,000 pages from my subdomain indexed over a year ago... and it started to really drop off around October/November of last year. And then there was a huge drop in December/January and then another big drop at the end of March. But in my case, by the time I got to the drop in March it didn't really matter. I was already only down to having only 160 pages indexed correctly by then.
  
  The odd part is that my views didn't really drop off at the same time these pages were being dropped out of the Google index. I mean, I had a drop in views on December 10th, but by the 21st of that month my traffic started to surge higher than before. And there were some ups and downs, but nothing as big as what happened in March, in terms of views.
  
  So, it didn't help me at all.
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  Susana Sposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I don't use WMT for Hubpages because there's so little use for it. IMO it's helpful for a site you have control over and can make changes to, but for HP? No.
  
  Anyway, what you've said seems to be that the indexing changes you see recorded in WMT did not effect your traffic?
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  Bendo13posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I agree that it's not as helpful with HP, but it does give you some insights as to what's happening with your subdomain. Google Analytics is also worth looking into.
  
  The initial index losses didn't seem to change my traffic levels, but whatever happened at the end of March definitely did... and my traffic hasn't recovered since.
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  brakel2posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  My pages also dropped in December and then in March. There is a pattern here.
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  Bendo13posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  After reading some of those posts, it kind of makes me wonder if the odd redirecting nature of HubPages isn't confusing Google, in a bad way.
  
  You can link to a hub incorrectly and it redirects things to your subdomain, which is nice... but obviously that makes Google want to index the link incorrectly. We need a solid subdomain structure, not all these redirects, which obviously are the root of the indexing problem.
  
  Of course Google would choose to index the main domain over a subdomain, if they link to the same place. And I know that the redirects were first put into place so that we wouldn't lose all the links we had pointing to our articles, when the subdomains first came into play, but it's obvious that they are hurting how articles are indexed now.
  
  I think it would be smart to do away with the redirects and instead have the page say... "Did you mean to access subdomain.hubpages.com/article?" with a link they can click. Then people will still be able to find the correct page, we'll have a few extra links to our articles, and the indexing problems will go away.
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paradigmsearchposted 11 years ago
I was unaware of this feature. Your post caused me to look at mine. My index number has dropped over 90% from last year. I am likewise totally nonplussed.
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  Alison Grahamposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I have serious reservations about this. On the one hand, my top performing hubs are receiving traffic via Google searches listing them as hubpages.com (not mysubdomain.hubpages.com), I have way fewer hubs indexed on my subdomain than I have published (and featured).
  My concern is that I understood that the idea of having a subdomain in the first instance was to have a strong portfolio of quality hubs that would have more credibility 'in Google's eyes' than single hubs on the main HubPages domain. If my 'best' hubs are on hubpages.com not my subdomain, is this not to the detriment of other hubs on my subdomain? I am very reluctant to try to get these 'top performing' hubs to be indexed on my subdomain in case this has a negative impact on traffic and income. I think it is time for some clear direction, instructions, leadership, whatever, from the team at HubPages as surely, those Hubbers who want to build their income here and are worried by all this, want to do what is best for both HubPages and themselves - success is mutually beneficial - 60/40!
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krushnach80posted 11 years ago
yeah you are right on the point
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Writer Foxposted 11 years ago
This subject has been discussed many times on forum threads and was last consolidated here:
http://hubpages.com/forum/topic/112722#post2399394

Note that Paul Deeds and Paul E. both commented that the indexing was Google's fault and that there was nothing that HubPages' staff could do.

Paul Deeds certainly knows programming better than I do (or ever will or want to!) but, as an SEO consultant for many major websites, I know for a fact that Google cannot index a URL that doesn't exist! Either it is a valid URL or it isn't. Webmasters create the URLs for their sites and no one else, certainly not Google.

If a URL has never been created on a website and you try to click on a link, you will get this notice: "Unable to open [url]. The Internet site reports that the item you requested could not be found. HTTP/1.0 404." If you enter the URL into your browser, it should redirect to an HP page which says: "404. That page doesn't exist. The author may have decided to delete it, or there could be an error with the URL that you are using." This is as it should be.

If the URL hubpages.com/YOUR HUB URL exists, it's not because Google created it. If that URL exists and the same Hub can be found under YOUR HP USER NAME.hubpages.com/hub/YOUR HUB URL, then Google detects duplicate content on two HubPages' URLs and will index the one it believes has the higher authority.

You cannot create off-page optimization for your Hub under these circumstances. A Hub which is not indexed under your subdomain has no link from an HP Topic page, your other related Hubs, social media links you have created, etc. In effect, you're trying to revive a dead horse.

If Allison is receiving good search results, I think she is in the minority of Hubbers who are experiencing the problem of duplicate URLs.
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  Alison Grahamposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Writer Fox, you make some extremely important points - how can we promote our hubs under such circumstances - the present situation is ensuring that both Hubbers and Hubpages miss out on income.
  The only hubs I have which are receiving good search traffic from Google are those which are only indexed on Hubpages.com and not on my subdomain as well.
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  Writer Foxposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Hi Allison,
  
  It appears that HubPages' staff has pretty much waved the responsibility for this problem. I wish that were not the case and if it were affecting my Hubs I would continue to yell and scream.
  
  Are your Hubs that are under-performing indexed under both URLs – the main HP.com and your subdomain?
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  Alison Grahamposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Hi again Writer Fox - I am going to have to do a lot more work on this to determine the exact position but I can tell you that my four top performing hubs in the Google search are ONLY indexed on hubpages.com - although they are listed in my sitemap so I am assuming that G is not indexing them as duplicate content - would that be your take on the situation?
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  Writer Foxposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  If those Hubs are doing well in search, I would leave them alone, too. But, clearly, this problem shouldn't be happening. It's an unhealthy situation for the entire website.
  
  How will you decide which URL to use when you submit a link on Facebook or Pinterest, etc.?
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  Alison Grahamposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I revised my previous reply - to say that these hubs are listed in my sitemap! It is almost impossible to know what to do about submitting links to pinterest, etc. It just makes me feel that I am never going to be able to build up my subdomain to be credible in 'Google's eyes' because I have so many hubs that are not indexed on it - they seem to be treated as entirely different pages on hubpages.com and it is as if I have 'copied' them on my subdomain - this cannot be right, surely?!
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  brakel2posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  @Writer Fox I posted on Twitter a hub indexed under HubPages instead of subdomain URL. It used the shortened URL and went to Twitter with no problem. A success!
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  brakel2posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I emailed the team about this issue to get a further explanation. However, the answer was the same - that it is out of their control and that Google has chosen to do this indexing. My traffic is down in the past sixty days, and my Webmaster Tools shows a decline since then of my pages. Initially, my subdomain was not verified. I did verify it and have fetched one of my missing hubs. I understand that all these hubs that are not indexed in the subdomain in search must be redirected to the correct place. In my Google Analytics, I found redirect pages and the time of redirection on a sample. I guess I am learning a lot. I hope this issue eventually gets resolved. I wish someone would do a hub on 301 redirects and articles indexed in a different domain. It is a little out of my expertise. I have not figured out which set of hubs is doing better. Thanks for all help, including staff, who are dealing with this issue. One hubber has helped me a lot.
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  krushnach80posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  @brakel2 can you please give me the hubpage team email I have been trying to find but failed it you could give me the hubpage email contact it would really helpful for me. and kind of you
  
  Thanks
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  Writer Foxposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  team@ hubpages.com (without the spaces)
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  krushnach80posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  thanks ..
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brakel2posted 11 years ago
@Writer Fox When Google crawls the subdomain, the hubs under hubpages won't be among them, as they don't exist, right? You are so helpful!!!! Can you write a hub about redirects and orphan hubs? I know you probably wouldn't want to.
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  Alison Grahamposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Hi brakel2, the point I was making is that the hubs under hubpages are in the sitemap for the subdomain but not indexed in Google for the subdomain - just for hubpages only. There are evidently redirects but I wondered if Writer Fox could advise whether there is any mechanism for 'telling' Google which version of the page should be indexed - the HubPages or the subdomain one?
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brakel2posted 11 years ago
@Allison. I don't think we can ask Google to index the way we want. This is mostly based on Writer Fox's theory that Google may not be the one responsible for the index problem. All of Susanna's hubs are indexed under HubPages. Why would Google reindex all these hubs? I think Writer Fox has some good ideas. I fetched a hub back into the subdomain, but it is not indexed correctly in search. I did a link to Twitter from one. It was successful, and used the short URL. I wish I knew the answer. I do know that all my hubs are correct in Google Analytics. Let me know if you have any ideas. Thanks
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Writer Foxposted 11 years ago
I think a possible explanation for the two URLs is that it might just be affecting Hubs which were originally published before subdomains were created on the HubPages website.

Does anyone have a Hub published after the switch to subdomains which has the problem? If not, then it's not a major problem but you should continue to add your older Hubs' new subdomain URLs to your account on Google Webmaster Tools if they are missing in your indexed pages.

Google may be showing the original URL in search results because that's how your Hub was first indexed. HubPages has coded a '301 redirect' on the old URL so that, when a request is made for it, someone is automatically redirected to the new URL on your subdomain. In other words, the actual content only exists now on the subdomain URL. So any links you create for your Hub should only use the subdomain URL so the traffic is sent directly to your Hub instead of going through the redirect.

If you want to know more about the 301, go here for an explanation and watch Google's video:
https://support.google.com/webmasters/a … 3633?hl=en

Google knows about the redirect but chooses to keep the original URL in its index.

The fact that some authors report that their Hubs are getting more traffic from search engines listing Hubs without the subdomain may just be a coincidence if all of those Hubs are older and, thus, more established with links and citations, etc.

I tried to click on a link to some of my Hubs without the subdomain in the URL and I receive a 404 error, meaning that the page doesn't exist. It doesn't exist and never did! I wasn't on HubPages before subdomains.

So, does anyone have a newer Hub that shows on the Google index/search results without the subdomain URL?
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  Bendo13posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I only have 5 (out of my 400+) indexed properly, and while a lot of my hubs were written before the subdomain switch, tons of them were written after the switch.
  
  I think the problem is the redirects, which gives Google an option as to which URL to index. I read in another forum post that you could write a random subdomain name that doesn't even exist and it will redirect to your article on your subdomain. Yep... I just tested it and it works.
  
  So, with all these redirects it's just confusing Google. As I suggested above, all redirects should be done away with... and instead there should be an automatically created page, which will say something like:
  
  "Is this the page you were looking for? subdomain.hubpages.com/article"
  
  ...and there would be a link to the correct URL. We know that redirected links are weaker, and now we know there's a problem with the indexing. Time to move past the redirects.
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  Writer Foxposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Please post just one of your Hub URLs that was first published in the past 12 months and the search term on Google that shows the main HubPages URL ranking for the query rather than your subdomain URL.
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  Bendo13posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  We switched to the subdomains about 2 years ago, why does it have to be in the past 12 months?
  
  I've written a ton since the subdomain switch and, as I said, only 5 of my hubs are linked to through my subdomain in Google.
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  Bendo13posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Of the 5 articles, which are actually linked to correctly, here are the dates they were first published:
  Aug 9, 2011
  Dec 15, 2011
  Jan 16, 2012
  Jan 26, 2013
  Feb 20, 2013
  
  I've written almost 200 hubs since the subdomain switch.
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  Writer Foxposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Did you submit your sitemap? I gave you the instructions in this forum post:
  http://hubpages.com/forum/topic/113950#post2426795
  
  Can you find one of your newer Hub URLs that is coming up for a search querry without your subdomain? What is the URL and the search query?
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  Bendo13posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Yes, I did... which is how I quickly figured out that only 5 are indexed correctly. And submitting the sitemap didn't change that number. Even days later, only 5 are indexed correctly.
  
  And the problem with using me to test your theory is that HubPages didn't give my holiday pages exemptions, so most of my more recent hubs aren't featured. Even though those hubs all got a lot of traffic around the time of the holiday... every single day of the year; I wrote 365 holiday hubs. It was a fun year (2011), and the holidays are real, but now I have to move them all to my site.
  
  So, the most recent hub I can find, as per your instructions, is probably going to be "June 23rd is National Pink Day"
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  Writer Foxposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  When did you publish that, what is the URL, and what search term is it ranking for?
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  Bendo13posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  June 23rd, 2011 and I just searched the title. It's on the first page of Google for me, near the bottom.
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  Writer Foxposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  June, 2011, was before the switch to subdomains. However, that Hub is indexed under your subdomain and shows a 404 for the cache, which means 1) that you just added it to the index and Google hasn't stored a cache yet or 2) it was 'not featured' last time Google tried to crawl it.
  
  (Hubs that are 'not featured' will fall out of the Google index until they are featured again.)
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  Bendo13posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Dude... search the title of the hub in quotation marks - "June 23rd is National Pink Day". On the first page it links to hubpages.com, not my subdomain. Show me what I have to search to get my subdomain to show up in the Google search results, because I'm not seeing it. If you search site:bendo13.hubpages.com you can see it's not listed as one of my whopping 5 hubs.
  
  Also, that is why I said I wouldn't be a good person to test your theory because I already knew that was before the switch to subdomains. And you told me to submit my sitemap, so if that's causing the cache issue then you already knew that.
  
  I didn't just add it in there, other than manually submitting my sitemap as you asked, and as far as I knew it was already featured. For the past 30 days I see only 5 hits from sites outside of search engines and HubPages, so that leads me to believe that it was already featured when the holiday rolled around. I'm not sure how quickly HubPages jumps to changing that status though, so maybe it wasn't.
  
  I know what featured means as well... which is why I went all the way back to that hub to check and see how it was indexed. As I said, most of my holiday hubs aren't featured because HubPages wouldn't give me an exemption. Those pages will only really pull in traffic around the day of the holiday, but that wasn't enough for them.
  
  And that holiday was only 8 days ago, so I find it hard to believe that those 5 hits happened and HubPages quickly made it featured again.
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  Bendo13posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  In fact, I know that it couldn't have been featured so quickly because my "June 24th is Celebration of the Senses Day" hub got 78 hits from an outside site (not a search engine) in the past 30 days and it's not featured.
  
  The pink holiday hub had to be featured before the holiday even happened, and it has gotten hits from Google in the past 30 days, so it was already indexed as well. But it is NOT indexed under my subdomain... when you click the cache and get a 404 it's probably because it's indexed under hubpages.com and that page doesn't exist.
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  brakel2posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I have 43 hubs verified in Webmaster Tools and 595 not found. I think that includes questions-both figures. They won't fetch, although they are indexed. They are indexed under hubpages, so won't fetch. Everything dropped off in December and March and now have hit the lowest amount of indexed pages. I think some of the questions are deleted. It shows that they ? kept trying to verify my site and finally last week when I verified them, the 43 showed up.
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  Bendo13posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I think there is a separate sitemap for the questions. I only uploaded the hub one, just to see what all was indexed.
  
  There are 3 sitemaps listed in the robots.txt
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  brakel2posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  My hubs that say hubpages were all published before the subdomain. This is like deja vu, as I believe this issue came up at one time in the past. I don't remember the issue, but it may be a similar problem.
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Writer Foxposted 11 years ago
"I read in another forum post that you could write a random subdomain name that doesn't even exist and it will redirect to your article on your subdomain. Yep... I just tested it and it works."

I don't think so.
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  Bendo13posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Try it yourself... I just did.. I typed bwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww as the subdomain for my one article and it redirected it right to my article.
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  Writer Foxposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  
  Nothing for HubPages comes up for that search.
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  Bendo13posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  You must not understand what I'm saying...
  
  Copy and paste a URL from one of your articles and then change the subdomain to anything random.. it will redirect to your article.
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  Writer Foxposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  That's not a problem. That has nothing to do with search engine results or with indexing your Hub on Google. The browser is finding the correct location of the URL on the HubPages domain. You cannot find anything on Google by doing that. Google will report that there are no results for that query.
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  TIMETRAVELER2posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  OK, people..I hate to sound stupid, but I have absolutely no idea what you are talking about! I always thought the purpose of getting hubs featured was that they then would be indexed by Google so that the world could see them. I have never been able to figure out how to get onto Webmaster Tools and am now wondering if any of my hubs are indexed! I do see many of them when I search in Google, but have no way of knowing how many. This is giving me a headache!!
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  Bendo13posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Search this in Google to see how many are indexed correctly.
  
  site:http://YOURUSERNAME.hubpages.com/hub/
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  TIMETRAVELER2posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Bendo13: Thanks. I checked and all but 5 have been indexed, but I suspect those 5 are too new to have been indexed. Sometimes I write many hubs in a short period of time, but I'll keep checking. I appreciate your help on this one very much.
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brakel2posted 11 years ago
Some hubs are indexed under our subdomain and some under hubpages the main domain. Staff says Google has chosen to do so. Discussions have been ongoing for a while. Some of us have gone to Webmaster Tools to do some verification. If you are not familiar with the site, it can be confusing. I hope you are feeling better. Good luck with your recuperation.
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watergeekposted 11 years ago
If you are publishing under two or more pseudonyms on HP and you use the same Google AdSense number for all hubs, then Google will index your hubs under Hubpages. If you apply to Google AdSense for one number for each pseudonym, it will index the names separately.

For example, I have two names under which I publish hubs on this site - Watergeek and Sustainable Sue. The numbers Google AdSense gave me are UA-xxxxxx-1 and UA-xxxxxx-2, one for each pseudonym. Watergeek gets its own graph that shows traffic for all of its hubs, and Sustainable Sue has a different graph for its own hubs. Hope this helps.
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  Alison Grahamposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I understand what you are saying Watergeek, but it was my understanding that Google's rule is "one person, one adsense account - and ONLY one adsense account" (unless one person was running more than one business in which case each business could have an account) are you saying that you have more than one adsense account or one account that is split into your different pseudonyms?
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  watergeekposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  When I first signed up for AdSense, Google assigned me one number that I used for my two HP subdomains, e.g. UA-abcdefg. They indexed Hubpages and showed me a graph that combined the two subdomains.
  
  Recently I went back and listed the two subdomains separately. Google used the same main number, but gave me separate tags for each one, so technically they're two different numbers, e.g. UA-abcdefg-1 and UA-abcdefg-2. They graph separately now.
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  Susana Sposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I think you're getting confused.
  
  UA codes are for Google Analytics - you can have a different code for each website you want to track stats for.
  
  Adsense codes start with ca-pub or just pub. You only get one of those unless you've broken the rules.
  
  Here, we're not talking about Analytics or Adsense, but some aspects of Webmaster Tools and the url that hubs are indexed under in Google's search results.
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  watergeekposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  So Webmaster Tools has yet a different code, right? (You're right, I was confusing Analytics and AdSense.) My Analytics and AdSense codes work, but Webmaster Tools can't verify any of my sites, even though my sites show up as icons on WT's verification page (does that make sense?).
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  brakel2posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  You can verify your site through Google Analytics where it says ways to verify site. This happened to me a couple weeks ago. You have to have an account at Google Analytics.
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  watergeekposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Clarification (I just verified ). On the Webmaster Tools site "Add Site" if yours is not already there, then click "verify site" under the site you want verified. It will bring up a window that lets you verify via Google Analytics.
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  Bendo13posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I only publish under Bendo13, so there's no reason for them not to index my hubs under my subdomain. I only have one HubPage account.
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brakel2posted 11 years ago
I only have one account. Staff says this is an issue that Google has created. Many hubs are not listed under the subdomain, and nothing can be done.
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  Matthew Meyerposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  This is an accurate description.
  We are serving the content on the subdomain and Google is choosing to index the content using a non-subdomain URL.
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  Bendo13posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  And doing without all the weird redirects wouldn't change this?
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  Matthew Meyerposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I think doing away with what you call "weird redirects" is not a viable solution without major changes as people used to not have subdomains.
  In order to not "break" all old links, we have to maintain the non-subdomain URLs.
  
  That is why they forward to the subdomain URLs.
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  Bendo13posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I call them weird because of the fact you can type in any random subdomain (real or not) and it still redirects to the correct article.
  
  And I suggested a way to ensure that the original articles are still linked to, without using a redirect. You direct them to a page that says:
  "Is this the page you were looking for? subdomain.hubpages.com/article"
  ...and then you give them a link to click.
  
  I didn't know if that was possible or not, because no one responded to it. I realize why we have the redirects, I was just giving a suggestion on how to move past them.
  
  But can you confirm or disprove that it's the redirects that are causing the indexing issues?
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  pauldeedsposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Technically what you suggest is possible, but the result would likely be worse than the cure. Redirects pass most or all (depending on who you ask) of the "link juice" on to the end page. If you replace the old URL with a non-redirecting page with a link, a lot of that juice would be lost. In addition you might lose the aging of the page, and other (typically beneficial) things that transfer via redirects. Redirecting by all accounts, is the "correct" thing to do when the URL of a page changes.
  
  On the other hand, displaying a different URL in the search results than where the actual page has resided for a couple of years is decidedly odd. We aren't really sure why Google chooses to do that.
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  Bendo13posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I'm not too sure either.
  
  Could it have something to do with HubPages.com's main sitemap as a whole? Or does the main sitemap not link to anything that comes from subdomains, and our subdomain sitemaps take care of all those links themselves?
  
  If the redirects themselves aren't to blame, there has to be another explanation... it's just that someone hasn't put their finger on it yet.
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  pauldeedsposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Each individual subdomain has it's own hub sitemap, and that's the only sitemap that lists the hubs on that subdomain. So I don't think that's it.
  
  I'm confident that Google understands just fine what the proper urls are for those Hubs are. They are purposely showing the "wrong" URL (knowing that it will redirect). There is likely some algorithmic reason that they choose to list them that way, and I don't think we are ever going to get completely to the bottom of. They aren't real keen about revealing those sort of details.
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  Bendo13posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  OK, you just confirmed what I thought.
  
  The redirects are the problem, but only because Google's algorithm has chosen to show the wrong URL. If there were no redirects, and the article was written AFTER the subdomain, they'd have no choice but to index the correct URL.
  
  The real question is then... does indexing the wrong URL, through a redirect, hurt the overall reputation of the subdomain? I'm sure direct links from Google's search engine would be a lot better than a bunch of redirected links.
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  Alison Grahamposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Matthew, I appreciate what you are saying and that it is outside of Hubpages control but I thought that the point of having a subdomain would be to build a top quality group of hubs that would have more 'credibility' with Google and do better in the rankings collectively.
  
  What is the point of having a subdomain if this is what happens, especially as it seems from many comments I have read that the hubs indexed on hubpages.com seem to do better and get more traffic.
  I am not complaining, I am just trying to get the maximum return for my efforts - I only have so many hours in the day for writing and want to put it to best use!
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  Matthew Meyerposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  The idea of subdomains is that you can establish an identity and differentiate yourself from all other HubPages authors. Without subdomains all HubPages content would be somewhat judged as a whole by Google and therefore all authors would potentially be treated exactly the same by Google and other search engines.
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  Alison Grahamposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Matthew, I think that is my point exactly, subdomains were meant to build up an individual identity for authors for a body of work. The result of the 'best' hubs being indexed on hubpages.com instead of on anyhubberssubdomain.hubpages.com is that the individual identity of any author's body of work is devalued because their best work is ONLY indexed on Hubpages.com - so I ask again, what is the point of having a subdomain when we seemingly have no control over where the work we create is indexed?
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  Bendo13posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  If that's true, then I'm not too happy about that. Our best hubs, our reputation, isn't given to our subdomain... it goes to HubPages.com... That's not cool. Only a few of my newer hubs are indexed correctly, so that seems to be the case on my end.
  
  The articles which are indexed in the first few pages of Google aren't linked to, through Google, my subdomain. And that dilutes the link juice a little, as well as my reputation?
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  Matthew Meyerposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  There is no practical way for an author to establish any sort of reputation for content on HubPages without subdomains.
  
  I feel like this was addressed here.
  http://hubpages.com/forum/topic/113870#post2432072
  
  The result of the 'best' hubs being indexed on hubpages.com instead of on anyhubberssubdomain.hubpages.com
  I have seen no evidence for this premise.
  There seems to be no factor that we can point to that says "they indexed this on this URL for this reason" or the converse.
  
  As Paul mentioned here
  http://hubpages.com/forum/topic/113870#post2432199
  Google is unlikely to release details about the exact mechanism they use to determine how and where content is indexed as it would likely be gamed.
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  Bendo13posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I agree with you here, because from what I'm seeing it's not necessarily the "best" hubs that are indexed incorrectly... it's the OLD hubs, which I wrote before the subdomain switch!
  
  It just so happens that most of my older hubs are my best hubs, so I can see where the confusion can come in. They were on good informational topics, had time to build a good reputation and links, and started out by being on the main HubPages domain, not my subdomain.
  
  I'll have to see how things change once I get all my holiday hubs moved to my own website, and then start adding more informational hubs like I use to.
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brakel2posted 11 years ago
Alison Have your subdomain pages gradually decreased over past six months? How is your traffic? Does Webmaster Tools say many hubs cannot be found? Have you tried to fetch them? Nothing works for me. Should we let the issue rest?
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  Alison Grahamposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  @brakel2 Yes my subdomain pages have decreased but I can only tell since March this year because prior to that I did not have my hubpages account hooked up to webmaster tools.
  I have not tried to add my site map to webmaster tools because I am worried in case this results in loss of traffic/income from my three or four best hubs all of which are on hubpages.com not my subdomain - I did however add three recent hubs successfully (using fetch and then add to index). I just do not know enough about the possible implications to know what is the best course of action. As to whether we should let the matter rest, it seems unlikely that we will get anywhere with this as HubPages team puts the ball firmly in Google's court saying it is outside their control where the hubs are indexed. I don't want to 'rock the boat' or seem like I am complaining, I have put a heck of a lot of work into my hubs, especially since last October when I joined the apprentice scheme. I want to earn money here by providing good content but am frustrated by events! I am still waiting for a reply from Matthew.
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brakel2posted 11 years ago
Congrats on success
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brakel2posted 11 years ago
Congrats on success
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brakel2posted 11 years ago
Watergeek. Did say some hubs not found?
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  Alison Grahamposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  @brakel2, just a thought but, are you saying you cannot fetch any of your hubs in webmaster tools but you can find them in search engine results on hubpages.com rather than brakel2.hubpages.com ?
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  watergeekposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Google says there are 69 Watergeek hubs indexed, but doesn't list them. However, that is how many I have (although I deleted one yesterday). Sustainable Sue has 16 indexed out of 40. Most of those I haven't looked at for over a year and I wrote many like blogs, rather than articles, so I'm not surprised. (Both accounts are about the same age.) I assume that's what you mean?
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  brakel2posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Yes. Does that mean the ones under Watergeek are all under watergeek.com and none say only Hubpages.com?
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  watergeekposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  That's right. None of them say only hubpages.com anymore. I deleted that url from my Google Analytics account.
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  brakel2posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Water Geek How did you delete hubpages from Google Analytics?
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brakel2posted 11 years ago
Alison The only hubs I can fetch are those In the sudomain. I think they are now all indexed. The ones in hubpages say file not found, and they are all indexed. All my hubs are in Google Analytics. My hubs are all featured. The hubs under hubpages have to be redirected, according to staff. When someone finds it in search, it is redirected to it's subdomain home. It is homeless lol. I guess we need a few laughs right?
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  Alison Grahamposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Brakel2, I tried yesterday with an older hub originally published 02/24/11 although it was indexed in Google on hubpages.com showing the publication date as the last edit date (April this year). I was able to fetch it and have submitted it to index successfully - it has not been re-indexed yet. Maybe this is the key, the hub needs to be edited first to change the date stamp have you tried this with any of yours, editing one and waiting for it to be re-indexed before trying to fetch in webmaster tools? Although Watergeek suggests that edited hubs get re-indexed on the subdomain this evidently did not happen in this particular hub's case. I will let you know if this hub gets re-indexed correctly.
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  brakel2posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Thanks Alison. I will try that procedure, even though J Anderson says it did not work for him. Maybe I will get lucky.
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janderson99posted 11 years ago
Just to confirm the critical date for the switch to subdomains for listing in the SERPS is June 2011.
Hubs published before June 2011 are listed under hubpages.com
Hubs published after July 2011 are listed under SUBDOMAIN.hubpages.com
there are a few scragglers but this rules applies for my subs.
I have tried re-submitting the old ones via webmasters, but to no avail.

The huge diversity of sitemaps and index pages for all the topics and for hubpages.com latest, hot, best etc. must really confuse the bot.
Topic listings appear in the SERPs with the summary text for all hubs - when opened these go to the topic page not the hub with the subdomain. Rationalising all these issues would probably solve the problem IMO, but HP is unwilling to act.
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  watergeekposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Unless . . . you upgrade them. I have several hubs that were first created before 6/11 - some of them relatively popular ones. But I've upgraded all of them since that date, usually modifying the title and general description, plus a few subtitles and some of the text. No major upgrades yet, just attempting to make them more SEO responsive. It seems that they get reindexed when you upgrade, and are moved to the subdomain then.
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  janderson99posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  All 100 of my hubs published before 6/2011 have been edited and have a revised date in 2013, none to my knowledge has been reassigned to my subdomain.
  reply report

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