The dreaded blue 'traffic falling' sign...

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  1. Amy Naylor profile image82
    Amy Naylorposted 9 years ago

    It plagued one. And now another hub seems to have caught it.
    I'm seeing significant drops in traffic to a couple of my hubs. Maybe it's just because they're not new and intriguing any more, but I don't want that little blue icon to appear all over my stats. Help! What do I do?
    Any tips or advice for keeping a stable flow of traffic?

    1. Writer Fox profile image31
      Writer Foxposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      If your traffic began to fall on May 21st, it was because of a change in Google's Panda algorithm and an adjustment called the "Payday loan." See this forum post:
      http://hubpages.com/forum/topic/121989

      1. Amy Naylor profile image82
        Amy Naylorposted 9 years agoin reply to this

        Interesting, thank you

  2. paradigmsearch profile image60
    paradigmsearchposted 9 years ago

    I've got 15 of those critters at the moment. big_smile

    1. Amy Naylor profile image82
      Amy Naylorposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      I'm not alone! I guess it's just an inevitability...

  3. Mark Ewbie profile image82
    Mark Ewbieposted 9 years ago

    Amy - it's boring and trite but you need to write what people are looking for.  It needs to be better than the competition.  And you need luck.   A deal of it.

    1. Amy Naylor profile image82
      Amy Naylorposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      I think you're right Mark. Well, actually, I know you're right, I'm just in denial! Haha, hard work ahead for me my friend, hard work ahead.

  4. cfin profile image65
    cfinposted 9 years ago

    Mine often go from red to blue and back again. Make a small change to the title? Or just wait and see?

    1. Amy Naylor profile image82
      Amy Naylorposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      I'm planning on taking the route of minor edits and changes for the better. But I am taking my HP stats with a pinch of salt, my lowest rated hub is my most successful engagement wise. Since I'm not yet interested in making money from here, I'm more interested in the people who do visit my hub liking what they read. I like to converse with my readers!

      1. Marisa Wright profile image86
        Marisa Wrightposted 9 years agoin reply to this

        You're learning an important lesson - HubPages' scores and accolades have very little to do with how successful a Hub is!  So I wouldn't worry about them.

        What you should worry about is the risk of your Hubs becoming unFeatured.  If they don't get enough traffic, that can happen.   If a Hub becomes unFeatured, it effectively becomes invisible - there's a marker on it which tells Google to ignore it.  If you give someone a link to the Hub they can still read it, but you're likely to get few, if any, visitors once it's unFeatured, because most of HubPages' traffic comes via Google.

        Unfortunately it's the nature of your subjects that's the problem.  To get traffic, you need to attract readers from outside HubPages.  Most of those are people searching on Google - so to make money, you need to write about things people are searching for on Google.  Looking at your current subjects, I can't think what people could type into Google to find those Hubs - and even if I could think of the phrases they might use, I doubt many people would be typing them.   

        I think that's a problem common to all writers down the ages.   If you want to make a living from writing, you need to be prepared to write what other people want you to write. Writers who write what they want to write often end up starving in garrets!    In the old days, writers would become a journalist writing for an editor, or a freelance writer for hire, or would churn out cheap romances while they worked on The Novel.  These days it's Google that calls the tune.

  5. relache profile image72
    relacheposted 9 years ago

    Falling traffic is going to be a regular occurrence from now (Memorial Day) through Labor Day (first weekend of September) as most folks here see the bulk of their traffic from the USA.

    It will be regularly irregular until we hit "back to school." 

    Welcome to summer, folks!  Remember to wear plenty of sunscreen and anything resembling regular traffic will be back in the fall.

    1. janshares profile image93
      jansharesposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      big_smile True dat!

    2. Amy Naylor profile image82
      Amy Naylorposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      Why is that?

      1. relache profile image72
        relacheposted 9 years agoin reply to this

        It's a pattern of media consumption that has been visible/tracked in the USA since the invention of the monitoring of tv watching habits.  When the Internet got invented, they started monitoring how we consume that and it matches all the decades of television data.  This is a "basic" of how our country/culture functions in North America.

        Memorial Day (end of May) to Labor Day (start of Sept) in the USA, aka "summer"

        Longer hours of daylight
        Warmer temps
        Kids mostly out of school (right up through college)
        Time of year our culture takes their longest vacations

        In short, people get outside more and watch less tv and are on the Internet less in the summer.

  6. paradigmsearch profile image60
    paradigmsearchposted 9 years ago

    http://spaceplace.nasa.gov/prime/data/photos/apodImageOfTheDay/1341-0-full.jpg

    1. DzyMsLizzy profile image86
      DzyMsLizzyposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      Wow--that's quite a photo!  We need a "like" thumbs-up button in the forums!

      1. paradigmsearch profile image60
        paradigmsearchposted 9 years agoin reply to this

        A "harbinger of doom", courtesy of NASA. big_smile

  7. isharkbait profile image94
    isharkbaitposted 9 years ago

    I've haven't taken a look at what topics you are writing about, but I can share my experience. Every now and then I will see traffic drop on some of my hub. Sometimes the traffic remains steady at the lower level, sometimes it drops to zero for a while, and sometimes it picks back up. My advice is to keep writing. Ideally someone will read one of your newer hubs, like it, and want to read more of your hubs. Best of luck!

  8. janshares profile image93
    jansharesposted 9 years ago

    Good advice from Isharbait to keep writing. Write evergreen hubs that will do well regardless of the season. The slow months will give them time to get indexed, get a few views, and "ripen" after 4 months or so. By the fall and winter months, if it's a quality hub with information people are searching for, it will do well.

  9. The Examiner-1 profile image60
    The Examiner-1posted 9 years ago

    Right now I have four of those blue arrows and one red arrow. I may come back later and on (or more) of the blue arrows might have changed to become a red arrow. Or it might disappear and reappear. They are unpredictable.

    1. relache profile image72
      relacheposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      No, no they are not.  The red and blue arrows are a direct response to short-term rising and falling traffic trends.  They were meant to be an at-a-glance way of seeing how your Hubs are doing overall. 

      HOWEVER, go visit a whole bunch of your own lenses, and your own visits will cause red arrows to appear, making you falsely think your Hubs are getting new traffic.  This is especially true for Hubs that have an extremely low number of visits.

      It is also natural that Hubs which get red arrows to show they had a quick burst of hot traffic then later show blue arrows as the traffic trend cools down.

      1. The Examiner-1 profile image60
        The Examiner-1posted 9 years agoin reply to this

        I have visited my own Hubs many times to update them or check on them for future updates - I have not seen red arrows appear.

        I was also talking before about seeing my stats one night before I sign out and checking the stats again when I sign in the next morning. The red arrows are there in the AM which were not there in the previous PM and I was not in my Hubs overnight. Who did it? The boogieman?

        I know that about the traffic speed up/slowdown.

        1. relache profile image72
          relacheposted 9 years agoin reply to this

          According to the Google Analytics for my Hubs, it's visitors and not the boogieman.  And I get a lot of info about those folks.

          You might want to swap better statistical info in for some of that unpredictability.

          1. The Examiner-1 profile image60
            The Examiner-1posted 9 years agoin reply to this

            I know it is visitors. I check GA too. I was just making a point that I did not put the arrows there.

  10. paradigmsearch profile image60
    paradigmsearchposted 9 years ago

    And to add another cheerful note... big_smile

    I just now noticed that my Q&A traffic has truly been slaughtered.  Yes, sports fans. Summer has arrove.

 
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