Announcing Editor's Choice Hubs

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Robinposted 11 years ago
We want to continue to reward all of our Hubbers that are doing a fantastic job writing content that readers love. Today we are announcing a new designation for high-quality Hubs on HubPages: Editor's Choice. For more information, check out our blog post!
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  FlourishAnywayposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Robin,
  I just noticed that my hub on how to make peach custard ice cream was selected. (Doing a happy dance.) Thank you so much for the recognition. This is the first recipe hub I've tried, so it is especially motivating.
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  Cardisaposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Thanks Robin. I just saw one of my hubs with this feature and am so happy. Can't wait for the accolade!
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  ChristinSposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Robin, I know the program info said accolades are coming. Will they be displayed on the hub itself? or just in the accolades section? Will people know when they are viewing an Editor's choice hub? Thanks!
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  wildernessposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I certainly hope not. An easy target for thieves that learn to look for the accolade with software.
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  Jean Bakulaposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Thanks for the idea Glenn. I did add a blurb to advise people the piece would be better understood if they read the first one in the series, and printed the link. Then I went to the Groups function and changed the order, so two more are the Previous and Next at the bottom, and also on the next two, until you get to the last and seventh one.
  
  I'm not sure how I feel, because if they read it thoroughly, it's obvious there is no explanation for the origins and history of the hub subject. Mixed hub blessings, I guess!
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  AMAZING THINKERposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I have 3 published hubs. What are the chances for my hubs being selected for Editor's choice?
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  Glenn Stokposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I just read (and enjoyed) one of your hubs. In my opinion I think you have a very good chance. HP did say that it can take a lot of time since they have so many hubs to review for the Editor's Choice. So just keep up the good work, keep doing what you are doing, continue to make sure you have no pending style suggestions in the HubTool, and I bet your time will come. Welcome to HubPages.
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missoliveposted 11 years ago
I like this new endeavor, thank you Robin. I look forward to seeing how this pans out. Best of luck to the HP team and fellow hubbers.
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Robinposted 11 years ago
Thanks, Marisa. We hope that Hubbers appreciate it! You are all fantastic.
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  Vinaya Ghimireposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Robin,
  I loved this new concept. Seventy of my 139 hubs have Editor's Choice icon, which is about 50 percent. What do I have on the grading scale: A,B or C? When I was in school, 50 percent was C.
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  Robinposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I'd give you an A+ for sure, Vinaya! You are single-handedly inspiring me to travel to Tibet!
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Patty Inglish, MSposted 11 years ago
Thanks for the new opportunity! I look forward to what happens next.
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rebekahELLEposted 11 years ago
Nice, thanks! I just noticed one of mine has the banner. Very pleased to see that hub receive recognition.
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ChristinSposted 11 years ago
I just noticed this That is so awesome! I'm honored that I have some chosen.
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wildernessposted 11 years ago
I'm a little concerned about this, hopefully over nothing.

Searching for an editors choice right now gives a normal search result, with the hub in the subdomain, but clicking the link does NOT lead to the subdomain, but to HP. This will soon change, however, as google takes note and removes the subdomain from the URL. When that happens, and the (presumably) top hubs are removed from the subdomain what happens to the rest of the hubs still there? Do they wither and die without the "google juice" from the top hubs to support them?

Seems like it will pay to keep close watch on overall traffic as well as individual hubs. If the "choice" hubs grow but the rest shrink it could be a losing proposition and the opt out choice might be wise.
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  prairieprincessposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I would be concerned about this, as well. And do our views get counted from these hubs? How does this actually benefit the writer? I am not quite clear on this.
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  wildernessposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Those hubs will be promoted by HP on social sites and on HP, hopefully gaining some traffic from that. In addition, they are now a part of HP, with a higher PR than the subdomain and that could also result in more traffic.
  
  But like everything else in the post-panda world, it is a guess. A guess that may be highly successful (as the subdomains were) or that may flop. Watch the traffic and watch what HP in general is doing as well as what other hubbers report.
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  Writer Foxposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  The Hubs with changed URLs do NOT get an added boost in PageRank. They still feed from the same Topic pages and the same Subdomain Profile. They don't get any extra link juice on the HP website. As for social platforms, Facebook links are NoFollow. In fact, every Hub with the 301 redirect is going to loose some PageRank in the switch.
  
  Hubbers with changed URLs who say their views are up are being prematurely optimistic that this is from the change. It's too soon for Googlebot to have found all those changes. It takes time for Google to locate the 301, store it in its index and analyze the data. It's not going to happen quickly.
  
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9hUnuf9sWg
  
  Google probably has noted a few of them. Global traffic to HubPages yesterday was the lowest recorded all year. It hasn't been this low since the summer of 2009.
  
  Since I opted out of the program, I truly do not understand the enthusiasm for this URL change. Is it for the little accolade? That seems to me to be rather like a staff afterthought to explain its true intentions, since it hasn't even been designed yet. And wasn't it interesting that Hub URLs were changed before most Hubbers were aware that they had to opt-out to prevent that from happening to their work?
  
  I suspect that the intention is to eventually de-index (Un-Feature) Hubs left on Subdomain URLs. And if that happens, the time will be ripe for a new revenue-sharing content site to emerge in Cybersphere – a site that gets Google-quality right from inception, honors its Terms of Agreement to pay authors for ALL AdSense ads shown on their articles even if it takes a little more paper/computer work to keep its word as in the case with 'Related Search' AdSense ads, and could launch with all those de-indexed Hubs. (Just registered a URL.)
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  Mark Ewbieposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I was thinking this too.
  
  Selecting the editor's choice and effectively dumping the rest. Not a bad idea - and no other options - if the ads and links are not going to be scaled down.
  
  All my stuff will be dumped - hey, OK. This is not the right place for me anyway. Yeah, I have some vaguely useful things but whatever.
  
  As for the future I don't see it. Google hates content farms. How can even a specially selected one succeed? I am not aware of ANY that are doing OK.
  
  I don't see how you can try to create a Wiki quality experience for readers and then slam loads of ads and links on it. And still get Google interest.
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  Will Apseposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Google doesn't hate content farms. Demand media does very well.
  
  What Google hates is amateurish content in its search results. Poor quality user generated content can be entertaining on YouTube. It doesn't matter how grainy the video is if you capture a cat falling off a skyscraper.
  
  On the other hand, articles with poor spelling and grammar and little or no content that megasite SEO can push high in the SERP's threaten Google's business model and will bring the wrath.
  
  You don't want Google bringing the wrath.
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  Mark Ewbieposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I guess we will know the answer in about six months.,
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  Will Apseposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Yeah, sounds about right. If the main domain could deliver high traffic over the longer term, it would probably reclaim my loyalty.
  
  I am more interested in the next week right now, though. I have nothing on the main domain yet.
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  habeeposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  You think a cat falling off a skyscraper is entertaining?? That's disturbing.
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  Will Apseposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  It is always disturbing when you encounter someone who has no sense of irony.
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  Writer Foxposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  It's interesting that just two years ago HP management started the Subdomains and claimed that testing showed the Subdomains increased traffic for good writers:
  http://hubpages.com/forum/topic/78912
  
  Since selecting the content switched to the main URL is not based on traffic sent from Google, it contains a mixed-bag of what Google defines as quality.
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  Mark Ewbieposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I'm glad you are on the case.
  
  Yeah I wondered about subdomains too. They were the new thing two years ago. Worked until Google caught up. Now the mixed content goes back on the main domain.
  
  What happens to the subs I wonder? I would be happy if they unlinked me and let me drown, or swim. At least I could also move away from what I consider to be garbage.
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  Robinposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I think you are wise to watch closely; you know that we are as well! We hope this is going to be a good thing for our authors and our community. Like you said, if you see that it's not good for you, you can always opt out. Thanks, Dan.
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aa liteposted 11 years ago
This will hopefully help with traffic to the chosen hubs, they will benefit from higher PR of the main domain, and be isolated from anything that is problematic. Although in the short term there could be some chaos.

One question. Will the 'related hubs' underneath the hub be other Editor's Choices. It seems to me that this is necessary to ensure that the hubs are truly isolated from hubs that Google deems to be 'low quality'.

Unless that is it decides that some of the Editor's Choices are "low quality' (I am rather doubtful about Google's definition of what "low quality" is these days).
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  wildernessposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Linkwise, you can't keep them separate. Not really. Every one of my hubs is linked to several others, usually a half dozen. Plus the grouping function at the bottom and I occasionally link to other's hubs as well. Any, none or all of those could be editor's choices, but "all" is very unlikely. Impossible in my case, unless HP has been fiddling with my internal links.
  
  With all that, those related hubs are only a portion and probably not worth worrying about.
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  aa liteposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Yep, but the difference is that you have control over which hubs you link to, and even with groups you could change. I mean I don't think I write stuff that Google would actively penalise, but who knows?
  
  Mind you, there are topics pages etc. so I guess we can't really sever the links.
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  wildernessposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  You may not think you write stuff Google penalizes, but I know I do. When traffic drops 60% in just a couple of days, I've been penalized, whether I think I deserve it or not. Something is there that Google doesn't like. Or at least doesn't like today - tomorrow will be different.
  
  You're right about the topics pages and all the other places hubs are linked from. They cannot take all those out without destroying the architecture completely.
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  Jean Bakulaposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I was checking my stats and noticed that one of my hubs from 2011 was chosen as an Editor's Choice! I wasn't sure what that meant, so I researched, and it appears to be something new? Thank you for recognizing me, that was very kind. That piece was part of a series that had me tearing my hair out, so I'm wondering what was different about it than the other 6 in the series. But I thank you all the same (and my hair has grown back)!
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  Robinposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Congratulations, Jean! We may not have looked at your other Hubs yet; it's going to take us time to get through the queue of all the marvelous Hubs on HP!
  
  FourishAnyway, Robbie, Cardisa, and Sugahware. Congrats to you, too! Well done.
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Writer Foxposted 11 years ago
Thank you for providing the option to opt-out. Won't moving Hubs from the subdomain cause indexing problems that writers here have complained about?
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Sugahwareposted 11 years ago
Love this idea, so glad that one of mine was chosen!
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Victoria Lynnposted 11 years ago
What is the Editor's Choice icon? I either don't have any or don't know what I'm looking for. :-)
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  Victoria Lynnposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Nearly all my hubs are featured, but maybe none are stellar by the strict guidelines.
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  aa liteposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I don't think they have "checked" your hubs yet. Since EC's are handpicked it will apparently take a few weeks before they are chosen.
  
  Perhaps they are doing it alphabetically?
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  Victoria Lynnposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  People with last names later in the alphabet than mine have already been chosen. Oh, well. We'll see how it all play out, huh? :-)
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Robbie C Wilsonposted 11 years ago
I have two hubs that have achieved Editor's Choice, how exciting. I look forward to seeing what this does to my traffic over time. Hopefully, this gives mine a nice boost!
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Will Apseposted 11 years ago
I hope you don't get too bogged down in quality.

High-earning potential should never be sniffed at...
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  Robinposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  It's true, spammy topics are less likely to be selected. When it comes to product reviews, we are doing our best to choose Hubs that are useful and demonstrate that the author has more experience with the product than simply piecing together information from multiple sites. An otherwise great Hub might not be selected if it has products that are arbitrarily added in the hopes of earning additional revenue or if there are more products than what is necessary. For example, if you are writing a Hub about a specific product, you only need a single product listing. Large blocks of products should be avoided. We created the style tips so that we can give you small hints on ways that you can improve your Hubs so that they are more likely to be chosen as Editor's Choice.
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  Will Apseposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Product comparison pages are certainly difficult to pull off but you know you have got it right if the user metrics are good. If visitors spend a lot of time on the page and buy heavily through the affiliate ads, you have probably hit the target.
  
  I suppose I am saying, it is worth finding a way of identifying these kinds of page, for the sake of all concerned.
  
  Google does not hate these pages when they are well done and add value to search.
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  Robinposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Thanks for the comments, Will, and I agree! There definitely are product review Hubs that can be incredibly useful to the reader and we are looking for those Hubs. We are just being very selective with these types of Hubs as they can stray from being useful very easily.
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  Jean Bakulaposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Congrats everyone on your Editor's Choice hubs! It's fun to have something new to get enthusiasm going!
  
  I know it seems that the stats and scores are not updated as much, but isn't there less staff working now too? Plus it is summer and people deserve vacations. Sometimes it just seems long because we get used to checking so much.
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  Will Apseposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Thx for that. It is reassuring.
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wildernessposted 11 years ago
On a slightly different subject, I notice the hub stats are stuck again; something becoming very common on weekends.

As this is the first few days when Google will crawl and re-index the "Editor's choice" hubs, it could be important to watch the traffic on those hubs as well as others. Would HP please make an extra effort to keep those stats working this weekend? Normally it is of little importance, but this weekend could be different...
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  Writer Foxposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Earnings haven't been updated for August 8th
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  Just Ask Susanposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  That was only yesterday. It would be nice to see the stats updated every couple of hours though.
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  wildernessposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Earnings I'm not particularly interested in (although I DO like to see them). It's the traffic changes over the next few days as Google crawls these new changes that concerns me.
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  Just Ask Susanposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  +
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pstraubie48posted 11 years ago
Thank you so much for selecting my hub ....Depression the silent killer...I am honored to be selected as the writers on HubPages are phenomenal.
I feel like the little kid who "done good' in class!!! ps
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Nell Roseposted 11 years ago
Silly question, but bare with me as I have been off here for a couple of days sick, how do we know which ones are selected? Thanks.
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  wildernessposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  On your stats page, in the column with the hub name will be a very obvious flag if any are selected yet. No mistaking it.
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  Nell Roseposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Thanks Wilderness!
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  wildernessposted 11 years agoin reply to this
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  mary615posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Don't we have to set it up in our profile if we want the banner to show? Maybe I read that wrong.
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  wildernessposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  No. You can set it up in your profile so that HP will not give the award to any of your hubs, though - to opt out of the Editor's Choice program entirely. If you do that, of course, you will not see any banners because there will be no Editor's Choice hubs.
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  mary615posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I'm not showing any banners. Maybe I mistakenly opted out. Will go back to profile and check. Thanks, wilderness.
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  mary615posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  On the "My Hubs are eligible for Editor's Choice" I checked Yes. Surely, I would have a couple of banners!
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  wildernessposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Not necessarily - it will take weeks for HP to go through all the hubs, picking those they want. This cannot reasonably be done by 'bots (or so it would seem) and will thus take quite some time.
  
  There are probably requirements, maybe a particular hub score, maybe traffic, etc. but it will still take quite a while to look at all the million hubs published here. Patience, Mary - I'm sure your turn will come.
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  Robinposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  As Wilderness said, it's going to take us time to get through the potential Hubs. In the meantime, you can always go through your Hubs (I would order them by HubScore and start at the top score) and make sure they are great.
  
  One thing that we look for when assessing a Hub is if there are Style Tips. Use the Style Tips as a guide in improving your Hub. Many really good Hubs have not been selected because there are blocks of products, excessive links, sign-up for HubPages links, affiliate links, etc. If you edit your Hub and see a Style Tip (and you want your Hub selected Editor's Choice), I recommend updating it.
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  Will Apseposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  The style tips give this warning 'Uh-oh! It looks like you have a large number of Amazon or eBay products grouped together' even if there is only one Amazon ad on a 2 thousand word page.
  
  How can these tips be a useful guide?
  
  You could look at my smartphones of 2012 hub, if you want an example.
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  wildernessposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I found the same thing; reduce each capsule to 2 products or less and the warning goes away. Apparently, anything over 2 products is considered a "block" of products and is not acceptable.
  
  I also found a few hubs with capsules not right next to discussion of a product; those hubs also had the warning. Sometimes it isn't convenient to make capsules immediately adjacent and that appears to be a no-no.
  
  Amusingly, two side by side Amazon/eBay capsules, both with 2 products each, is NOT a block, but one capsule with 3 products IS.
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  Will Apseposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  As far as I can tell all of my hubs with Amazon capsules generate a warning, including the one mentioned which had only one ad in a very long page.
  
  I have my doubts about HP's ability to identify pages with affiliate ads that genuinely work for readers. I suppose, time will tell, lol.
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  wildernessposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I don't think they can, either. I suspect that this goes way back to the first Panda when they decided that excessive numbers of Amazon ads was being penalized. My most successful sales hubs have 8-10 products per capsule and show as many as 30 different products.
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  Robinposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I didn't see a Style Tip when I looked at this Hub. However, if you have a Hub that has a products in a hidden capsule, we will still show you the tip. The tips are really meant to be helpful, and of course, you don't have to follow them. Reducing the number of products is usually a good thing, but if the product is useful to your reader, then you should include it. Perhaps you can ask yourself, "Would I include this product even if I didn't earn from it?" If the answer is yes, then include it!
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  Will Apseposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I fixed the false Style Tip warning on that page and sixty or seventy other pages over the weekend.
  
  It was a problem with older Amazon capsules, as I have explained elsewhere (at length, lol).
  
  Anyway, it seems that almost all of my hubs have failed to get EC status (I got one awarded that accolade), despite getting rid of the false positives. Could you give me some clues as to why the vast majority have failed?
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  pauldeedsposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Having one or more style tips does not systematically prevent your Hub from being evaluated for Editor's Choice status. They just highlight *some* of the (easy to detect with software) issues that an Editor might consider.
  
  The most likely answer to your question is that we simply haven't evaluated very many of your Hubs yet. We are plowing through them as quickly as we can, but it's a labor intensive and time consuming process. It will be several months, at least, before we reach a relatively stable pool of Editor's Choice Hubs. Have patience.
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writingloverposted 11 years ago
Hi, Nell! All you have to do is check your stats and you should see a big banner by the side of one of your hubs (if not more than one) that says Editor's Choice. I hope you're feeling better!
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Nitin Pillaiposted 11 years ago
Thanks Robin. I am very glad to see that worthy hubs receive such recognition.
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aa liteposted 11 years ago
I don't think Google has caught up with the changes to my EC hub yet. When I search for it in Google it still shows up as on my subdomain. When I click on the link though, it goes to hubpages.com. I guess all this takes time, but I suspect I shouldn't expect to see any effect of the change until google returns the right address.
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  wildernessposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Mine are beginning to show up in a search as being in HP now. The few I looked at may or may not be getting more traffic; if they are it isn't a great deal. No red arrow, either, but they were all hubs that see fair sized swings over the weekend (both up and down).
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  ChristinSposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I think it may make a difference my overall traffic is up quite a bit today and much, but not all of it is on my Editor's Choice hubs. I haven't done a search yet, I will, but so far, it would appear something is causing my traffic to jump by over a third since yesterday. Time will tell I guess.
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Writer Foxposted 11 years ago
Global traffic site-wide went down 10% on August 9, day one of the revolving URL experiment.
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  rebekahELLEposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Overall site-wide traffic drops towards/on the weekend. Probably too soon to make a correlation.
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  Writer Foxposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  August 9th was a Friday, a weekday.
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  missoliveposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Writer Fox, couldn't it it just be the normal weekend dip? I think it is going to take a while before we can really assess the success (hopefully not failure) of the Editor's Choice endeavor.
  
  FYI, my EC hubs are starting to show up under HP as well as my sub domain. Will wait and see.
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  Writer Foxposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Time will tell. (I opted out of the program.) On the weekends, my traffic always goes up on my 'Quotes about Divorce' and 'Killing Rats' Hubs. I always hope that the same people aren't looking at both of those articles!
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  LCDWriterposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I love it! Very "Rose For Emily."
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  missoliveposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  LOL that is kind of creepy
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  Writer Foxposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I've thought about inter-linking the Hubs. (Just kidding.)
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  Marcy Goodfleischposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  LOL! Based on my personal experience, I'm guessing there's some overlap . . .
  
  (Thanks for the great laugh!)
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  ologsinquitoposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Writer Fox, are you saying you now think moving hubs and URLs is the cause of this latest dip? That was my suspicion as well. It's all so confusing.
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  Writer Foxposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  The effects of the changed URLs won't be known for some time. Watch the video in the link I posted. Any massive, rapid change to a website has its effects. In fact, Google has stated many times that to make massive changes to a site for purposes of search engine optimization flags a site for possible penalties.
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  ologsinquitoposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Writer Fox,
  
  There have been a lot of links posted. When did you post this?
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  Writer Foxposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Here's the link and part of what I said above:
  
  Hubbers with changed URLs who say their views are up are being prematurely optimistic that this is from the change. It's too soon for Googlebot to have found all those changes. It takes time for Google to locate the 301, store it in its index and analyze the data. It's not going to happen quickly.
  
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9hUnuf9sWg
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  ologsinquitoposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Very informative video. Thanks Writer Fox.
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  Writer Foxposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  To answer the rest of your question: The cause of the latest dip in traffic was due to the new Panda algorithm update in July:
  http://hubpages.com/forum/topic/115452
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LCDWriterposted 11 years ago
Yes, when so many were complaining about traffic being down, mine was way up and now, of course, it is way down. I have opted out of the Editor's Choice for now (not that any of mine would be picked anyway) but I can only imagine any big change like this would cause a certain amount of havoc site-wide since it is so different from what HP seemed to be trying to do earlier with subdomains. Plus it probably makes the google machine a bit crazy.

I'll just wait and see. I realize that it is always a roller coaster game anyway.
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  ologsinquitoposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  LCD Writer,
  
  You are I are in the same boat. My traffic had continued to rise, and, right now, it's way down. Unfortunately, it appears as if HP listened to a lot of complaints about falling traffic. Those whose traffic wasn't falling weren't going to jump in and say "mine's great" for fear of making others feel badly. Perhaps there was an overreaction, a decision to move a lot of hubs around, and now we're seeing some fallout. I hope things settle down quickly.
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Bill Yovinoposted 11 years ago
What an extraordinarily bad idea this is. My best Hub has been selected and has now completely tanked. It's a technical Hub about moving iTunes and most of my views come from Apple forums. Now that the Hub has been removed from my sub-domain, all of the links to it are now broken.

What a disaster. Did you think this through at all?

If I opt-out, how long before the Hub is moved back to my subdomain?
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  Glenn Stokposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Bill, Can you provide an example of a broken link?
  
  I had checked 301 redirects on some other's hubs that had been selected as Editors Choice. I had confirmed that HubPages properly set a 301 redirect so both the old (subdomain) and the new (hubpges.com) URL to work. The 301 also instructs search engines to update their indexing. 301 also carries link-juice so it is strange to have lost ranking causing your hub to tank.
  
  I'm curious about this since we are all watching to see how well, and if, the Editors Choice process works.
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  wildernessposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Ditto here; I've checked a few of mine and they all work as well. I'm not sure that the links will be picked up by Google, though, and we may loose any SEO from them...
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  Writer Foxposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Many webmasters cancel links which are redirected to protect their visitors from being sent to spam links.
  
  As for link juice from Google, some PageRank will dissipate in a 301 redirect. Google also states that a 301 should never be used unless it is permanent. There should be no 'temporary' 301 like the '60 days' HubPages is doing for this new test. HP used the wrong code.
  
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Filv4pP-1nw
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1lVPrYoBkA
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  Jean Bakulaposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Thanks for trying to figure this out, Glenn and Wilderness. I got an Editor's choice, but it was one piece of a 7 part series, and not even the first one, which explained the rationale for the others. That would have been a better choice. So once again, I'm not sure how much thought went into this.
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  Glenn Stokposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Congratulations, Jean, on the Editor's Choice of your hub. HP said they allow editing EC hubs. So a solution would be to add a blurb at the top of it indicating the other six in the series. Or at least a link to the first in the series.
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  Glenn Stokposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Bill,
  
  I found your Editors Choice hub you wrote about iTunes and checked the 301 redirect. It's working properly. No broken link.
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  rebekahELLEposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Perhaps Bill is referring to external links coming into his EC hub?
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  Glenn Stokposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Both URL's work. Old and new. I checked. The subdomain URL simply is 301 redirected to the new URL. That makes all existing links work. And "301 redirects" instruct search engines about the new location.
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  Bill Yovinoposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  That's a horse of a different color. As the late Gilda Radner (as Emily Litella) used to say "Nevermind".
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  findwholenessposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I had the same thing happen. A couple days after I got EC, that hub lost about 1,000 views per day. I opted out after a few more days, but traffic is still horrible. I'm pretty pissed off about this. Thanks a lot, HubPages. Does opting out eventually make the hub go back to normal??
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  95
  PegCole17posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Not sure if the traffic comes back but if you want to immediately reverse a hub that has been selected as an Editor's Choice then unpublish it briefly and then republish. The sub-domain comes back and the EC banner goes away.
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Sue Adamsposted 11 years ago
Where can we find a list of Editor's Choice Hubs?
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  wildernessposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Your own are on your stats page. Hopefully you will never be able to find a site-wide list. Easy, easy targeting for thieves.
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delleaposted 11 years ago
That's true wilderness, in some of my hubs I've had to use a few different ad capsules to recommend various products that I use myself and have used for clients in my business. For example one hub I wrote recommended battery backups and surge protectors in one text capsule, and in another recommended good antivirus... and at the end of most of my hubs I prefer to recommend a couple of books on the specific subject to help people out even further... so some hubs require my using 3 or 4 ad capsules to deliver a complete helpful solution for readers.
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  Will Apseposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I noticed the style tips thing a while ago but thought it was probably doing more good overall than harm. Big blocks of ads are bad for a page, after all, and writers can easily ignore false positives.
  
  On the other hand, I can't imagine HP staff are going to read every page on the site. They must have some kind of filtering software. If the style tips algo is part of the filter then a lot of perfectly good pages will never be assessed. Not good for the site or individual writers.
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  Blake Flanneryposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  So far, it looks like a lot of the apprentice program hubs and recent hubs created by apprentice program people are being chosen. I wonder if HP staff started there because there were some general guidelines those people followed during the program.
  
  I also noticed on some people's accounts who are not apprentices, they may have one selected that also was chosen as the hub of the day.
  
  I am wondering if there is some sort of order/preference that the HP staff are using, especially when there are multiple hubs with the same keywords and high quality. For example, if I wrote "How to fly fish: Catching Trout" and another person wrote "How to fly fish: Trout Fishing" and both hubs were of "high quality," how would the choice be made?
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  aa liteposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Ive noticed that too. None of my non-AP hubs have been selected, and some of them are better than my AP hubs.
  
  I think it is because all the AP hubs have already been read by HP staff (who I presume are also the"editors"). The same goes for HoTD hubs. Since picking the EC hubs involves humans actually eyeballing the article, and these have already been checked, that makes sense, even if it seems unfair. (I obviously benefit from this so you are free to sling mud at me. Don't worry I can take it!)
  
  I sincerely hope that HP aren't going to stop there, and they are actually reading hubs of people who were never in the program, who don't post on forums, but who write great stuff.
  
  It seems like an overwhelming task. Only featured hubs will be checked, but that still leaves several hundred thousands. I suspect the QAP score is also used to limit the number that are being checked.
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  wildernessposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I think that's a good guess, but as far as being favored - the apprentice alumni are being used as a test group, whether intentional or not. Every apprentice I've talked to has a bunch of editor's choice hubs and no one else seems to have more than a few (habee is an exception, but she has 1,000 hubs!).
  
  So yes, the apprentices may be getting another benefit. Or they may end up with a loss for their trouble of attending "school". At this point it's a guess.
  
  It does make sense, though, given that those hubs have all been gone over already. I would imagine, given that HP has changed hub score to something more realistic, that that probably plays a part as well. Nothing under a score of 80, maybe, or some other number. So they will probably never read every hub, letting software do much of the work.
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  ChristinSposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I think yes there's some truth in it. Most, but not all, of my apprenticeship hubs and every HOTD I've had were chosen, but also some I wrote before the apprenticeship. With the AP/HOTD hubs I suspect it is as you said, because they've been reviewed already.
  
  My guess - and this is merely speculation - there is an algorithm in place that is selecting hubs that meet certain criteria and then those hubs are being chosen for review. How possible would it be for a small staff to read every single hub that's been written?
  
  Ones that I had not featured for example were ones with only one image, shorter text and a couple of eBay capsules. Although featured, they were not "stellar" hubs and were skipped over, so this month I am all about fixing up those older hubs to see if I can get more EC's because my traffic is soaring again to all my hubs - not just the EC. It's really too early to tell though what the long-term effect will be. I'm just going to keep an open mind and wait and see attitude.
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  Will Apseposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  So, successful hubs allow HP to establish some 'average characteristics' that form the norm for 'quality' on HP and become the guidelines for apprentices.
  
  Apprentices apply the guidelines and get EC status.
  
  But the original, successful pages are not quite meeting the average characteristics themselves (these pages, after all, were written by individuals) and do not get EC status.
  
  Is this a rational anxiety?
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  aa liteposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I am individuals (usually several fighting it out inside my head) and I wrote my EC AP hubs. Not sure what your point is?
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  ChristinSposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Some of my original hubs prior to the AP were also selected, so I think that is not a reason to fear not having them picked. If anything, I would probably go by the "style tips" or whatever they are calling it. When you go into your hub to edit it, there are style tips up top. Mine mostly say "uhoh you have to many eBay capsules" These were my older hubs where I would put 3 instead of the now max 2. I think fixing those and then including most of the stuff in the little checkboxes up top for quality will get you an EC. This is new, so I am speculating largely here, but that's my two cents on it anyway.
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suziecat7posted 11 years ago
I've got none selected out of over 100.
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  ChristinSposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  hope you don't mind I checked out a couple I think part of it may be with not properly attributing photographs. In the hub on selling antiques you have a video right on the very top, I would probably move that down and have text at the top (for crawling purposes/search engines) but your layouts are nice and the writing is awesome. I think with some photo attributions and moving the video down things like that, would be great. Your old churches one also, had many of the church names listed, but not linked to the original photo source. Hope that helps. You're a good writer! Also, they are still going through them so don't worry just yet.
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  aa liteposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I suspect most people haven't got any yet. It will take a while for the editors to choose them. So I wouldn't worry for a couple of weeks.
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Will Apseposted 11 years ago
I just realised that the style tips issue relates to older amazon capsules that were configured to display 3 ads as default. Even if you only entered details of one product you need to dial back the 'maximum number of ads' setting to one or two to get rid of the warning.

I have just spent an hour going through hubs with a style tip warning. I also reported it in the tech section. Maybe the problem will get fixed at source.
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  Jean Bakulaposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  If they think I'm changing every damn hub on here AGAIN, because I have 3 or 4 Amazon products that are relevant, they are crazy. I've had it.
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  mary615posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I spent about 3 hours editing. My style warnings were for having too many Amazon and eBay products. I knocked them down to two each. When HP says to jump, I just say "how high"!
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  Rochelle Frankposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  How do you find style tip warnings? do you have to open each hub?
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  Will Apseposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Open them to edit. A blue box appears top right if there is a problem.
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  Rochelle Frankposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Thanx!
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  Blake Flanneryposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I was having the same issue. Thanks for figuring out the mystery that I couldn't figure out. You are right about changing the capsule setting to display only one item.
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  Will Apseposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  You're welcome. Now I just have to wonder what HP will expect in the way of attribution of publicity photos from manufacturers, which I have used extensively (along with a great many other people). Sigh.
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  mary615posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  The more I read about this subject, the more confused I become. I'm thinking now of opting out: one less thing to have to worry about.
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theraggededgeposted 11 years ago
Traffic has doubled! Yay! I now feel inspired to write more Hubs after my traffic plummeted last Sept/Oct and never recovered.

Thanks HP.
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janderson99posted 11 years ago
Looks like the search 'site:hubpages(dot)com/hub/' lists all the little lovelies with an occasional ring-in.
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STAFF
Paul Edmondsonposted 11 years ago
@Will I don't think we've gotten to your hubs yet, but I took a look and can give some pointers for folks that make lists and product reviews so they have best opportunity to be selected as they come up in queues.

Here are a few things we will use to decide on ECs for Hubs with affiliate links.

- Is the author demonstrating hands on knowledge or did they paraphrase from a few sources (commonly amazon when it comes to products).

- Are the placement of products well integrated or did they over do product placement.

- Is the hub designed to inform vs sell.

We are trying to avoid pages like MC describes here (starts at about 1.50 on affiliates). https://support.google.com/webmasters/a … 19?ctx=MAC
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Will Apseposted 11 years ago
Thanks for your replies.

Can I just make a plea for pages that have demonstrated their value for readers and search engines?

In other words, pages that have had tens of thousands of views and get read times of four, five, six minutes...

Even if they don't fit the style you are looking for, they are an asset.
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  PaulGoodman67posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  One thing that I think we can be sure of is that Google will never interpret any Amazon.com page to be a "doorway" or "thin content", even if it has multiple commercial links, tells you virtually nothing about a product and there are no intelligent or genuine comments. Amazon pages will always feature near, or at the top of the Google search results whatever, it seems. The internet is increasingly dominated by a handful of superpowers and the space for the little guy is being squeezed and squeezed. The virtual world seemed like a refreshing alternative to the corporate one in the early days of the internet, now the big corporations are reasserting their power, it seems.
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  aa liteposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  That is true enough. But the state of the internet hasn't just been harmed by big corporations. There were plenty of "little guys" who published pages upon pages of utter drivel, scraped and spun spam, in the hopes of making a quick buck, and they still do.
  
  If the "little guys" weren't so active doing that, on HubPages as well as many other sites, there probably wouldn't have been a Panda update, and we'd all be doing a lot better.
  
  Money corrupts, but then again if there wasn't a chance of earning money, this site wouldn't exist, and the vast majority of us wouldn't be publishing on the internet.
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Mark Ewbieposted 11 years ago
What happens to Google Authorship for main domain pages?
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  Glenn Stokposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  No problem Mark. The authorship markup is still in the HTML of the EC hub. Try the Rich Snippets Test on any of the Editor's Choice hubs from Hubbers who have authorship, and you'll see it passes.
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writingloverposted 11 years ago
There's spam that actually makes sense! Never thought I would see that... *rolls eyes*
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  TIMETRAVELER2posted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Am I the only person here who sees that what the HP team is doing is the exact opposite of what they did when they moved everybody's work over to sub domain status? Instead of having to go through hundreds of thousands of articles to weed out the bad ones, they are moving those few that are the best of the best BACK to the HP URL.. This way they can just ignore the baddies and let the rest of the articles die out. It is much easier for them to do this, and the only losers are the writers. I agree with Writer Fox and a few others that this is going to create havoc on this site and Google is NOT going to be happy. I refuse to be a part of it. I've opted out, and do not plan to opt in anytime soon.
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  Mark Ewbieposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  You are not the only one. Ever changing. QAP, Mturk, Quality - we have been through the wringer a lot. But this kind of changes the whole game.
  
  No guarantee it will work even on the main dom. Google didn't like it before. Is mixed content on a writing site, even good quality, going to be enough?
  
  And meanwhile...
  
  What exactly is the plan from now on for subdomains I wonder?
  
  I opted out too. Don't really want to mess around any more. Wish I could opt out of floating ads and the links.
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  Victoria Lynnposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  I just don't know what to do any more. Sigh.
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janderson99posted 11 years ago
Time will tell. But I don't think that the 'Chosen Ones' being tied back to the arm strings of mum will do anything more than claw back a little traffic that was lost when Google made the kids leave home and separate from mum. The 'Chosen Ones' are essentially those favored previously on the topic pages etc., so that won't change things. Maybe Mum will get back some of her Mojo and this will give a boost to the subdomains. The only major changes to traffic for Mum and the Kids would occur if HP deindexed all the Subs. The big problem in all of this is the way it has disrupted the indexing of pages of HP - first in one way and then the reverse. The bot is unlikely to like this and any recovery may be delayed or curtailed. The real concern is the decline of CPM. Have you looked lately – Tragic!
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rebekahELLEposted 11 years ago
Not according to the results I've recently checked.
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Will Apseposted 11 years ago
Hopefully, HP will leave very high traffic pages out of the EC hubs experiment going forward. There are pages that obviously will not benefit from the URL change.
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  Glenn Stokposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  No Will. My most active hub was selected for EC. It was getting almost 300 views a day. Traffic now dropped to half. But I can't say the drop was due to being EC. Traffic with that same hub was like a roller coster ever since Panda started.
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  Will Apseposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  Well you can never be sure but as I said in another thread, if a page is already at the top of tree as far as traffic goes, it is silly to risk a major change.
  
  My EC hubs are doing well, as I keep saying. I would just like a few more
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  Jean Bakulaposted 11 years agoin reply to this
  That's what I am finding confusing. Out of over 135 hubs that were written in my same style, I only had 2 EC ones. And since they were both part of series, they weren't logical choices, as they weren't the first one that had more of an explanation about why I wrote them that way. They were both always highly visited, and since they were EC, I never see an up arrow. So I opted out. I'd rather see if traffic improves, and it's only two months.
  reply report

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