On Sunday, I noticed that many of my hubs made the Editor's Choice list. Though I was pleased, I noticed that my views had fallen somewhat. I figured it would take a few days for views to increase since my hubs are no longer on my subdomain but on the main HP domain. However, I checked on my account today, and I find that my views have fallen nearly 65-70 percent! This really concerns me. I will ride this thing out, but I need some encouragement. Does the HP team have any advice?
Abby,
The site in general has seen a bit of a traffic drop recently after Google's recent algorithm changes.
The reason we initiated Editors Choice is that we found many Hubs receive more engagement when on HubPages.com, rather than sub-domains.
I would give it a bit of time to let the changes settle.
Some Hubs will take longer than others to see a benefit from the URL change.
Wasn't that the reason a lot of people got upset in the first place?
Because " Hubs receive more engagement when on HubPages.com, rather than sub-domains"?
And the sub-domains effectively killed a lot of their traffic?
That is why it would have been nice if the blog about this actually gave the reasoning for it. I get that things change. I can take a straight explanation.
Hi Matthew. Thank you for responding. I have seen many sharing that their traffic has been down over the last few months due to Google Panda. Did they make another change recently? If so, when? This may help me determine what I should do as I didn't have problems before Sunday when I received EC on many hubs. I actually had increased traffic each day. If there was a very recent change, I will wait this out. But, if the change was a couple of months ago, I think I should opt out of EC because I didn't have a problem. It's difficult to make an educated decision without knowing exactly what is going on.
On another note, Matthew, what do you mean by "more engagement" with EC hubs? Are you speaking of more engagement with hubbers? I know that most of my previous traffic came from Google search and that's the way I wanted it. I don't want to just reach hubbers; I want to reach outsiders. It's also good for my views.
I'm sorry,Matthew, but to describe what has happened here as a "bit of a traffic drop recently" is quite an understatement. The great majority of the writers here have seen their accounts decimated and many people, if you've been reading the forums about this subject, are very worried. We don't see many team members responding to those worries, other than with the EC thing and now cutting, once again, the number of affiliate ads one can display on a hub. We know you are probably working frantically behind the scenes to come up with ways to fix this problem, and the quieter you are about this, the more upset people here become. Not knowing is always worse than knowing what is happening, and when you candy coat the situation with statements like the one you just made, it is like rubbing salt in the wound. Please do not do this to us. We are all adults here, and all of us want HP to succeed. We want to succeed with it. Help us find meaningful ways to do that, and soon.
It's hard to tell in such a short time period what may be causing the traffic drop. Did you check to make sure all of your EC hubs are showing as indexed? The only thing that I noticed with your hubs that could possibly be a problem is your author info on each hub (that I checked) with a link to your book and your website.
Hi Rebekah. Thanks for responding. My author information on each hub was actually suggested by HP to do when I was in the apprenticeship program. Why would this affect my hub views now when it didn't at all with the subdomain?
Forgot to mention that my hubs are all indexed. However, half of my hubs are receiving zero views now.
@Abbey I was actually looking at your account today. Your Hubs are very good and I can see why they were chosen early.
I did notice that your traffic rose very quickly not that long ago. That kind of growth is pretty rare.
Sometimes accounts go through these cliff like changes. Way up, way down. We don't know why, but I've seen the pattern many times. I know how frustrating this can be when there is little obvious reason.
The EC program is new and with that we can't guarantee results for each selected Hub, but in general we believe that this will be a good long-term program. We are in the very early days with many more things coming down the road to improve it. A few days is really too few to know how it will do over time.
The vast majority of people don't have any EC Hubs yet, but we are staffing up with a goal of getting to Hubs over the next three months. You can imagine what a task this is.
Everybody has a few options with EC. They can stay in or they can see if they like the results and decide whether to stay in or not. They can opt out and join in later after there is more history.
We can't tell each author what is best for them. Ultimately, it's up to them to decide.
http://hubpages.com/faq/#Editors-Choice
Abbey, we will follow your Hubs and I'll have Robin follow up with you.
My views have almost tripled since the editor's choice came up, but the majority of my hubs were selected. Unsure if that made a different. Either way, I'm pleased with my current traffic.
Although I don't have EC hubs, the whole site's traffic has been down for the past few days so that is likely the problem. Some are reporting a slight trend upwards. I see a very, very tiny upwards trend on my traffic so hopefully yours will trend upwards as well.
Traffic on my subdomain has gotten a little better, compared to the weekend, but it's not where it was before it fell, beginning Saturday. It's not up to where it was last week.
Thanks, LCDWriter, for the encouragement. While lots of hubbers were complaining about their traffic over the last few months, I did not have that problem while my hubs were on the subdomain. My traffic was actually rising each day. It's only been since my hubs have become EC that it has dropped... which has been since Sunday... and an even bigger drop since yesterday morning.
Abby, if it's any consolation, my traffic was also rising. None of my hubs were moved to EC, and I still noticed a traffic drop beginning on Friday. Yesterday was off as well. I haven't checked today's stats, but I imagine they are not good.
That would explain why I hit an all time low a couple of days ago if the whole site's traffic has plummeted. I have no Editors Choice hubs but all of mine are featured and $0.12 doesn't seem much for 88 featured hubs.
I hope it picks up for everyone soon Abby. I can't find the enthusiasm to write here at the moment apart from answering questions and the forum.
Thanks Sue. I appreciate your reply nonetheless. I was doing so well on my subdomain with increased traffic each day. I was encouraged on Sunday when I read some people had increased traffic with their EC hubs. However, mine have been falling fast. I feel like I need to do something quickly like opt out of EC to get my traffic back, but then it really doesn't matter if the whole site is down.
I have no Editor's Choice hubs either, I have about 200 featured hubs though (clearly they missed my genius when they browsed through).
Traffic's down, income's down, click through rate's down, cpm is down.
I'm sitting nervously ... just popping in 2-3x a day to monitor/tweak the occasional item.
It could be that HP just hasn't gotten to your hubs yet, earner, to become EC. I think they are still working on it, but I'm sorry to hear that everything is down for you as well. Hopefully, it will get better soon.
I am happy to report that my traffic is slowly inching up. It is not back up to what it was a few months ago, but it is improving over the lowest lows of the last couple of weeks.
Some of my editor's choice hubs are climbing, some are staying the same. The ones that were already getting a few views are the ones that are climbing. The ones that no one ever cared to look at still have a very low number of views.
Hi SmartAndFun,
That's good to know. Obviously the entire site took a big hit. I just hope it rebounds quickly.
How does one even know if a hub is EC? And what is the point of making ECs?
You will see an indication near your Hub here
http://hubpages.com/my/hubs/stats
I assume it would be indicated there if I had any ECs. But absence of evidence can be a tad ambiguous.
I have no ECs, but then I suppose that deeply researched and balanced biomedical articles written by a qualified professional with over three decades in the field are not the sort of information the riff-raff of the Internet is searching and therefore are doomed to slow death on a neglected subdomain.
What is interesting, is that over the last week or so Hubpages is reporting that I have been getting 7-25 impressions. Strangely, Webmaster Tools tells me that my subdomain has been getting 35-90 impressions. This does not look like a 60-40 split in my favour.
Yes, the site visits are down and my own hub score has gone way down below 90 for the first time in 4 years.
$$$$$$ is at half of what it was last month.
My views are down, and up until this point, my site was pretty immune to the overall lower traffic pulls that HPs has been experiencing. I recently got 4 EC hubs, and I've opted out. Hoping things return to normal. My facebook likes DID come back which is why I'm taking this rather well.
Hi Melissa. When you opted out, did your Facebook likes automatically come back? I noticed all of my Facebook and Pinterest likes are gone which was very disappointing.
I don't mean to sound rude, I'm asking because really don't know: what is so bad about Facebook and Pinterest likes disappering? Is it just that the badge with all those likes lets readers know how well loved your article is? That's what I'm assuming. Does it help push it up in the SERPS?
Also, how do you know how many likes you have? I think there used to be buttons at the top of our articles but I don't see any now.
Yeah, pretty much. If people are anything like me, they would look at FB likes to determine an articles' popularity. I get more 'roused' when I see that an article I disagree with is successfully being shared, therefore I may be more likely to take said article seriously. And, I just like seeing them. Regardless, my traffic is the lowest its been since the EC thing happened to 4 of my hubs. On analytics, you can see the line pointing way down.
I also do see my facebook likes on the side.
If Google is upset about thin content, I have no idea why I only have 2 EC hubs. My work is based on 35+ years of experience. I know Astrology is oversaturated, but I have over 25,000 views on some of those hubs. I also wrote quality pieces on Greek Myth, where I not only learned about Greek Myth, but took it a step further, and read about a psychotherapist who uses the characters in Greek Myth to treat her patients. I write book reviews on books I actually read, they are not pieced together from Amazon reviews. Those Mythical hubs were the product of at least 15 hours of work each. I wrote them for a Spring contest, and lost every day to recipes and other meaningless garbage. So the Google thin content argument carries no weight. My views were at an all time low, but are even worse now that somebody decided 2 out of my 135 hubs are fit to be EC.
And is it just me, or is anyone else aggravated about having to put one object on each Amazon capsule, which leads to correcting every hub, AGAIN. I'm going to finish the series I'm working on, and either stop adding content or put it somewhere where intelligent people can appreciate it. I don't think the general public is stupid and has the attention span of a gnat.
Thin content, that makes me furious. Why don't the moderators just admit they are throwing anything at the wall to see if it sticks, at our expense and time?
You got twice as many EC pages as I did. Only my page about crabs has been blessed.
When Google was pushing the pages around, I had over a hundred hubs indexed on the main domain. But then, Google was looking at the pages from the perspective of their proven utility, rather than their appearance.
I suppose there is the small possibility that not every one of our pages has been looked at. The editors may not be running through the site sub by sub. They might be working through categories, or running from low to high page views or any other of the many alternatives.
I don't think there is a "small" possibility that every page has been checked for EC; my understanding is that it will takes weeks to go through everything. It would seem a certainty that there are still thousands upon thousands of hubs that have not been considered.
Make that months. Paul Edmonson said so just yesterday in one of his posts on the forums...can't remember which one. He's guessing about 3 months and apparently has hired extra staff to help him with this project.
One thing to remember is that Google traffic is search traffic. Search traffic means people looking for a particular thing.
Fewer people are looking for depth psychology and the applicability of mythic archetypes to psychoanalysis than are looking for, say, "Athena T-shirts."
I doubt that a well-written article on the former would be classified by Google (or Hubpages) as "thin content." But there's no getting around the fact that there are fewer people looking for Ginette Paris than Paris Hilton.
If Google is sending tens of thousands of people to a page you can be pretty sure it does not consider the page to be thin content.
If a page is well researched, well written and true but not especially popular it should not be considered thin either...
But I am still struggling to see what point you are making here.
I wasn't talking about pages getting thousands of visitors. It sounded like she was saying that her Greek myth + psychology hubs weren't getting much traffic, and she was assuming that Google and/or Hubpages must be penalizing them as thin content. I was arguing that thin content is not the issue; it might just be a lower-traffic niche.
I may have misunderstood her complaint. If so, I apologize.
Jean: The last time HP told us to cut back the ads, I went through ever single hub and did so...and guess what...I saw tons of other hubs that left things as they were and did nothing. This time they can forget it. I don't advertise much anyhow...never have, but I, too, am tired of redoing and redoing, especially when so many other people simply ignore the directive to fix things.
+1 I just got finished knocking mine down to two each! I don't intend to go back and go down to one each! If I do, then next month, we'll be told to go back to 3 or 4. I'm over it!
I moved a few. I put 3 Amazon capsules on several hubs, but with only one product on each. I have some hubs that are about people that have something in common, so I have to put a product in the capsule that has to do with the right person! I think it looks awful, to be honest. I never did great with Amazon, but cover topics that do require books and study. It is very hard to narrow it down so much. On the other hand, I do have hubs that have too many products, but they are for items that have many styles and I wanted to include a variety. It is so puzzling and difficult to keep changing strategies. And to see your money and red arrows disappear.
You this busy, I can not help, but I will give you support, refueling!
I want to caution folks about very short-term results. We are trying to take a long term approach to apply our resources to help people that make meaningful contributions. EC is part of it, but there is more to come...It's going to take some time...
Imho, which is worth nought, ridding the site of RS adds would have short term and long term gains. Short term you would gain writer support and therefore, more hubs. Long term Goggle may not see this site as so spammy. Win, win. Worth a thousand ECs.
Paul: It's nice to see you responding on the forums, but I have a question. What are you doing for the REST of this site to shore up the views for those who have lost more than half of them these past few weeks. If you are only going to concentrate on the EC portion of the site, that would be very bad for those who chose not to participate or for those who were not or will not be chosen.
Paul: I am very happy to hear you say that EC is only part of your plan...you really had me worried there for awhile.
@Timetraveler If there was a magic wand to bring people's traffic back, we would wave it. At the end of the day each person is responsible for their content/traffic. The largest companies to the individual have struggled with Panda and massive google fluctuations so I get how frustrating it is. I work on this every day...
I can tell you that Google has been clear that Panda is about thin content. I was frankly a bit surprised at some of the content Google said was thin in the new webmaster tools reporting that shows pages/subdomains under manual penalties. I don't want to call anyone out, but people should check their subdomains. Many of these are self inflicted.
What we are planning is to differentiate the two aspects of the site. Subdomains will become more personalized over time, and EC will become more HP branded. There are many technical details to finalize, but we are planning to invest in both.
The current estimate is 3 months to get through the top half of featured Hubs, so like I said, I'm not too worried about short term fluctuations.
If you fall in the camp with a traffic loss, I personally work on my pages when they fall. I try and make them the best I can. I hope others do too.
I checked WMT and Google says I've been good.
However, should I kill off all my Q&A anyway?
Paul: Thank you for responding. FYI I have spent many hours, starting last November, seriously updating every single hub, deleting low traffic hubs and doing all sorts of upgrading. My numbers were just getting back to normal when this Panda thing hit. This was a major blow for me after having done so much work. I have never made a lot of money here, but I was happy to have people reading my work and making a little each month. Now it has all but disappeared. I know I'm not the only person here who has done this much work, and while I am willing to wait, knowing exactly what happened and why and that you understand that and know how to fix things is extremely important. If you look at my stats, you will see that every single hub is featured, meets all of your requirements, and is correctly and well written. I have a Masters Degree and was a Language Arts teacher, so I know good writing from bad. I am not the best tech person however, and never will be, but I do all of the things people have advised regarding SEO, etc. I just am shocked and frankly feel like I'm drowning here.
Will, thanks for the kind words and understanding. It has been my understanding that Google is looking for longer articles written by people who know a lot about their subject. And I also know there has to be a time factor if real people are choosing these hubs. It's not that I care so much about the EC stuff, it's taking apart the Amazon hubs that threw me over the edge last night. Those little blue "tips" that come up in edit mode make me want to stick my foot through the computer! Not to worry.....I won't. Take care.
Greek Geek,
I get what you are trying to say. Greek Myth isn't the "in" thing, and maybe isn't being searched for. Except those 12 or so hubs were always my most popular, people loved them. I have over 25,000 views on them. Kids in school are using them for reports on the Humanities, because I see myself in "Cite Your Source" for those Myth hubs. The same thing happened when I wrote about the round, feminist tarot deck, Motherpeace. I had never even seen it, it's so obscure, and I wrote a long series on it while I was learning to read it (kill two birds with one stone). I had been on HP for about 6 months and didn't make much money yet, and asked what I was doing wrong. Everybody told me that the long hubs had to go. Again, they are 7 hubs, and for weeks they have been my 7 highest ones. Some people go online for a quick answer. Some people go on to learn something in more depth. Thanks for considering my issues though!
So what are the steps we take to see if we have thin content. Go to webmaster tools and from there what do we do? Does it say you have thin content?
Paul I thought the main problem was spam. We went to WT to make sure our sites did not have spam.
With the Percy Jackson movie in the theatres right now I would think Greek myth is pretty poular, all things considered.
I felt honored to have one of my hubs chosen as an EC hub. However, the hub that was chosen had been averaging 150-200 views in a 24 hour period for me since I wrote it. Since it was made a EC hub, it's down to barely 70 views a day...
...and now I'm pulling in maybe 50 views in a 24 hour period. Those of you with EC hubs, has the distinction killed your hubs too?
My hub went from over a thousand views per day do just over 100 per day after it got EC. I'm opting out now. Ridiculous!
Hubs that are Editors Choice are still on your subdomain... ! They are just promoted by HubPages...Views should not decrease. My Editors Choice hub views are going up not down. But they've been going up even before it was chosen as Editors Choice...
Oh wow! I was wrong. Just checked my Editors Choice hub and it's no longer on the subdomain. Does that mean it will not displayed on my profile?
Mine still displays on my profile. All of my traffic came from Google though. When it was under my subdomain, the article benefited from Google Authorship, so it was the only one in the first page of search results with an image associated (my profile pic). Now it doesn't have anything to make it stand out. I'm wondering if it's as simple as this.
A good point. If `Editor's Choice' hubs lose authorship, could this adversely affect traffic? Is this something Hubpages has considered?
Yes, Editor's Choice Hubs will still appear on your profile.
Alisha, you might want to wait it out a little bit longer. If traffic to that Hub continues to slip, opting out of Editor's Choice is probably your best bet. Though you will need to wait 60 days, you can eventually opt back in.
Thank you for your reply!
I'll wait a little longer to evaluate. It's a shame since I appreciate receiving the distinction of having an EC hub, but if it's best for the health of the hub, I will opt out.
I hate to be a pain, but when can I expect the article to return to my subdomain? I opted out about 24 hours ago, but it is still on Hubpages.com.
Let me rephrase. Now that I have opted it, will my article return to my subdomain?
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