Panda and Indexing Changes

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paradigmsearchposted 11 years ago
My traffic has stayed within a narrow range. When it drops below a certain round number, I become perturbed and cranky. When it goes above a certain round number, I become a legend in my own mind and the world is a wonderful place.
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  BahamasFinderposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Nicely said, and don't we all!
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  paradigmsearchposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  
  Looking to be a good day. 5 hubs updated already.
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  paradigmsearchposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  My stats just made a significant drop below that lower round number. I will try to put my perturbations and crankiness towards some productive use.
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  jansharesposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I'm feeling it, too, for the first time para. But like I said in the thread I posted, I hope it's just that this weekend is so gorgeous that no one's online. I will do the same and work on something else for now.
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Greekgeekposted 11 years ago
I keep waiting for the shoe to drop and hit my dash with the same 16-ton-anvil as everybody else.

I'm afraid to post anything in these threads, because it is utter salt in the wound when you've just had your traffic sawn off at the knees while other people are saying "I'm not seeing a drop," but... Er. So far the Angel of Traffic Death has not found my cul-de-sac?

I still don't understand what people are saying about the indexing. My account goes back to 2007, but most of my hubs were written in 2011. So are they newer or older than the hubs that other people are seeing lose traffic?

FWIW, I'm not doing much updating. I figure that unless I have made substantial changes that significantly change the content (as opposed to minor tweaks), Google's probably going to treat it the same anyway.
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  janderson99posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I did extensive research for my own hubs and those of many other people. I found that the cut off date for hubs displaying in the SERPS with the HP URL and in the SUBS was June 2011. My traffic for hubs originally published before June 2011 has declined. BUT all of them have been edited and show a revised date after January 2013. That's my take on it. But others have reported newer hubs having HP URL.
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  Marsha Musselman1posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  All hubs should have a HP URL. I think maybe before the change the hp part may have been before the authors name, whereas, now it's after the author? I'm guessing on this as I wasn't around to see the changes happening.
  
  Our hubs need to have the HP URL on them as they are hosting our hubs for free. If we were paying for our own subdomains, then maybe we would be able to have our own domain used without HP's involvement in the URL.
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  Susana Sposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  It will probably depend on when you moved to your own subdomain, as it's hubs that were published before that date that seem to be affected most by big traffic drops right now.
  
  There were tests on some accounts in June 2011 to see how they'd fare on subs. Once the testing showed that moving to subs helped, people could move to subs of their own volition through July. Then there was a cut off date of 10th August when all accounts that hadn't been moved already were moved automatically.
  
  http://blog.hubpages.com/2011/06/prepar … ess-panda/
  http://blog.hubpages.com/2011/07/
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  Sue Baileyposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I have absolutely no idea about subdomains etc., All I do know is that something has happened in the last week. My earnings which had already dropped from roughly $2 + per day to under $1 per day in the last couple of months have suddenly plummeted even further to as low as$0.36. Granted I have written no new hubs for several weeks now but even my evergreen hubs that were getting plenty of visitors are now not. I'm becoming more and more frustrated and disillusioned by the day. I'm also seeing more and more seasoned hubbers moving over to Bubblews every day!
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  Marsha Musselman1posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I didn't understand subdomains either until I just read the first blog post that Susana S just provided in the comment above your own.
  
  I just joined hubpages recently to where I actually wrote an article or two to make my stay official. The way hubpages is set up now all our articles look like they are on our oun subdomains. I did join several years ago and never got around to writing anything. I don't remember how the site looked then, but I'm guessing that all articles were under the main hubpages site which possibly made it harder to find a particular author you liked and read more of what they had written.
  
  Now it's all found in one place under their own name. I believe that would be considered their subdomain.
  
  Would someone that's been here since before the changes care to let me know if my understanding of this is correct?
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  moonlakeposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I was here before the changes ( 5 years) and I don't remember much about it. I do know it was never hard to find the author. I had an old account on Tripod so I checked it because I knew I had an old hubpage address on there, here's how it showed up http://moonlake.hubpages.com/_Moonlake/ The new address is http://moonlake.hubpages.com. I'm not sure if that helps anyone understand the change over to subdomains.
  I know my traffic is way down and not because of summer. When I check my webmaster tools all my hubs look the same no critical issues. I don't know what is going on but I do believe it's not all because of Google.
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  Glenn Stokposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Moonlake - you are confusing tracking codes with subdomains. You gave the same URL in both examples. Both are your subdomain version. The only difference is that the first one includes your tracking code that you created so that you get 10% from anyone who signs up by following your link.
  
  The old version URL before the change to subdomains did not have the username before hubpages.com. It had it after it... such as hubpages.com/username. If you see an underscore ( _ ) then THAT is a tracking code. Such as username.hubpages.com/_trackingcode
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  rebekahELLEposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  The old URL was http://w w w.hubpages.com/profile/username
  My Google analytics account still has this URL. I wonder if others did not change theirs also and this had something to do with our older hubs being indexed on the HP domain? (Probably not... because for a while our hubs were indexed on our new subdomains.) I remember being told it didn't make a difference as long as analytics was still collecting data. Does anyone else remember this?
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  Glenn Stokposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  rebekahELLE - I need to correct you on this. HP does not use the www on their URL. I see some people adding the www in front of their subdomain URL in links, not realizing that it goes to a page that says "that user does not exist."
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  rebekahELLEposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  That is the address that shows on my analytics account. It obviously goes to my subdomain as the data is there. The proper URL is listed on my WMT account. When I first log onto analytics, it shows that URL with the proper affiliate code. I'll change the URL and hope it doesn't mess things up.
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  Glenn Stokposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  My Webmaster Tools lists it without the www. In Google Analytics under Admin > Property Settings you can specify the correct URL. If you have it with the old URL (with or without the www) it still works because HP does a 301 redirect to the proper URL. But if you include www in front of the subdomain URL that is used now, it will fail. This is because "www" is taken as the subdomain and there is no user on HP with "www" as their username. Try it in your browser and you'll see what I mean. It directs you to a page that says "use does not exist." If Google Analytics is getting the data, then you probably have the correct URL in the "Default URL" field and the www's in the "Property name" field. The Property name is just a title for your account.
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  snakeslaneposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  This is so complicated! But I do appreciate you sharing the info Glenn, thank you...
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  moonlakeposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  That's how much I know. Thanks for information.
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IzzyMposted 11 years ago
All hubs do have a hubpages url, still. They are still getting re-directs.

ie http://randygodwin.hubpages.com/hub/Son … ew-Chapter is the same as http://hubpages.com/hub/Son-Of-Hubber-A-New-Chapter
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  TIMETRAVELER2posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  IzzyM: Where can I go to check this information? That is a big statement that makes me nervous and I'd like to check some of mine to see if I'm OK or not. I thought I was because my hubs show up as being indexed under my subdomain...but now I'm not so sure. Please advise. Thanks
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  IzzyMposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Right click on the links I provided, and choose 'open in new tab'.
  
  If they don't both go to the same site, then I am wrong, obviously, but they do for me.
  
  http://timetraveler2.hubpages.com/hub/F … e-US-Penny should be the same as
  http://hubpages.com/hub/Farewell-to-the-US-Penny
  
  HP use re-directs.
  
  The point being really that we should all still benefit from the domain Hubpages, despite being on our own subdomains.
  
  HP is getting slapped left, right and centre from Google updates.
  
  No-one really cared when my sub got slapped. That happened a while ago and it never recovered. I got told I must have used too many keywords or some such crap.
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  TIMETRAVELER2posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Izzy: Yep...they both went to the same site. Interesting...and thank you.
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jansharesposted 11 years ago
I just visited Google Analytics and I'm beginning to think the same, Mark Ewbie. Just dreadful. Off to church, will pray.
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tillsontitanposted 11 years ago
Your explanation helps somewhat. As you are well aware, it is very disheartening to see your readership (not to mention scores) plummet, but it helps a little to have an explanation. I hope Google will eventually realize there are a lot of people and a lot of hubs affected by their actions.
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paradigmsearchposted 11 years ago
Well, folks... https://www.quantcast.com/hubpages.com

However, for comparison, check this out... https://www.quantcast.com/google.com

In other words, the whole freaking internet sucks.

I've instructed my subconscious to find me another way to do my pursuit of happiness...
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  brakel2posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Squidoo really tanked to rank of 167. HubPages at 99. I think HP was in the 70s not too long ago.
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Jenn-Anneposted 11 years ago
My older hubs that were doing well have fallen from page 1 to page 3 on google and the views have dropped way off. (I suspect these might have been moved to my subdomain, which could explain the drop.) My newest hub seems to be doing reasonably well in comparison, although its views aren't great either. I have been here 14 months. May was the best month I've ever had. My views have plummeted since then. It is discouraging but for now I don't have a lot of time to spend fussing with backlinks, etc. Will try updating the older hubs to see if that makes a difference. Not optimistic though.
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  alexadryposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Jenn Anne, I noticed that too... some of my hubs that were ranking well in Google for over 5 years have also dropped way off and what is odd is that most of the articles outranking mine are newer ones published this year and the one right on top of mine has even copied some of my content and is mentioning me as a reference and has a back-link to me! Does Google now like newer content? By newer I mean like recently published versus an older article that is updated routinely? I used to think that "mature" articles were preferred and if I recall well it used to take a few years to start to get traffic. I hope this is just a temporary thing and that once these after shocks take place, things will be stable again.
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  Victoria Lynnposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  That's what I thought, alexadry. I thought the mature ones were supposed to do better. Mine did for a while. My most popular hubs are hardly getting views some days. It's weird what is going on. It's like the bottom fell out!
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brakel2posted 11 years ago
Do you think HP was hit for bad links?
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  TIMETRAVELER2posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  brake12: That is always a possibility and may be part of the problem, but I think the real problem deals with the messy switch to subdomains as well as the many poorly written hubs that have been on the site and still may be here to a certain extent. Time will fix this...that's all I can say.
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  janderson99posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Looks like HP achieved their aim – Dump 2/3 of the hubs
  site:hubpages.com =>>> About 681,000 results
  All Pages corralled in subdomains
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brakel2posted 11 years ago
@Time Traveler. 35 percent of my months views are mobile Some mobile phones work weird on some web pages plus Google pays less for mobile ads I hear. I had a new mobile phone for 3 days and could barely navigate HP site. I exchanged it for iPhone.
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  TIMETRAVELER2posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  brake12: I just don't get those small devices...small, yes...but difficult to use. Don't know why people buy them and you are right...they may be part of the problem...but my question is why would anybody want to read an internet article on something so small and user unfriendly?
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paradigmsearchposted 11 years ago
Just a note...

My usual Sunday traffic ramp-up for the new week never occurred; a first for this year. As such, I figured I was totally doomed. But Monday traffic did indeed bounce back up to the almost usual level. So, weird things and fluctuations are still happening. And there is still hope.
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  LeanManposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Monday was up compared to Sunday which was the worst day I have had in years - but it is still a long way short of what I would expect.
  My personal sites however are seeing extra traffic while HP slips and slides.......... but I expect there will be some sort of recovery but I am not confident that HP has the rosy future that it once had!
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  paradigmsearchposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  No matter what, the owners are set for life. Worst case scenario: they layoff all the employees and temps, close the office, and maintain the site from their homes. They'll have a comfortable net income for life; something I was never able to accomplish.
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Muttfaceposted 11 years ago
I only started to write here about 5 months ago, but the traffic from May onwards was abysmal (I'm too embarrassed to report them, but think about how many fingers you have on your hands and if you were to have 4 friends with the same amount of fingers per month).

I thought it was due to the summer months, being that most of my hubs are about English as a Second Language. The figures were so horrendous I thought, well, teachers don't need to research as much blah, blah, blah...

But, last week, while everyone was complaining about nosedive traffic, I started to see a rise in traffic.
Our old friend Googlie, after completely ignoring me, even after typing in the full name of my articles and getting no result, now seems to be more interested in a relationship... I hope I don't screw it up by typing this. Perhaps it has something to do with the sub-domains. Maybe, maybe not, but I am delighted with the all of a sudden new interest.

My views are still meagre in the light of earning an online income , but I am over the moon to finally get some traffic to compensate from the RSI I have.

I hope things pick up for all of you.
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Barb Hposted 11 years ago
My hubs seem to be improving a little. Is anyone else seeing improvement in traffic scores?
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LeanManposted 11 years ago
I have seen my traffic steadily fall as the day has gone on when I would normally be watching a steady rise.... down and down and down... if it does come back up I will need a decompression chamber as it has gone so low!
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Astra Nomikposted 11 years ago
People who are writing on hub Pages should be asking themselves: if there was something other than search engines that allowed people to find my hubs and my writing - what would they be? What platforms or social media would I be found on? What other ways are there that my writing can be shared, seen and viewed on the web?

Any hubber with a blog is one step ahead of those without a blog. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Tumblr are just some platforms and media that can extend our message further...

Traffic can go down, yes. But traffic from where, exactly...? There are other ways...
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Susana Sposted 11 years ago
Last time we moved to subdomains, after about a month of very low traffic, traffic and earnings went crazy for a bit, then settled down to something approaching normal. Wondering if that will happen this time?

(Just to allay any potential confusion - as there is tonnes of it about! - this only applies to those whose accounts have many hubs published before Summer 2011).
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  PaulGoodman67posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I hope you are right, SS. I have to say that comparing HP and Squid in Quantcast, the graphs are fairly similar (apart from the pre-crash spike) - which makes me wonder if the crash isn't all about indexing and subdoms, as Squid doesn't use subdoms. I am still hopeful there will be some sort of recovery. Pretty grim at the moment though, traffic-wise.
  
  (Like you say, there is a lot of confusion and red herrings in the discussion. Freshness, French plagiarism, etc. are important, but separate matters - the problem is almost certainly technical in nature)
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  Susana Sposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I think there are 2 main things happening:
  
  1. subdomains and indexing issues - this is affecting (all/some?) accounts with a lot of content from pre summer 2011.
  
  2. Panda - this will be the main cause of traffic drops for many newer accounts (post Summer 2011), plus it could also be affecting older accounts on top of the subdomain issues.
  
  I've been more focused on 1. because that's what's caused my current traffic loss, but the latest Panda is a biggy too (as was the Panda hit back in May).
  
  Paul E. asks why Panda is still clobbering the site in his latest hub and the main answer is that there is still a lot of barely readable crap being published everyday because it actually passes QAP! The level 6 pass mark has very dodgy criteria and it's just too low a benchmark.
  
  I think the best thing to do right now is sit tight and wait, but if people really feel the need to do something then I'd say make sure you've panda proofed your pages if you haven't already.
  
  50 Reasons your pages might get penalised by Google
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  agilitymachposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  That's an interesting article. I know many people suffering a hit were writing back when keyword stuffing was acceptable and desirable. Perhaps some of the hits being taken are on hubs that still have this keyword stuffing model in play. I know I have one hub that I "stuffed" keywords into. I'm going to go review it and fix it. Since my other articles have all seen drastic increases in traffic with this new Panda, perhaps I can encourage that one to that end as well.
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  Marisa Wrightposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Extreme keyword stuffing was never acceptable. However I recall many "gurus" advised using the same keywords in your URL, title, and every heading and sub-heading, as well as repeating it in the text. If you check those Hubs today, you'll see their keyword density is over 5%, which is well into keyword-stuffing territory by Google's new standards.
  
  As you say, Hubbers can't be blamed for following that advice because at the time, it worked and it was still possible to create a fluent, well-written Hub while following that advice - because the headings didn't intrude and there was no need to "overstuff" the text.
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  New Understandingposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Thanks for the good info Susana! I'm going to check out those 50 reasons now.
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  Susana Sposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  You're welcome I re-read that article and thought that it's more about Penguin proofing websites and not so much in there that's useful to hubbers.
  
  This article is much more useful: http://moz.com/blog/why-you-might-be-lo … or-content
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  robhamptonposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I know I am definatley deeply impacted and was hit hard by this Panda update, or whatever is going on. As I said, steadily a thousand impressions per day for months and then.. WHAM! I'm lucky if I see 300. This happened in the corse of only like a week. So when people respond with stuff like "Oh, well traffic fluctuates, you probably had a slow weekend" No, I've been on here almost 4 years and know that I've been railroaded by this update. This is no simple "traffic fluctuation" I hope things change, but I no longer log into hubpages daily anymore. Maybe I'll check it in a month and see if anything has changed. BTW, Susana S, you have some awesome knowledge of what's going on with this so thank you for sharing. I'll check in on your posts often.
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beaddve1800posted 11 years ago
Thanks for notice, Paul.
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paradigmsearchposted 11 years ago
Well, well... This Monday was better than last Monday. How's everyone else doing? Same Monday comparison, better or worse?
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  Victoria Lynnposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Actually, quite a bit better. :-) I'm only down about 1/2 of what I used to be instead of 2/3! It's still not what it was early in the year, but today's numbers do make me feel a bit better. :-)
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  susi10posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  My traffic is still down a little but is gradually improving. I suppose the worst of the Panda update is over and now traffic is stabilising a little bit more. I was getting a lot more traffic before the update, now its down again and it should hopefully rise up again in the coming days and weeks.
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  Ms Deeposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  paradigmsearch, I'm still down 2/3's this morning
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  theherbivorehippiposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I'm still dropping. All blue arrows. This is my lowest day.
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  robhamptonposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I feel your pain for sure
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  wordscribe43posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  You and I are always affected at the same time... It's simultaneously interesting and very sucky. I am in a huge slump- one I haven't seen in ages. Hope it improves soon...
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  theherbivorehippiposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Yes, we always are! At least I'm in good company while I'm sinking.
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  PaulGoodman67posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  As bad as ever for me.
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cornwall_UKposted 11 years ago
At some time in the past, my Hubpages earnings were enough to pay half my significant rent..... today they have failed to buy me one small, raw, potato.

Sad times.

It's not just the traffic that dropped, it's the CTR that's been hammered too.
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janderson99posted 11 years ago
This is a serious drop - 50% of page views lost since the end of April (Quantcast)
29 April 1.4M
29 July 0.7M
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Mekenzieposted 11 years ago
Glad to have found this post and know I am not alone. I will remove my own question since the topic is being thoroughly covered here. Thanks Paul and HP team for all your efforts to inform and assist.
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  TIMETRAVELER2posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  My numbers, while not great, continue to remain steady.The only reason I think this is happening is that I started updating last November and continue to do so. However, it seems that no matter how many hubs I write, the views and pays never seem to change much. Can't figure out why my numbers are holding and everybody else's are having such wild fluctuations.
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  Mekenzieposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I have just learned that a french site is copying hubpages. This may account for the drastic drop. I found my hubs copied here and have now reported it to DMCA. I am not very computer saavy so I hope it is reported it accurately. The site is rank08dotcom/a/yourprofilename
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  Mekenzieposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Well I just had my email with the DMCA report bounced back. I got the address on a google search but now I learned it does not exist. For now I give up .. I do not have time for this. I hope Hubpages is doing something about this theft.
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  WriteAngledposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  No, Hubpages will not do anything about this. They put all the onus on the authors. In my case, the pitiful earnings I get from HP do not justify me spending time on DMCA notices. I earn more in 10 minutes real work than I do per month on HP. Even on Adsense, a couple of sites I put up, which I do not update in any way, are earning about 5 times as much as I get from HP. So really, I no longer care whether this site sinks or swims.
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  paradigmsearchposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Hey, folks. I just went and did the rank08dotcom/a/yourprofilename thing. It's not a copy. It's a freaking almost-live feed!!! Or simultaneous translate iframe. Or whatever the heck the thing is... I'm not kidding. I rewrote my profile yesterday, and today I followed some people. The last follow being just a few minutes ago. The changes and the latest following total are all there on rank08.
  
  Try it to confirm. Make a minor profile change. Proceed to rank08.
  
  If this has already been reported, sorry about that.
  
  Update: there does appear to be a time delay. Don't know how long yet. I'm going to the other thread, where I thought I was to begin with.
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  Susana Sposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  The traffic drops are nothing to do with this.
  
  Think about it.
  
  How often do you see a website with French content show up for your English searches on google.com, google.co.uk, google.com.au, google.co.in etc? It doesn't happen. Therefore, rank08 cannot be stealing Hubpages traffic, there is something else going on.
  
  What there was, was a confirmed Google Panda update from 18th - 28th July. This is one of the main reasons many are experiencing traffic drops (for the other main reason see my post above). Hubpages has been doing battle with Google panda for the last 2 1/2 years and for the most part is losing.
  
  http://searchenginewatch.com/article/22 … ers-Seeing
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  HollieTposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I think you hit the nail on the head Susana when you suggested that some of the rubbish getting through QAP is, in part, responsible for the ongoing Panda slaps which HP just cannot shake off. It's bad enough that there is still a lot of substandard content on this site yet to go through QAP, but the fact new rubbish is being churned out daily must be like a red flag to a bull.
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  TIMETRAVELER2posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  This is exactly why HP needs to toughen up its QAP standards and why writers here need to seriously start flagging bad hubs. Until the mess gets mopped up, everybody here will suffer.
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  HollieTposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  The thing is, some hubs which have been flagged remain published. Apparently, some of the incomprehensible rubbish meets the criteria for a score of six?? This is a problem.
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  TIMETRAVELER2posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Again...HP needs to toughen up its standards if it is to return to its former glory. Allowing low quality work on one end while booting out other low quality work makes no sense! On the other hand, the team is overworked and understaffed and this stuff takes time!
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  PaulGoodman67posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  My experience is that HP have put a great amount of effort to ensure quality over the past couple of years. There is plenty of spam and low quality on Google operated services such as Youtube and Blogger. Google has no incentive to be kind to HP and Squidoo, because these websites are competition to Google services. The problem is bigger than just a question of HP improving quality.
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  TIMETRAVELER2posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Paul, I hate to say it, but I see your point. If that is the case, HP is in more trouble than what I originally thought, and this greatly concerns me. The question is, can this issue be overcome or are sites like ours headed for the trash can! And if they are, where in the world will people be able to write that is NOT in competition with Google! I wrote for Yahoo for more than a year before coming here, and my results were horrible. Any thoughts?
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  mistyhorizon2003posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  There are a good few other places e.g. all the other places similar to HP such as Wizzley, Xobba, This is Freelance etc etc as they do use Adsense as the major amount of ads on their pages. Then of course there is Blogger / Blogspot which are owned by Google and therefore tend to do well, or there is the option of your own websites which are fairly cheap to set up now.
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  TIMETRAVELER2posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I contacted the team about the French site that has stolen and copied the entire HP website. They are aware of the situation and although they didn't go into detail, I'm sure they are working to remedy the situation.
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agilitymachposted 11 years ago
My views are continuing to rise. My Google views are now up three times over what they were. I'm happy, although I'm not happy for those of you with lower numbers. I'm thinking the reason my numbers are up is because all of my content is "fresh" since I'm newer to HP.
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paradigmsearchposted 11 years ago
I think my end-of-week traffic drop has already started...
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Ms Deeposted 11 years ago
The later part of today my traffic hitting the bottom turned into an increase. Now there are about the same amount of red arrows as there are blue. Hoping a corner has been turned with my account. Hope others experience this soon, if not already.
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  Victoria Lynnposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Mine is up some! Woo hoo! I'll take it!
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  Ms Deeposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Victoria, Good to hear yours is going up too!
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janderson99posted 11 years ago
Looks like another round of unfeaturing has started triggered by the decline in traffic which was cause by HP's indexing problems.
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susi10posted 11 years ago
My traffic is going up again and is climbing back up to what it used to be before the update. However, I do feel sorry for those that their traffic is down, it's terrible. Still, no matter what people say, I still think that HP is on the way up again. We just have to hang in there and perhaps tighten the QAP standards and get rid of spammy, poor English hubs. Perhaps teaching some SEO and keyword research to Hubbers that want to learn would be very useful too.
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jemuelOposted 11 years ago
I agree with you susi. Hubpages is on the way up again-I can see it. With the great community we have, I'm sure HP will soon bounce back in terms of traffic and earnings. We just have to stick with producing quality hubs (as Panda wants it). By the way, I joined HP 2 months ago, and am enjoying my stay here. I admit I still need to learn more when it comes to publishing high quality hubs. Your suggestion on educating hubbers is great! It would be very helpful to all hubbers, especially to the newbies. I would be very glad to hear thoughtful tips from experienced hubbers.
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  susi10posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  We just have to hang in there, until the update stabilises. Hubbers have to start learning about keyword research, backlinkkng and writing search- friendly hubs, etc because without Google traffic, any hub is pretty much doomed. I can see that your hubs, jemuelO are search-friendly and should attract search traffic.
  
  As for educating Hubbers, the Learning Centre is not enough. I had to learn about SEO myself from other Hubbers' hubs and through trial and error. Educating new Hubbers would significantly boost search traffic, as some simply don't know how to research keywords and give up.
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jemuelOposted 11 years ago
I'm happy to know that my hubs are search friendly (as what you've said), at least I made something right. Thanks for the feedback, it's highly appreciated.
With regards to producing quality hubs and the use of search friendly keywords, some hubbers (including me) still do not know how these things are done correctly.
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jemuelOposted 11 years ago
It's the reason why we really need to improve and expand the learning center, and at the same time encourage expert hubbers to help other members in developing high quality hubs. We're all in this together, in bringing HP to the top once again.
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Mark Ewbieposted 11 years ago
Right.

I'll just say to those talking about keyword research, SEO and back-linking.

That is exactly the crap that will destroy any site. It generates the same generic garbage that exists on a thousand other sites.

What you need is a reason to visit.

It is not just content - it is the whole site.

Ah well. I give up. Do your back-linking and play your SEO games. A million pages on the exact same thing.
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  susi10posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I suppose you are right in what you are saying, Mark but I have seen many hubs that are brilliantly made and written but aren't search friendly. Hubbers have to be taught about keyword research so they can apply that to their hubs and gain more traffic from search engines. I don't mean to create Hubs around SEO, simply to make some tutorials in the Learning Centre about how to choose good keywords. I am sure a lot of Hubbers would appreciate that.
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  Mark Ewbieposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Fair point. I was addressing the old style content writers./
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  aa liteposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Well technically, keyword research done right should not result in "the same generic garbage that exists on thousands of other pages".
  
  A good keyword is one that has low competition, so there aren't thousands of pages saying the same thing on the same topic Or maybe there are but they are shallow generic pages, and you happen to be able to say a lot more on the topic and produce a much better page.
  
  The problem is that it is easy to say "do keyword research", but quite hard to do it properly. I tend to agree about backlinking though. I think the kind of backlinks that most hubbers can build are probably disregarded by Google, since they don't come from authority sites.
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  Mark Ewbieposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Yeah I guess. Went into rant mode. If its not "summer" its "seo". Whatever it is we have been trying to fix it for two long years.
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  HollieTposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I suppose it also depends how it's done. I decide what I want to write about, then research the best keyword phrase for that topic. Although, in the past, I know there were people who just "homed in" on any niche they established to be profitable, then write a pile of ......uninformed nonsense. lol.
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paradigmsearchposted 11 years ago

I am not amused. There has got to be a better way...
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brakel2posted 11 years ago
Writer Fox has great hubs on Panda and Penguin. They are better than reading books.
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paradigmsearchposted 11 years ago
I've decided to hell with all things penguin, panda, and seo. They've won. I've lost. That is that. On to other adventures. Ones that have nothing to do with the aforementioned nemeses.
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brakel2posted 11 years ago
Susanna, I read the fifty reasons article article and found it useful. Thanks for finding it.
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Astra Nomikposted 11 years ago
There is some strangeness and weirdness in what happens with Google. Sometimes, no matter what people do, their scores just don't rise...

I read this on Search Engine Watch, and it was bizarre and unusual to read... it talks about one set of rules for big and Gigantic companies and then different rules for the small fry.....

http://searchenginewatch.com/article/22 … hree-Bears
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  Barbara Kayposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I am beginning to think that we just need to get traffic from other sources. Some people say not to get links, but if they are good ones I don't think Google cares. I'm beginning to wonder if it matters if Google cares anyways. 3/4 of my traffic is coming from elsewhere now.
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theherbivorehippiposted 11 years ago
My traffic is even lower today than yesterday! I didn't even think that was possible. So frustrated!
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  Mark Ewbieposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I have been trying to take a certain sexual pleasure from the way my traffic is being destroyed. Each new low gives me a frisson of delight. I love it when Google beasts me.
  
  Sorry. I guess it's not exactly SEO.
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  theherbivorehippiposted 11 years agoin reply to this
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  sabrebIadeposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Yeah...mine has dropped around 100 more views.
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Ms Deeposted 11 years ago
Though my traffic level had turned a corner and started going up again, now today it is going back down again. So it is not on its way to recovery, as I'd hoped.
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ketageposted 11 years ago
Mine is crashing at an alarming rate I thought it was just me.
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  Victoria Lynnposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  No, ketage. You are not alone. There are many of us.
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Mark Ewbieposted 11 years ago
I checked my graph for the first time in a while. It is not so good...

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Sue Adamsposted 11 years ago
In this forum post, Janderson kindly provided real proof in the pudding for the decline of HubPages with this picture:

"There is GOOD EVIDENCE that RELATED SEARCH ADS have triggered the DECLINE for HP - Too many ads. They were introduced mid to late March."
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rebekahELLEposted 11 years ago
Too many links could be the issue.
I placed my profile URL and a few of my hub URL's into the feed the bot spider simulator tool (which I have never used before GreekGeek introduced it in a thread) to get an assessment of how search engines see the pages. The message related to links reads: There may be too many links on this page
There are more than 50 links on this page. This is not too much reason for alarm, but it is worth noting that pages with this many links can confuse users with choices and may not distribute pagerank very well.
It then lists each link, including each HP site related link. IDK?
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  Mark Ewbieposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  +1.
  
  Is it too obvious?
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  mistyhorizon2003posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  +2
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  Will Apseposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  You have 61 hubs. How could your profile page function as a profile page with less than 61 links? Plus a few links to other people's profile pages, plus a few ads...
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  NateB11posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Yes, I would think a page needs at least as many links as Hubs/posts, plus at least a few more each for links to other relevant content, other Hubs/posts, ads, etc.
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  rebekahELLEposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  The message I quoted above is in regard to one of my informational hubs, not my profile page. It includes every single link leaving the page, including all ads and navigational links at the top and bottom of the page.
  This is the message relating to links on my profile page.
  Page has 111 total links. (107 internal links and 4 external links)
  There are too many links on this page (for most situations).
  There are more than 100 links on this page. This might be normal for well linked to major media/news sites and online retailers. - If you aren't famous and you don't have a lot of links to your pages this is probably too many links. You are likely confusing users with too many choices and may appear to search engines as spammy. If you have legitimate reason for so many links, you may want to organize your site better so that there aren't so many links.
  Yes, I understand that our profile page is like our home page, so it is going to have more links. If anyone can add any insight, I'm all ears. This also appears to be the standard response to a certain number of links on a page. I would guess that a bot doesn't differentiate between the type of site a page appears on.
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  Barbara Kayposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  When I joined Google Adsense, the rule was no more than 100 links per page. They may still have this rule. I hadn't even thought about our profile page having so many. Maybe it is time to divide some of this up into different accounts. It sounds like a lot of work, but I may do it if traffic doesn't improve.
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  rebekahELLEposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  As I understand it now, the general guideline is to keep the amount of links reasonable...
  Also there is a distinction between a single web page and a web site. A web site obviously can have more than 100 links. We fall into that obscure placement of having a subdomain on a huge web site.
  I would love to see some of the unneccessary links removed from our hub pages. The related searches do appear spammy and there are too many unrelated hubs listed below our hub content. Getting rid of links that don't add value to the page could help, including Amazon ads.
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IzzyMposted 11 years ago
The internet was built on links. Links make us all stronger. I quadrupled the traffic on one of my other subdomains last year by interlinking my hubs with contextual on-page links to my other related articles.

It didn't work on this account.

I got Google-slapped in August 2011, and have never recovered.
So, no major loss this time around for this account.

I honestly think Hubpages are doing good with the QAP, even though I don't always agree with the hubs they pass or fail.

But I hate the RS ads, they look spammy, they are in the reader's face because one of them floats, and they are frequently unrelated (as well is misspelt).

I do think Hubpages have made too many changes, too quickly.

Could the loss of traffic have been caused by the de-indexing of so many hubs (links), or could the hated RS ads have triggered a Google penalty?

As someone pointed out, not all subs were hit this time around. If it was the RS, wouldn't every subdomain see a traffic loss?

Most of my other (newer) subs are doing much the same as before. Some are down a little, others are up a little, but that could be seasonal.

I wish the management would bring one major change in at a time. That way, the results would be easier to see, instead we are playing guessing games again.
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  LeanManposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Hi Izzy, hope you are well..
  
  The "not every subdomain has seen a loss" is a red herring! The site has seen a massive drop in traffic over the last few months. Yes pages have been deindexed but on the whole these are non-performing pages therefore will have limited impact on our traffic. However "successful" authors have continued to add pages.
  On average the subdomains are losing traffic, even if some people are seeing increased traffic - maybe through the continual publishing of additional hubs which add traffic. The thing with averages is that some will be below the average and some will be above it!
  So half of us will be seeing less than the average drop in traffic and a small percentage are likely to be seeing no drop and even a rise. While some of us will be seeing a massive drop!
  My drop seems to mirror the average that the site is experiencing.
  
  The cause appears to be Panda, but what it is about the site that it does not like is anyone's guess. Related ads, too many links, Mark's aftershave? We can only guess at the moment!
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  Mark Ewbieposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Lol. Revisiting the stats graph above it looks like Squidoo is also seeing a similar ongoing drop - not much to choose between the sites.
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  rebekahELLEposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I think it is each of those things.. including Mark's aftershave. Maybe he should make a fresh new stick figure.
  I hope HP does something with the floating Related Searches.
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  janderson99posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  HP should delete the Related Search Ads for two weeks.
  Just watch the traffic surge!!!
  
  With 18 staff why do we have to wait 2 weeks to get an answer?
  HP have abandoned the forums.
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  Victoria Lynnposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Simone was all over the forums. I really miss Simone. :-(
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  paradigmsearchposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Speaking of which... http://www.gigaverse.com/
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  Victoria Lynnposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Yes! I signed up to request early access as soon as I heard she was leaving. Have you signed up? I emailed her recently to tell her I missed her. We talked briefly about Gigaverse. It sounds like they're still working on it. I definitely want to see what they have to offer. She talks like they can help us freelancers out. :-)
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  paradigmsearchposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I'll send her my pic.
  
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  Victoria Lynnposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  LOL!
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  Mark Ewbieposted 11 years agoin reply to this
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  janderson99posted 11 years agoin reply to this
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  Mark Ewbieposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Jesus!
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  janderson99posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I thought he rose! ▲ The other guy descended ▼
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  Mark Ewbieposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  It just scared me slightly...
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  janderson99posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Bubble Go Up and ............
  1 little, 2 little, 3 little bubbles
  4 little, 5 little, 6 little bubbles
  7 little, 8 little, 9 little bubbles
  10 little bubbles go pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop
  That scares me as well!
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  rebekahELLEposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Love it.
  
  I'm sure we all wish it was that simple.
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  HollieTposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I'd go with Mark's aftershave!
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  IzzyMposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I think the de-indexing of so many hubs could have a major impact on our traffic.
  Each of those pages carried a lot of links to other hubs, our own included. So the sudden loss of so many links would affect every subdomain on the domain.
  I'm thinking of the Google spiders suddenly hitting a lot of dead-ends, or worse, the drop-off of links that supported our subdomains.
  That was the power of the platform. The whole structure is held together and strengthened by links, just like the whole web, really.
  Break the internal structure and the the whole site is weakened.
  
  It could come back again, but only by rebuilding. By mass publications of good, quality hubs. Unfortunately, when traffic crashes like it is doing, most people stop publishing, or even worse, good hubs get removed and put elsewhere.
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  Susana Sposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Agree with the essence of this post.
  
  From memory I think HP has gone from having well over a million pages indexed (I think I read 1.8 million somewhere) to about 650,000 in the space of a few days.
  
  That's going to have a huge effect on the internal structure of the site (which as you say has traditionally been HP's biggest strength).
  
  All links should have been 301'd though so it may just take time for Google to recrawl everything.
  
  I'm sure the ins and outs of this particular issue are far more complex than this ^^^, but I see it in a very similar way to how there was an initial massive traffic drop when we first moved to subs. The structure of the site changed radically then and it took a while for things to settle down after that.
  
  On the issue of numbers of ads and related search ads - I really believe that if it was this causing traffic drops it would affect every page, since every page has the same layout and number of ads.
  
  Why would google penalise some pages (particularly older pages), for having too many ads and not newer pages? That doesn't make sense to me.
  
  That's not to say that personally I wouldn't rather the related search ads were removed though!
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  Will Apseposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  RS ads represent an idiot tax. The idiots who click on them fund the site.
  
  All hail the idiot!
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  janderson99posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  "A lemon squeezed too hard yeilds a bitter juice"
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  Susana Sposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Lol! Yep you would have to be an idiot to click on 1st the related search link and then an utter moron to click an ad afterwards.....but these people do exist. Can't decide if that's a good thing or not!
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  ngurecoposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  My instincts are telling me that de-indexing of so many hubs (links) may be doing more harm than good to this site.
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cornwall_UKposted 11 years ago
I keep chirping.... CTR has dropped significantly too.

It's not traffic per se, it's the CTR rate that's abysmally small. Abysmal. Uber cr4p to coin a phrase.

Traffic comes, people don't click .... they used to click; now they don't.

I blame that floaty thing and other gizmos that pay us nought.
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  Mark Ewbieposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  PN. Have you checked out Bubblews?
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  cornwall_UKposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Yes, I should do more there. Joined/did a few .... got some views .... seem to be getting 10x the CPM on there to here.
  
  Maybe I'll have a Bubble fortnight starting later today
  
  There's a hub you know ... that compared them http://earner.hubpages.com/hub/Bubblews-v-Hubpages
  
  It is a lot easier. I think I just felt lonely.
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  Mark Ewbieposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Ah OK... you are ahead of me. Totally different beasts. I would be so happy on HP if there was the traffic that I was hoping for. I like more permanent writing that you can revisit and improve over time.
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  cornwall_UKposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Me too - but for some subjects and on some days there's just not a lot more to say than a swift paragraph... a muse, a joke, some information .... and it's over.
  
  I do find that now writing Hubs is a major time/effort investment - gone are my 20 minutes to write/publish a good hub .... now it's a 3-4 hour worry .... and then the big top right advert doesn't even bother to turn up if it sees less than 100 people have visited it yet.
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  CMHypnoposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I think perhaps that hubbers churning out hubs in 20 minutes is part of the problems we are having with traffic at HP, not something to be missed? I've never understood how a writer can research, write, edit and source images for a decent length, quality hub in anything less than a couple of hours?.
  
  A good article is an investment in time and effort and needs to be to offer value to the readers
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  Barbara Kayposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I have a couple that are popular that I wrote in a short time, but they were about things I am an expert at. Otherwise it takes me 3-4 hours or more to write a hub. I have one that I spent most of a week on and it doesn't do well. It is just disgusting sometimes.
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  TIMETRAVELER2posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  CornwallUK: Bubblews is anything but easy. Yes, they pay better, but you have to be "on it" constantly every day to make anything. I find it very tense over there.
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wampyriiposted 11 years ago
My traffic doubled today - hurrah! I went from around 18 hits to around 40...which is about 700 hits less than when I got slapped around in 2011. I spent a month back then on reducing keyword density and other nonsense which made my hubs look and read worse in my opinion and regained no traffic. I think I leveled off around 60 - 70 per day. I haven't felt compelled to write anything here since then since that was less than 1 hit per hub per day for me. Oddly, in the last couple of months my traffic increased over 200 again, income was up - a lot comparatively speaking - and then *poof* - all gone again, worse than before. Not just here either, other places I write at are faring no better...although better than here.

I think the time for this kind of site is over and its all downhill from now. Google doesn't want you around, you don't buy ads from them, you're not Wikipedia or Amazon, or some other major corporation so don't expect to rank in their search engine unless by some miracle those guys or companies like them aren't talking about/selling something related to your chosen subject matter. The writing has been on the wall since they started talking about trustrank and authority sites - it's doublespeak for "big sites" preferably with lots of advertising bucks to burn - ebay, Amazon, etc. They seem to pick a flavor of the month site for writers and that might rank. Hubpages hasn't been it for some time. Squidoo was but it seems they're going the same way now...and panicking...and driving people away with dumb decisions. Man, it's all so familiar. Who's next? Meh, who cares.

Anyway, good luck to all, I hope something changes in the Google world but all these sites seem to be flailing around for answers and they're all coming up blank. The only stable ones are those who never had traffic in the first place.

Anyway, I've decided to back off from the whole online writing and webmaster lark and go back to school. I had a good twelve years of full time self-employment on the internet but having been hit hard and forced to rebuild by just about every single major update Google has done, going all the way back to the Florida Update which was the first time they wiped me out and made Christmas "interesting" in 2003 I'm done. I'm tired of having the rug yanked out from under me and it's time for something new whilst I'm still young enough to do it.

Oh and thanks Google, I'll probably never be able to look at a Panda or Penguin again and feel anything but a mixture of anger and remorse.
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  jansharesposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Hello there, wampyrii. I appreciate your reality check. I see you speak from years of experience, have been bitten a few times, and have lived through the ups and downs. I respect your views because you've been there. I still choose to remain optimistic about the future in all my green naivete. My traffic has doubled as well in the last day or so. Maybe it will last, maybe it won't. But I'm still hopeful. So hopeful, I even wrote a hub about it. Call me a Pollyanna but I still like it here. Maybe I'll be where you are in 10 years but for now, I want to enjoy the ride and see what else I can offer and what else I can gain. I wish you peace.
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  wampyriiposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Hello By all means continue doing what you love - that's what sustained my foray into online writing/marketing for at least 10 of those 12 years and brought in some pretty hefty paychecks during the good times as well. Motivation is key to this game, I'm just burned out on it and have decided to seize an opportunity for moving on to greener pastures. I never thought I'd be looking forward to a 9 to 5 job but I am lol
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Chris in VAposted 11 years ago
@TIMETRAVELER2 -- Bubblews is only about the money. Quality plays a minimal to non-existent role over there. You can post a few items, walk away and let the site do the rest.

Not worth much effort if you are not going to spend 6-8 hours a day on it.
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  TIMETRAVELER2posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Chris in VA: I disagree. I am already seeing results from readers who appreciate articles that are informative and well written. I have spent far more time on HP for far less money, but I do know that the site won't hold up if everybody views it as you do. I have already seen some of HPs best writers over there, and they are not producing junk. Time will tell!
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  Chris in VAposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I haven't seen those types of articles. Most of what I have come across has not had much substance. I will have to look again. Thanks.
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  Mark Ewbieposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I am producing junk but I am doing it honestly. No keyword research, no scraping out of Wiki - just good old fashioned words and a picture. Seem to me Bubblews is as good a place as any to while away some time and earn a dollar.
  
  On the other hand - every time I check my stats here, or anywhere really, I just think there is little point.
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  Chris in VAposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  They make it sooo much easier. An estimate of your earnings is always there as a motivating factor, but the reality for me is that I do not need to put the time and effort to write there as I do here. It's all about page views and clicks of any kind and you earn money.
  
  Not much joy for me as a writer. But you are right, it is as good a place as any to earn money.
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  Chris in VAposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Commenting while multi-tasking is never good. Ugh!
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  Mark Ewbieposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Oddfly enough - I consider myself a creative writer! I am doing the same thing on Bubblews as I do anywhere.
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  TIMETRAVELER2posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Chirs in VA: You can start by checking mine out: I write under sandnsun. I have noticed that people there who are serious readers and writers seek out the quality hubs and connect with each other. I have already found 5 or 6 well known HP writers over there. Check my comments on the more serious articles and you'll see what I'm talking about. Yes, there is a lot of junk there, but if you really look, you can find some good writing and people who want to make that site become something meaningful. However, I do think they will eventually face the same problems as HP simply because they allowed all of the junk. By the way, I found one of my articles on page 2 of Google yesterday and was stunned!
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  Chris in VAposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Will do. Thanks.
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  Marisa Wrightposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  My concern is that Bubblews will face the same problem as Today.com did. They were also generous with payments in their early days, which attracted large numbers of bloggers - and they were mostly good, too. Unfortunately Today.com soon realised they couldn't sustain the level of payouts and were at risk of folding, so they sold their domain name. The whole site - and everyone's blogs - disappeared overnight.
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  aa liteposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  My theory is that at some point they will drastically reduce the payout. Right now the CPM is something like $15, which is clearly unsustainable, especially for a site that mostly gets internal traffic.
  
  Eventually they will say that they will pay out whatever the pages earn (averaged across the site). When the payouts drop down drastically most people will abandon it. But the owners will still be left with a hall of a lot of content that they can earn from.
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  TIMETRAVELER2posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Marissa: I keep copies of everything I write, and since what I'm putting on B is stuff that was just sitting anyhow and I have no other place to post it, at least there it is getting read. I agree...they pay too much too fast and people are overloading the site...if they're smart they'll catch on. If not, hopefully they'll warn people to remove their work before they close up shop!
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  Marisa Wrightposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Today.com didn't warn anyone, and neither did a couple of other sites I used to write on. So best to assume they won't!
  
  There's certainly no harm in taking advantage of their generosity while it lasts!!
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adrianlawrenceposted 11 years ago
I don't think any of what we are seeing is unique to Hubpages, I use and watch a large number of content publishing sites and they are almost all seeing a drop in traffic which is most noticeable when you look back over the last 3-6 months, a loss of around 50% seems to be the norm.

What I think is happening is that Google is continually refining that it considers quality and each time Panda re-runs less and less of the hubs on hubpages meet the bill. If too great a % of content is considered to be lower quality then the whole site takes a hit.

As others have said, this is very unfair as high quality hubbers are hit at the same time as lower quality ones. All I can think off is to No-Index / no Follow all hubs with lower quality scores, so reducing the size of the indexed site by a significant % maybe 40-50%. Its drastic but it may lead to a recovery for the remaining members.
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  TIMETRAVELER2posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  adrianlawrence: I think you may be correct. The problem is that for Google quality is more than just something that is correctly written. They want authority, and that is very hard for the average writer to achieve. Researching something is not the same as having known and experienced it...and THAT is what makes the difference.
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  Marisa Wrightposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  You have to look at how Google judges authority. Like its appraisal of quality, it's not what you think. Understandable, when you consider that most (though not all) of the assessments are done by robots.
  
  As I understand it, the biggest factor in "authority" is just volume. A large blog with lots of posts on a single topic, even if the blogger isn't an expert, can be regarded as an authority site.
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  agilitymachposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I'm doing 300 percent better with the latest Panda. Is it because I'm a niche site, most of my articles are on one topic and Google has decided I'm an authority? I've been trying to figure out why I'm doing so well when everyone else isn't.
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  Barbara Kayposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  agilitymach, It might have to do with the hubs being newer too. I wonder if it wouldn't help some of us to rewrite the older hubs. Possibly it would be a waste of time though.
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  LeanManposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Newer is definitely having an impact on current results......
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  Greekgeekposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Define newer?
  
  My hubs that are holding steady are mostly from 2011.
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  LeanManposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Just an observation that I have made on some results on SERPs in last few weeks - I have seen copies of hubs outranking the originals for some keywords. A "fault" on googles part I am sure that will not last but it does show that they are promoting newer over older....
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  Susana Sposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  On the issue of newness... I came across this today...
  
  http://www.viperchill.com/google-storm/
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  agilitymachposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Yes, I think so too, Barbara.
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  TIMETRAVELER2posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Barbara: Since November I have rewritten and/or updated every single article and was doing OK...not great but OK...until this latest hit. Now ALL of them...old, new, top earners, low earners...whatever, suck. Yesterday views were up a bit...today they are lower than ever. This is beginning to literally make me sick.
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  livewithrichardposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  If you're not in it for the money then why would it make you sick. If you help one person with your information, shouldn't that be enough of a reward? The people who should be sick are the ones that are (or were) in it for the money.
  
  The great thing about writing for Hubpages is that you didn't have to be a niche writer, you could write in any category and still receive the authority of the site. The switch to subdomains changed that for everyone. If your subdomain is not tight or all related to a certain category then you are seeing a huge drop. I created a new account here less than 2 weeks ago (Richard-Bivins) and it only has 6 hubs, all featured, a hubber score in the 90's, and traffic that is nearly what I have with this older mixed account with over 100 hubs. The difference is that the new account caters to a certain niche while this account caters to everything.
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  Will Apseposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Nothing to do with niches. Just a virgin sub, un-pandered and ready to give you some mileage for a few months.
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  Marisa Wrightposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  That would certainly be one factor.
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  TIMETRAVELER2posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Marissa: How many articles are you talking about in terms of creating "authority"?
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  Marisa Wrightposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Who knows? I'm not quite sure any more, since my most successful "authority" site just got hit by the latest Panda and lost about 40% of its traffic
  
  However before that, it was doing well and it has a total of 170 posts and pages. Most of those are around the 300-400 word mark.
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  TIMETRAVELER2posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Marissa: I have 45 hubs on my main niche and it still struggles, even though it is the best of the lot I have published. I think there's more to this than just numbers.
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  Marisa Wrightposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  45 Hubs is not a lot. Besides, if you have other topics on your sub-domain, then you're not an authority by definition, because you're not writing solely about that topic.
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  TIMETRAVELER2posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Marisa: A long time back an SEO expert who writes here from time to time said just the opposite. Yes, it is better to have just one topic, but you can have as many as 20 if you continually write in those topics. His lowest number to really get going was 40...so 45 should meet that criteria. I hesitate to remove all of my other hubs because they represent 1/3 of my views and I really have no place else to put them right now. Besides, I like variety in my writing.
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DzyMsLizzyposted 11 years ago
Dear Google:

Please release the Pandas back into the wild forests where they belong! They don't understand technology, and are fouling up the works.
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  ketageposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  LOL , I agree 100%
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HollieTposted 11 years ago
Even when translated the copies return completely different keywords from the original article, in many cases. I very much doubt that the scraped articles will cause any of us any real problems. Still, I've filed DMCAs out of principle.
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adrianlawrenceposted 11 years ago
As others have commented Google collects data on pages before they get hit by Panda, my own experiments seem to suggest around 300 page views is some sort of threshold, then they have enough data to conclude if you hub is good quality.

If you don't get hardly any traffic then it seems to get flagged as bad by default after a certain time period. So it sort of comes down to:-

No traffic = must be shallow / poor quality
Traffic = but poor metrics = shallow = hit it with Panda
Traffic and Good metrics = leave alone, but keep re-calculating metric incase of a drop.

It really is a tough job creating something that fits the bill with longevity.
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  TIMETRAVELER2posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  adrianlawrence: I hate to sound stupid but what do you mean when you say "metrics". You lost me!
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adrianlawrenceposted 11 years ago
Metrics that I think are at work

* Time on page (high importance)
* Bounce Rate (medium importnance)
* Uniqueness of content (high importance)
* Reading level / Grammar / spelling (lower importance)
* Keyword density ( medium importance)

These are the factors that my own experiments seem to suggest are at work. So my own opinions based on experiments research and discussions with other webmasters
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  HollieTposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  The thing that puzzles me is, the sites where short, concise (and often dreadfully written content) is present- such as Wiki and Yahoo answers, often outranks quality content. I read, somewhere, long ago, that if this type of content answers the query and visitors do not back button and continue down the SERPS in search of answers, then this is not a bad bounce, and therefore, time on page is of much less importance than answering the searchers query.
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  TIMETRAVELER2posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  AdrianLawrence: Thank you. My Google bounce rate has always been abysmal, yet my HP metrics show long time on page for many of the same articles? Which bounce rate are you talking about? My main niche has mostly extremely unique content due to the fact that it is based on my 50 years of experience and know how. Even THAT niche is doing poorly right now. I just do not understand what is happening here and it is very frustrating.
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adrianlawrenceposted 11 years ago
Here is the issue that I think is causing us problems

If too many hubs on the whole hubpage site don't have good enough metrics, time on page etc (because for example they are not that interesting) then they are causing Panda to filter traffic for the better hubs also.

Previously the whole site was sufficiently high enough quality to mean that only the individual hubber accounts with poor metrics got hit.

If you have a very high hub, then your account is above the threshold and OK.
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  LeanManposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Adrian; if you believe that HP was of better quality before the panda hit you are very mistaken!
  The whole reason for the introduction of hub idling is so that HP can use google's judgement to de-index all the pages that google does not like. If google sends no visitors then a hub is made no index and drops out of sight as far as google is concerned. This has allowed HP to de-index many thousands of spam pages on accounts that are not monitored etc ridding us of many of these pages that google will drag us down for. However it also removes high quality pages that are just not highly searched which is a big problem for many authors.
  
  The QAP is also ensuring that ALL hubs are of a minimum quality before they are allowed to be published as well as going over all existing hubs, many believe to too high a standard judging by the complaints in the forums from people who have had hubs unpublished (and yes I have had hubs caught for "violations" none of us are perfect.)
  
  Many of the people who are suffering at the minute are the longer standing users who were still indexed by google under the Hubpages domain and are now having those hubs indexed under the subdomain. This loses them the "reputation" of the main daomain and they now have to stand as an independant sub-domain. However even that is guess work as no one knows for sure how much influence this is having with google. They use hundreds of metrics to assess your page and its position in the search engine and what you have mentioned is only a very small percentage of what is important.
  
  There are a host of things that are impacting us today from what I have seen and what has been announced and discussed;
  
  Indexing under sub-domains not HP
  Panda Update
  Physical changes within HP site structure
  Issues with google freshness
  Holidays
  Multiple sites copying HP
  Related links on HP pages
  
  All or none of these could be the reason for the changes that many of us are seeing as well as the site overall.
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  Marisa Wrightposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Good post.
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  TIMETRAVELER2posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  LeanMan: That's quite a list! Interestingly, some of these issues are fixable, while others will either just take time or will never be fixed. The Panda Updates and copying will always be there. The Indexing, internal structural changes and related links issues will take time to settle in or will at some point reach a crescendo which will force positive changes. Holidays will always be around and Google will always keep us guessing. Personally, I don't buy the Google "freshness" thing...if freshness was the issue everybody seems to currently think it is, then evergreen articles are dead. I don't think so. So, bad as you make this all sound, there is a middle ground that will come. Whether writers will have the patience to wait for it to come, who knows?
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  janderson99posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Read all about it. Get the latest news on the demise, and bullet holes
  http://pauledmondson.hubpages.com/hub/T … ng-Scraped
  
  "If you search Google for "what we don't know about Google Panda," you will see a site that ranks #1 above my site. Why did this happen? My theory is that Google decided my site was low quality. That the combination of my Hubs on search engines, bbq, and kids didn't fit what they saw as high quality. Over the last few Panda updates I lost a huge amount of my traffic from Google. When Google punishes a site with Panda or a penalty it suppresses the pages so much that a scraped copy of the page can outrank it."
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  NateB11posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Wow. I read that piece. Can't believe that happens, and it's interesting how it does happen.
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