Significant Traffic Change for Imported Accounts

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Paul Edmondsonposted 9 years ago
We haven't had enough time to go through all the data, but I wanted to post to Hubbers and at least acknowledge we see dramatic traffic changes particularly for recently imported Squidoo accounts.

At the same time, it looks like established HubPages accounts are holding up well (there is always some movement up and down). This is what we want.

We are on subdomains so each author can be evaluated more independently by search engines. However, it is common to see what looks like a site wide change because many authors use a similar style of making Hubs. I believe this is the case with Squidoo imports. Many imported accounts share a similar style. It appears that this Google update is particularly hard on it.

I'm sorry to those that are suffering a traffic loss. I wanted to let you know that we are very aware and will work on recommendations for people that are interested in best practices that we believe will build long term results.

Back shortly.
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  TonyPayneposted 9 years agoin reply to this
  Thanks Paul.
  
  It's good to see feedback like this coming from the top and promptly too, shows you are aware of what's happening out there.
  
  Having recently transferred my Squidoo content across to Hubpages and seen my traffic keep going up I have been excited, but this drop does have me a little concerned, especially if it continues.
  
  However, the backbone of my account is longer more content rich hubs, which do need a lot of work on them still, but hopefully as all of us from Squidoo get our transferred hubs into shape things will look up again.
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  JYOTI KOTHARIposted 9 years agoin reply to this
  I am not in squidoo and not imported anything from there. My traffic is steady. Will there be any affect in future?
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  pkmcrukposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  Paul I wonder if it is worth experimenting with killing the 301 re-directs given that this is the third or fourth time our former lenses have been subjected to them. Perhaps just let the lenses (now hubs) find their natural place in the SERPs?
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  lisavollrathposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  I volunteer to have the plugs pulled on mine.
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  justholidaysposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  So do I
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  HomeArtist1posted 8 years agoin reply to this
  I'm thinking of deleting my less helpful ex-Squidoo hubs from way back,
  when there were less restrictions and we were prompted to garner sales
  from our work.
  
  I'm thinking this will help my overall a/c status and ratings from Google--and my
  own higher standards.
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  Seasons Greetingsposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  Why not just write a new post around them? Add more content by doing an interview with someone who wrote a book relevant to the topic. Talk about how you used the product yourself. Etc. I'm working on revamping a post about Rocket Squids. It's a little bit of web history and the writing advice is still good, even without the Rocket Squids still be around. Repurpose rather than delete.
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  Jenn-Anneposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  I'm not blaming it on anyone specifically but my traffic has dropped by more than half this week and I'm NOT a squidoo transfer. I suspect we'll all feel the effects of the hubpages/squidoo combo in one way or another. Yes, I'm a bit discouraged because after a couple years of seasoning I was finally getting decent (for me) traffic and it hurts to lose that. But as there isn't anything I can do about it I guess there's no choice but to wait and see what happens. Really hoping there will be a rebound soon. And for anyone who is curious, my editor's choice hubs have done pretty poorly since being selected as editors choice, and even worse this week. May have to opt out...
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  PegCole17posted 8 years agoin reply to this
  This Editor's Choice comment is very interesting and mirrors my experience with the EC hubs as well. Paul Edmondson has stated, "We are on subdomains so each author can be evaluated more independently by search engines". Not so with Editor's choice hubs.
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  Writer Foxposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  Panda has now targeted HubPages for low quality content, and it will affect the entire site – not just individual subdomains – because that's one of the hallmarks of the Panda algorithm. (Since 2012 Google has treated subdomains and subdirectories equally on a website.)
  
  But, you ain't seen nothin' yet. The whopper Penguin update, which has been announced by Google and is expected momentarily, targets webspam, which is now more rife than ever on HP.
  
  My advice is to immediately NoIndex all Hubs which have not passed QAP. For newly imported Squidoo Hubs which have not passed QAP, you could just transfer them back to the Squidoo domain and give them time there to pass QAP instead of on the HP domain.
  
  What do you have to lose if you do this? Nothing.
  What do you have to lose if you don't do this? Everything.
  
  Traffic on HP is now down to what it was on August 14th, the day before the acquisition of Squidoo was announced. Nothing has been gained traffic-wise in this transfer of content to HP.
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  Paula Atwellposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  This advice is nonsensical since there is no way to transfer back Squidoo hubs to Squidoo.
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  Writer Foxposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  The programmers who imported the content know how to export it as well. They are very good at what they do.
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  DzyMsLizzyposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  I was under the impression that Squidoo went under, (for whatever reason) and was bought out by HP. Ergo, Squidoo no longer exists, so how could anyone transfer back there????
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  Writer Foxposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  The site is still online and will be for quite some time, with or without content. Those 301 redirects have to redirect from Squidoo.com, so it has to remain online for that to happen.
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  LuisEGonzalezposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  Can we do this (No-Index) ourselves or does HP have to be the one?
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  Seasons Greetingsposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  My imports from Squidoo didn't need much touching up. Mainly adding summaries and moving around Amazon sections. I've gone through most of them at this point. My traffic seems about the same or maybe a bit better even.
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  Kathleen Odenthalposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  This is clearly a sign that you and your staff made a terrible decision when you decided to accept EVERY squidoo writer after the site FAILED!
  
  But I guess I shouldn't expect you guys to care, because in the end, we do the work, and you cash the checks.
  
  Maybe you should scroll through some of the hubs on here and you will see why we got hit so hard by the Panda update.
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  Marisa Wrightposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  They did not accept every Squidoo writer. They accepted only writers who had Featured lenses (similar to our Featured Hubs). Only Featured lenses were published.
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  Mark Ewbieposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  Similar to but not quite the same - hence the reminder in the weekly HubPages email.
  
  Whoops!
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  rebekahELLEposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  The filter that Squidoo used for featured lenses was admittingly much different than the QAP. This has been made known in various threads by those who transferred their lenses.
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  Linda BookLadyposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  .
  .
  I would appreciate an official explanation of why my pages lost 94.1% of their traffic a week after my writing moved to HubPages.
  
  How long do you expect it to take for us to recover from this kind of traffic loss. A year? Maybe two? Do you have any experience with this kind of thing?
  
  You said "back shortly" and I was really hoping to get more information from you on what's happening and how to respond to it.
  
  All the other chatter on this forum thread is pretty much meaningless to me... I want to hear from the owner of this site.
  
  I and others who were affected are not buying into the idea that our content was defective or insufficient. We had quality traffic from Google because our pages that were thriving were quality pages. I believe that the traffic loss is from having new URLs.
  
  If there's a better explanation I'd like to hear from the owner of this site about it.
  
  In any case, you said, "back shortly" and I'm still waiting.
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  Brite-Ideasposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  I would like to hear from an authority as well, Linda, as you know, my graph looks exactly like yours and my percentage of traffic loss is about the same. Pages that we ranked for years on, obliterated.
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  LuisEGonzalezposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  Something has to give, my traffic is so low is not even worth looking at.
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  Sharlee01posted 8 years agoin reply to this
  I transferred my articles from Squidoo. I have several other web sites, and know quite a bit about glitches, and I also know any new article takes time to be ranked by Google, and if luck get some traffic. I am more concerned with the problems that are occurring with page views counters, and subsequently earnings. My first week here at hubpages went as suspected, a traffic jump and then decline. This is common, and I was not alarmed. However, then a noted my page views stopped dead, they were dead for 11 days. I reported this frequently to the proper person. Each reply was speedy, and assured me the problem would be fixed. Yesterday I saw a bit of movement, unfortunately the page views are now going backwards. I all so noted in the days that I had no movement in stats, I was earning a bit of revenue. I have emailed hubpages and asked how this could occur with the glitch in the stats. I got no response to my inquiry on this matter. I was told to obtain Google Analytics to keep track of stats more efficiently. I have had an account with Google from prettty much their conception, and I certainly have Google Analytic. Google Analytic's has been keeping stats for my other web sites for many years, and of resent keeping my stats for hubpages. The stats that hubpages report are not even close to my Google Analytic stats. I know what problems can occur, and I sympathize. All I want to know is truthfully how long will it take to fix. I am willing to hang in. However, I dislike the run - around. My eyes don't deceive, stats are not working properly.
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  Barbara Kayposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  The two never agree, because there is a split with Hubpages. You get 60% of the views and Hubpages get 40% for their cut of earnings. It isn't evenly divided by number of views, but they get 40% of the time involved.
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  Solarasposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  Thank you Barbara Kay for explaining that. I have been asking all over, and this is the first thing that has made sense to me. Okay I can relax now.
  
  Except that I did lose 5000-6000 of my total views in this last week. So I am that much further away from my next milestone of 1 million views lol.
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  DrMark1961posted 8 years agoin reply to this
  Are your views still missing? After you mentioned this, I made note of my total. I did not have any disappear, like your stats, but it did not move forward like normally. A few days ago it jumped forward and all of those missing views showed up.
  If it has not happened yet, I hope it will!
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  Solarasposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  My views just caught up today to where they were the day the stats started reporting again. They went in reverse for several days and now, the last 2 days have begun to grow again. Peculiar, but I suppose the total views are only important to my vanity lol.
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  DrMark1961posted 8 years agoin reply to this
  I am glad they have caught up, Solaras, and started moving the right way. I was starting to think total views were disappearing like B payments!
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  ctavias0ffering1posted 8 years agoin reply to this
  Can anyone help me? My lenses from Squidoo were imported to Hub Pages but there is a huge problem with the importing of my account, specifically the username.
  Hub seems to have failed to import my username from Squidoo and I am now ctavias0fferings1 on here instead of 0ctavias0fferings (the 0 is a zero in each case).
  All my linked images (photobucket hosted) are missing and this makes a complete mockery of what were informative and helpful lenses on Squidoo.
  1 is the name fixable?
  2 why have images vanished and how can they be retrieved?
  if 1 and 2 are not solvable ...
  3 how do I delete this account and will everything of mine on here disappear with it?
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  Marisa Wrightposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  Email team @ hubpages and let them know, they are the only ones that can fix it.
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  ctavias0ffering1posted 8 years agoin reply to this
  Thanks, will do
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  KathyMcGraw2posted 8 years agoin reply to this
  Hi K....I sure hope you get this fixed as you are a good writer and gave a lot to Squidoo. Sure hate seeing you're having issues.
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  ctavias0ffering1posted 8 years agoin reply to this
  Thanks for the compliment Kathy, I've unpublished all my transferred work as apparently the username can't be changed. I'm told a username on HP can't start with a numeric so that's an end to my involvement before I even started.
  
  I'll just have to find somewhere else for my work to go. Perhaps I'll sort out a few websites of my own instead, then I can add my own affiliate links and get 100% of the revenue generated instead of just a small percentage.
  
  I enjoyed Squidoo before they tried to turn it into a product review site, way counterproductive IMO and possibly detrimental to Hub Pages if they imported all those pages. Squidoo pages seemed to take a deal of punishment from Google when the site moved away from the UUU principle and I really don't think I want to be somewhere where the same thing could happen again so I won't be opening any other account here.
  
  I copied my relevant info from Squidoo and I know what was getting most traffic there so I have a few ideas where I can go from here.
  
  Wishing everyone I've known from Squidoo the best of luck, I met some really great folks there.
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  Marisa Wrightposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  Why is the username such a big deal? Is it so absolutely critical that that first letter is a zero instead of the letter O (which they could probably do)?
  
  It is rare for them to change usernames but I have known them do so in extreme cases. If they know that the alternative is for you to delete your account and leave, they may modify their stance - but you will have to settle for a letter not a number.
  
  As for the images - HubPages does not support HTML images so yes, you would have to relink to those using photo capsules.
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  ctavias0ffering1posted 8 years agoin reply to this
  The name is a big deal because that's the username I have been using for over 15 years. I have been told it can't be changed so that's an end of it.
  
  There are very good reasons for having the start of the username as a zero.
  
  It's all academic really as I won't be contributing here since that fundamental problem can't be overcome.
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  Marisa Wrightposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  I guessed that the name meant a lot to you, but I asked because I suspected most people would assume it was the letter O - you can see that Kathy, who knows you well, did. It seems a shame to lose all your work for a number which most people don't even know is there. And I notice you've accepted the use of an O instead on Tumblr.
  
  There are many choices of revenue-sharing sites but all the rest are smaller than HubPages and none of them has as much interaction we have here.
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  KathyMcGraw2posted 8 years agoin reply to this
  Marisa,
  I want to thank you for the effort you just put in with my old mentor. The name HP gave her sucks....but yes, since 2009 I thought it was a capital O.
  
  If wishes came true, HP would give her the right username, or more people would think it was really an O anyway...but even then HP would have to agree to get that c off the front.
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  HomeArtist1posted 8 years agoin reply to this
  I agree, Marissa. While we want a great, meaningful (to us) name,
  it's not a good idea to use a name where any part of it can be confused
  or misspelled.
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  Marisa Wrightposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  I wasn't saying that, really, just questioning whether it was SO vital that a compromise was completely impossible. It's a drastic step to delete an account that seemed to be valued by so many people, just for one letter. Especially as it seems even her friends thought they were letters rather than numbers anyway!
  
  Just to reiterate that HubPages does change usernames in rare cases, and I think that if she asked them to add a letter O in front of her current username instead of a zero, they would do it.
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  KathyMcGraw2posted 8 years agoin reply to this
  K.....I sure do wish you luck. Everything you said is true, and the people like you, Carol, and Michelle that taught me how to write online will forever be held in the highest esteem no matter where you go.
  
  I don't understand about having a numeric as the first part of your name as I always thought it was a O....as in Octavia. It sucks big time for me to see this....your account not being able to work the way you want. It's different for the people that only wrote crap, or very very short stuff, but guess that's the way it goes.
  
  If you aren't writing on here anymore....you can join Yuku.com community...(upside down u community). Many people you know. If not, hope you drop a line and let us know where your work ends up.
  
  My deepest gratitude to you for all the mentoring you gave me.
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  ctavias0ffering1posted 8 years agoin reply to this
  Shucks Kathy, you're making my head swell.
  
  I enjoyed every minute of it and you know you're successful in what you do when you can wave good luck as those you've helped along travel on ahead.
  
  I'll take a look at that site, thanks.
  
  Sure we'll meet again along the way :-)
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  Shades-of-truthposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  Ditto to all that KathyMcGraw2 said!
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  HubChiefposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  Please see my traffic report from Google analytics... I have significant change in my content...please help..
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  HomeArtist1posted 8 years agoin reply to this
  My traffic is down to nothing. :,(
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  Blake Flanneryposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  Paul,
  Did you ever come back to follow up? I'm seeing what looks like a sandboxing of the account I brought over from Squidoo. Too many backlinks added too fast on a new subdomain? I had about 30,000 pinterest backlinks according to GWMT.
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  billtweakerposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  I just found out a little bit ago that Hub Pages seems to be buying Squidoo or something... In my squidoo account, I didn't see a button that said transfer article, import account or anything like that. So, I just copied / pasted an unpublished article onto here. Does it sound like I handled it well enough... it was my only article on there.
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  Barbara Kayposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  Be sure to delete the Squidoo lens also and you should be good to go.
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  Lynne-Modranskiposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  Can you still delete the lens?
  
  Also, if she didn't opt out, the lens should now be a HUB here. Anyone who didn't specifically opt out got a Hubpages account whether they wanted to or not. (Unless all of the lenses were WIP - work in progress)
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  Barbara Kayposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  I sounds like he copied and pasted it on his account here, so it would be duplicate content if he doesn't delete it. He doesn't say that he has an account here from the Squidoo lens. Yes, he should check that first.
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  Lynne-Modranskiposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  I don't think we CAN delete stuff on Squidoo anymore. We can't edit, so I assume we can't delete. It will all be disappearing soon, so it will be moot.. I'd be more afraid it was duplicate content on here.
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  HubChiefposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  There are so many users impacted by Google update. Can you please write an FAQ and provide some guidance. My traffic had just started making $7 and am down to $3.
  
  Is Google's algorithm subject to scrutiny by courts? We are small $$ earners and such updates from google put us behind in our ability to earn from articles. Also I see in Google analytics is that Google maximizes the clicks for our articles to 5. magic number...
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  Blake Flanneryposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  Has anybody heard from Paul lately? I hope he's o.k.
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  Marisa Wrightposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  I'm sure he's fine! He is the CEO of the company so he's not on the forums regularly.
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  ecogrannyposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  Paul, just wondering how you and your team are coming on this and when you might provide recommendations, especially for those of us who came over from Squidoo.
  
  We continue to edit our hubs as quickly as we can get to them. It would be nice to know if there are additional changes we should consider, apart from those we find in the Learning Center.
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Nell Roseposted 9 years ago
Thanks paul that's good to know, I know a lot of us have had dramatic drops recently, thanks.
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Kierstin Gunsbergposted 9 years ago
Thank you so much for the updating. It is a bit concerning, but I'm sure that in time it will all work itself out!
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Kierstin Gunsbergposted 9 years ago
Update, I mean
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paradigmsearchposted 9 years ago
I was checking out squid harpoons at Amazon, but then I decided I would never harpoon a squid when it's down.
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  Barbara Kayposted 9 years agoin reply to this
  You are silly. That was a good one.
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  paradigmsearchposted 9 years agoin reply to this
  
  On the one hand, I am reasonably certain that my new neighbors have cost me traffic and money.
  
  On the other hand, I am equally certain that scrapping the amnesty could quickly solve that problem; and it could actually be doing many of the former lensmasters a favor. My guess is that Google is busily sandboxing former lensmasters' new hub accounts right and left; scrapping the amnesty would immediately stop that from happening to many, many, many more of those new accounts.
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  Barbara Kayposted 9 years agoin reply to this
  Maybe the editors that have been hired would be better used on some of the Squidoo lenses to help everyone get their hubs into shape quicker.
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  Rochelle Frankposted 9 years agoin reply to this
  I don't know the details of all of this... but that sounds like an excellent idea. We want them all to thrive and prosper to make this site even better for all.
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  Barbara Kayposted 9 years agoin reply to this
  Rochelle, I agree.
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  relacheposted 9 years agoin reply to this
  As you are one of my referrals, I actually have data that shows <snipped>, so whatever is happening now can't be due to the Squidoo additions.
  
  Also, sand boxing subdomains (which you just described) is an action taken to preserve traffic on the main domain, or other sections of a website. Which means sandboxing new transferred domains that are weaker would benefit your pages.
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  paradigmsearchposted 9 years agoin reply to this
  I'm not sure how to respond about your blabbing about my earnings.
  
  I exceed payout every month. For me and a lot of other people that is a very big deal. Especially for me, it is the difference between my having enough money for food and shelter each month and not.
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  Jayne Lancerposted 9 years agoin reply to this
  My goodness. I'm very pleased I'm not somebody's referral if hubbers are permitted to publicly discuss their referral's earnings.
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  Barbara Kayposted 9 years agoin reply to this
  +++++ I am glad I'm not either.
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  moonlakeposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  I agree how can they let this happen. No ones information should be out there.
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  paradigmsearchposted 9 years agoin reply to this
  Relache, since you think my earnings are such a piddling amount, could you please ask HP Staff to remove me from your referrals? This is a sincere request and would be very much appreciated.
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  neosurkposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  You stole my words, Paradigm! I was wondering if HP would do that. I would be absolutely devastated if someone said that about me. And how the hell would she know what you're earning? From the 10% referral thing? BS! I'm one of the Squid transfers, but have a small HP account for years. I follow you and you are great!
  
  Old established users can brag anything about them, but shaming others as if they are in control of the stats and earnings is so not cool!
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  Mark Ewbieposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  My guess is that the forum gurus and Giants are feeling slightly rattled. Traffic has plummeted as expected although they did not see it coming.
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  DrMark1961posted 8 years agoin reply to this
  That is not true.
  http://writerfox.hubpages.com/hub/Seth- … o-HubPages
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  Mark Ewbieposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  Not that guru.
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  DrMark1961posted 8 years agoin reply to this
  The guru Mark Ewbie also predicted these traffic changes for adding thousands of new pages that had not passed QAP and had already been slapped by Google.
  I do not recall the forum, but I do remember that he was told that he was an evil person for giving the advice and had his message rammed down his throat.
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  Mark Ewbieposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  Lol and thanks! That kind of rankled a bit. It seemed obvious having looked at some of it.
  
  Lot of experts on these forums - that's for sure.
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  DrMark1961posted 8 years agoin reply to this
  I agree, which is why I usually just keep my mouth shut and read. Anytime someone tries to add something useful (thinking of you, Writer Fox, Marisa Wright, and Janderson) they are told they are being hatemongers, etc.
  I actually had someone come on a forum the other day and complain because I told a joke that she did not understand. She commented that the HP moderators would never do anything like that, as they were always helpful.
  It reminded me of some third grader complaining to the teacher.
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  Marisa Wrightposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  I think we all need to remember that even before the transfer, there were thousands of Hubs already on HubPages which had not passed QAP. So it's not correct to say all HubPages content has been vetted and given the seal of approval, whereas Squidoo transfers haven't.
  
  HubPages existed long before QAP was introduced. At the time, the UnFeatured for Lack of Engagement process was also introduced. It was explained that this was a quick-and-dirty way of dealing with the huge backlog of old Hubs, while new and edited Hubs were put through QAP.
  
  HubPages acknowledged that lack of engagement (i.e. lack of traffic) didn't mean a Hub is bad, it may just get low search volumes. Sometimes those low-search-volume subjects can convert well, because they're not saturated - so that wasn't ideal. However they just didn't have the staff to QAP all those old Hubs (though they would try to tackle the backlog slowly).
  
  Since that feature hasn't been removed and we've never seen a triumphant announcement from HubPages saying the backlog is done, I think it's fair to assume it's still there. You only have to look at the Hopper to see that!
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  paradigmsearchposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  Thank you, neosurk. Despite what relache says, I still think making payout every month is a major accomplishment and I am still proud of that fact. And I think that this particular aspect of the referral program does indeed need to be discontinued. Value to HP-wise, those of us who have been referred are at an unfair disadvantage to those who are not referrals.
  
  Ref:
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  Seasons Greetingsposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  Making payout each month is a bid deal. You should be proud for yourself. Don't let anyone knock that. As Eleanor says, you decide what you feel.
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  Jayne Lancerposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  It's a massive breach of confidence in my opinion. I find it ironic that HubPages' terms of use state that we're not allowed to "... publicly disclose [our] payments or Earned Balance (including any subcomponents thereof) from the HubPages Earnings Program without prior written consent of HubPages", yet we're allowed to disclose information about the earnings of other hubbers.
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  Marisa Wrightposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  Given the number of times Paradigmsearch has posted here about lack of earnings, I don't think that "revelation" was a revelation to any of us. Unfortunately creative, original writing is no guarantee of commercial success, as many writers have discovered in the past.
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  paradigmsearchposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  Marisa, in my opinion that is a lie on your part. I have never, ever complained about my earnings. Ever.
  
  In fact, I am quite fond of HP and their earnings program.
  
  Now as to my traffic rants, may they live long and prosper. And no doubt stay tuned for more to come.
  
  Update: I see that Marisa edited her post after I replied.
  Bolding done by me.
  
  Thank you. Thank you.
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  Kathleen Odenthalposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  THANK YOU PARADIGMSEARCH
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  HomeArtist1posted 8 years agoin reply to this
  I'm sorry you have been subject to an individuals personal assault--and so publicly. NOT good for morale.
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  paradigmsearchposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  Thanks. All is well. I'll use this post to mention my hub about life. Basically, it's all about perspective.
  
  Her post has not been a total loss. It made me realize that I have been at a distinct disadvantage here for the last 4-5 years:
  
  HP earns 40% from non-referred accounts, whereas HP only earns 30% from referred accounts. In other words, all else being equal, I am worth less to HP than anyone who has not been referred. There is absolutely no way that can be a good thing!
  
  If I'm not removed from relache's referral list, then I think that a major lobbying campaign might be in order. There are many others that are in the same situation as I am.
  
  We should keep the part of the referral program relating to pointing people from elsewhere to our hubs, that aspect is a win-win-win for absolutely everybody. But the part where referred members are inherently worth less to HP has got to go.
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  Judy Filareckiposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  If we were transferred over from Squidoo, are we considered a referral of somebody else so we get 10% less. This whole discussion is kind of confusing to me. Like, what is sandbagging? forgive me for feeling a little dumb.
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  calculus-geometryposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  If your account was not created from a referral link, you get 60% and HP gets 40%. If your account was created through a referral link, you get 60%, HP gets 30%, and your referrer gets 10%. Nothing to worry about since you get 60% either way.
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  Judy Filareckiposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  Thanks again for the info. That helped a lot.
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  lisavollrathposted 9 years agoin reply to this
  Oh. Yes. Let's blame it on the Squids. And not, say, the latest Panda roll out that started this week. That makes perfect sense.
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  Barbara Kayposted 9 years agoin reply to this
  He said the traffic changes were for the imported Squidoo accounts. Nobody is blaming anybody. My traffic is steady at this point, so I have no reason to blame anyone.
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  lisavollrathposted 9 years agoin reply to this
  The account of the person saying his squid neighbors are responsible for his drop in traffic was created four years ago, and so is not covered by what is in the original post.
  
  Blaming a drop in traffic on an old account on the newly migrated ones isn't supported by the original post.
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  Jayne Lancerposted 9 years agoin reply to this
  Paradigmsearch posted his comment 11 hours previously (now 13 hours ago), so he probably had no idea about a Panda roll out. I certainly hadn't heard about it when I first read his post. Until then, I also thought the traffic drops could have something to do with the transfers. It seemed the only logical explanation, fair or unfair.
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  lisavollrathposted 9 years agoin reply to this
  For some people, it's a running theme.
  Lower traffic this week? Blame it on the Squids.
  More spam? Must be those Squids.
  War in Syria? Squids.
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  sockiiposted 9 years agoin reply to this
  
  It's like the 2014 version of "Thanks, Obama!", isn't it?
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  Jayne Lancerposted 9 years agoin reply to this
  I know. I've noticed it myself, and I'm not saying it's right. I'm just saying that it's very unlikely that Paradigmsearch deliberately disregarded the Panda roll out, because he probably didn't even know about it at the time.
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  paradigmsearchposted 9 years agoin reply to this
  I'd been suspecting the Syria thing for a long time. Thanks for the confirmation.
  
  If you check out Quantcast, it looks like this weekend is going to be absolutely devastating. https://www.quantcast.com/hubpages.com/traffic
  
  Is it the Squids fault? No. The problem is with Google having been allowed to see those accounts and/or hubs that were substandard; then it now looks like Google went and ratted us out to their favorite black and white teddy bear.
  
  It is still not too late to scrap the amnesty and salvage this impending disaster; then again, maybe it is. Oh, well...
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  Paula Atwellposted 9 years agoin reply to this
  You can't judge traffic to hubs one day at a time, one week at a time. You have to look at a pattern over several weeks or months. Since the Squidoo transfer took a few weeks, there is no way to really tell what the outcome will be for the entire site or its subdomains. As the transferred hubs continue to be edited and improved, the traffic patterns will change and Google will reassess each time the articles are crawled. It is just too early to make any kind of judgement.
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  lisavollrathposted 9 years agoin reply to this
  I think the numbers say what you want them to say. Traffic on the 25th was roughly the same as it was September 7th. HubPages had an upswing, followed by a downswing. Granted, it was a faster ride down than it was up, but it's not devastating. If you look at three months of traffic instead of one, you'll notice this sort of up and down happens quite a bit.
  
  Paul mentions that transferred content from Squidoo is doing worse, but the older, established content is holding its own. Quantcast doesn't give us any numbers to narrow in on that. If you're doing worse than usual, while other established content is holding steady, I'm pretty sure you can't point to a Squid as the one to blame.
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  paradigmsearchposted 9 years agoin reply to this
  I've never had anything against Squids. In fact, I think they are delicious.
  
  Btw, I, too, am a Squid. Not only that, my illustrious one-hub account is getting more traffic here than it ever did at Squidoo.
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  Brite-Ideasposted 9 years agoin reply to this
  I agree.
  
  Personally I was doing very well at squidoo for traffic, been there 7 years, been through the subdomain switch, I would write, and I would rank - This transfer has temporarily wiped me out, and for the search terms I would rank for nothing that has replaced me is, like I've said before, 'gawds gift to the written word'. Google, decided to flatten out new subdomains and make many of us re-establish ourselves even though we've been writing online for years. Fine. I'll accept it. Does it make it easy, no, fun, no. Is it painful, yes. Does it cause me to rethink how I work online, yes. The amount of traffic that hit the skids for me and others is enormous. Had we still been at squidoo, I suspect we would have been fine, but that's not the case. So, like many here in the same boat, I'm dealing with it as best I can.
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  siramaposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  It takes time (Not Big. Three to six months) to settle down as there is change in the URL of the Content. The imported Squid A/Cs get their traffic back with the benefit of how well Hubpage respected by google.
  
  My Personal Exp: Moved from BlogSpot Sub-Domain to the .com, and I saw drop in the traffic (Around 80% fall). I did nothing but writing new articles with same phase I did before. The traffic automatically picked up to original + 30-40% extra.
  
  So, Simply wait for some time. If you had good content on Squido A/c, and google does't rank it well after the transfer then it is their problem and they are aware that they should not lose the trust of search engine user as the competition exists there also.
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  DzyMsLizzyposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  My goodness. I just looked at that report, and overall, the traffic looks positively dismal, on an individual, person by person basis!! Here are the last 2 lines, for US (left column) and Global, (right column):
  
  Page Views per Person (monthly) 2.00 2.01
  Page Views per Visit (average) 1.44 1.49
  
  That's horrible!! Only 2 page views per person per month????!!!!! And less than 1.5 per visit???!!!
  
  I do not see those as encouraging stats at all, given the millions of people in the top of the list for visits to the site per month. That would seem to indicate that many people visit the main HP domain, but hardly any bother to read anyone's articles.
  
  If my interpretation is wrong, then you now know why I hate and do not trust statistics.
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  makingamarkposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  Have you looked at your average no. of pageviews and Bounce Rate for your hubs on Google Analytics recently?
  
  Always an education!
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  Seasons Greetingsposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  We are secretly evil minions of Google.
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SANJAY LAKHANPALposted 9 years ago
With available options the style remains almost the same.
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janderson99posted 9 years ago
Looks like a pull back to quota (on quantcast), to me. We'll see.
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  paradigmsearchposted 9 years agoin reply to this
  Now that really would be a heck of a note.
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Torrs13posted 9 years ago
I've had my HubPages account for six months and my traffic had been really good for the past few months, but the past few days have beyond plummeted. Thanks for keeping us updated on the process - I hope that everyone's traffic recovers sooner than later.
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  Paula Atwellposted 9 years agoin reply to this
  There is a Panda rollout going on right now that may be affecting your hubs.
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  promisemposted 9 years agoin reply to this
  I'm surprised a Panda rollout would demolish traffic for someone with a score of 100, which is based on HubPage's analysis of what ranks well with search engines.
  
  In my case, a score 0f 95 was not good enough to avoid losing 70 percent of my traffic in only two days.
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  Brite-Ideasposted 9 years agoin reply to this
  Yep me too, I have hubs in the 90's and one at 100 that lost their placements.
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  KathyMcGraw2posted 8 years agoin reply to this
  Yes, but remember from Squidoo all those lenses that were at 100 didn't mean diddly when they wanted to lock them! Those scores there and here mean nothing for all intents and purposes.
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  Torrs13posted 9 years agoin reply to this
  Yeah, it's definitely a bummer. I guess we just all need to hang in there and hope traffic recovers soon.
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  Marisa Wrightposted 9 years agoin reply to this
  Score is not based on HubPages' analysis of what ranks well with search engines.
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  promisemposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  Respectfully, then why have a score? Google accounts for the vast majority of traffic. The point of a score is to acquire traffic, which generates revenue for both HP and us. I understand that many factors go into the score, but it's ultimate usefulness is getting traffic from Google and other search engines.
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  Marisa Wrightposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  This debate has been done to death - if you look, you'll find I and others have made the suggestion that scores should be done away with, since they are not helpful.
  
  The scores are based on a number of factors. One of the big factors is the number of ticks you have in the "Stellar Hub" boxes in the top right hand corner of the Hub. The scores are basically HubPages' way of encouraging you to follow their guidelines.
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sara0129posted 9 years ago
Thanks for the update.
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makingamarkposted 9 years ago
What traffic change?

Other than the funny glitch re Ad Sense last week I've been maintaining pretty steady traffic since the transfer and am very happy with it.
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savateuseposted 9 years ago
Like makingamark, I've had steady traffic since the transfer, particularly from google, so I'm very happy so far.
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Swisstoonsposted 9 years ago
My traffic had been rising since the transfer from Squidoo. About an hour ago, my 1 day traffic suddenly dropped by half. Somehow, I am comforted by the fact that there is a new Panda rollout which could be responsible. But I'm not sure why (I am comforted). If you haven't been hit yet, it's probably only because it takes Google time to crawl every Hubber's pages.
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  Paula Atwellposted 9 years agoin reply to this
  Maybe not, the Panda rollout will not hit every subdomain the same way. It may help some, hurt some and not touch others.
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  Swisstoonsposted 9 years agoin reply to this
  But it can't really hit every hub at the same instant, can it? Seems to me that it has to determine what's in each hub before it can classify it. And don't the bots have to crawl each hub individually to do that? I'm only guessing.
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  Barbara Kayposted 9 years agoin reply to this
  Paula, We long time hubbers have had it happen so many times that we freak out when it does. I had traffic of 2000 view per day go down to 100 during one of the Pandas. Then when the next one rolled through a good part of it came back. It has never regained its original traffic though.
  
  I see you must have arrived here from Squidoo, since you have so many lenses. You've probably been through this yourself.
  
  My traffic has gone down just a tiny bit, so I'm not worrying myself just yet.
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  Paula Atwellposted 9 years agoin reply to this
  Hi Barbara, I have been a member of Hubpages for several years on another account. I am completely aware of what has happened here, and elsewhere. I completely understand. I am just saying that Panda is not all bad to all people. Some people benefit by it.
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  Barbara Kayposted 9 years agoin reply to this
  True.
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Mark Ewbieposted 9 years ago
Hmmm. Here is the latest HubPages v Squidoo Quantcast figure.

I just can't figure it out.

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  janderson99posted 9 years agoin reply to this
  If you look at the data over 12 months you will see that HP has had relatively steady traffic at 620K views per day, with a slight increase to 650K since July. My theory is that Google has an effective quota system - it allocates a relative traffic share to sites based on various criteria. It used Panda and Penguin, and other systems to adjust the traffic back to that quota by tweaking the rankings of mum and child domains associated with HP. What we are seeing is the latest pull-back in traffic after the surge associated with the transfer of the Squids. If this theory is correct, and it matches the traffic pattern, it has profound implications for HP and contributors. It means we are all compteing for a fixed sized pot determined by Google. Time will tell - I predict that traffic will fall back to what it has been over the last 12 months i.e. around 620-650K, despite the squid catch bonus. The quota system started in 2011. Why else would HP's traffic remain so steady on average over such a long time with occasional steps up and down? With major changes in featured hubs, the traffic average should not remain so steady unless Google is twiddling the knobs. Its a pull back to quota - plain and simple.
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  makingamarkposted 9 years agoin reply to this
  Yes - but that is just your theory - as opposed to anything stated by Google on its pages where it explains what it is doing.
  
  I have personally never ever seen anything which suggests that Google operates a quota system. Perhaps you could cite your sources for your quota theory?
  
  Google is very open about the fact that it operates an algorithm which determines traffic flow depending on the criteria and indicators it uses and how it weights their influence within the algorithm. When they adjust them that's what's causes fluctuations.
  
  Google is also very clear that its purpose in making changes is to provide search consumers with more of what they want to see i.e. in a nutshell - good quality content which matches their query exactly.
  
  so quality content rising to the top is the aim - not notional quotas for different domains
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  Coffee-Breakposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  I think you are right about the quota system.
  Based on some of my metrics from GWT, it looks like this is the case.
  As an example, you can have a page on the second place in search results, yet the traffic can vary as much as 300% up and down.
  So with average number of searches constant, and SERP constant, how can the number of visitor vary this much?
  
  So even if your content is great in the eyes of Google, and your visitors, you might still not get the traffic your content deserves.
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  Paul Edmondsonposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  On theory presented to me is that it's sort of traffic throttling, but based on a page rank dilution. Here is an over-simplified example. If you have a site ranking well and the page rank is distributed and flows to each page, if you add several pages, the amount of page rank that flows to each page is diminished. Therefore, traffic gets redistributed as a function of page rank.
  
  So, there is a possible double benefit of removing pages. One, the Panda ranking factor is changed and two, there is more page rank to go around to better pages.
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  paradigmsearchposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  Can you recommend an optimal number of hubs for a subdomain?
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  Coffee-Breakposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  Thanks for your insights on this Paul. It makes sense.
  
  One thing that worked great on Squidoo was the initiative with "the best of" subdomains.
  All my content that was promoted on "the best of" dramatically increased traffic. From the discussions on forums most of content benefited for being featured on "the best of".
  
  My theory is that when the content was promoted it benefited from a few factors, "the silo" effect, means grouping similar content, it was all hand picked content, this is what search engines want, and the new subdomains got their own quota. Obviously this is hyper simplified, and I don't know all the technical details behind that move, but I know it worked for most of the content.
  
  This might even not work here, because everybody is on subdomains, but since this is such an open discussion, I thought I'd mention it.
  
  Thanks Paul for being so open and discussing these with us!!!!!
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pkmcrukposted 9 years ago
I will be very interested in seeing what Paul Edmondson and the team come back with.

In general, I think Paula is absolutely right that we can only take a view over a reasonable amount of time. For me that is three months plus.

One thing I think needs to be said is that a lot of former Lensmasters are looking very critically at their content and how that needs to be adjusted. We are very conscious that the shorter content we were encouraged to create at times doesn't pass muster here and are working to correct that. I know for myself I am looking at what were previously 500 - 750 word lenses and looking to merge them following deletion and de-indexing.

The most active and successful lensmasters are not just sitting back and letting time pass by. We want our content to be successful here!
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  Barbara Kayposted 9 years agoin reply to this
  Sometimes shorter is better. I don't know if I'd put 2 lenses together unless they aren't good enough alone. If you delete the old ones, you'll be losing all the aging, links to them etc.
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  pkmcrukposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  Agreed Barbara and that's what I am looking at closely. Do the pages need more content or do they naturally fit together to create a better reader experience.
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  lisavollrathposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  I did this with two recipe lenses that were very short, and were related. I fleshed it out with a third recipe that was new, and now, I have three variations on a theme, and a healthy hub with a good score.
  
  I'm sort of enjoying the process of expanding much of my content. It's been a challenge with recipes, but I'm finding ways to add information that is relevant. I'm surprised in some cases that I have so much more to say than I did the first time I wrote an article.
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  Snakesmumposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  pkmcruk wrote
  
  Totally agree with you on this point. Some of my lenses have already been deleted, and others are being looked at with a critical eye, as I work to bring them up to standard.
  
  For many of us, this is going to be a long job, and it will take time to get traffic to our new hubs.
  
  As to the traffic loss over the past couple of days, yes, it is down, and hopefully will go up again very soon. Panda could be the villain here, or it could be something else I'm not familiar with. Guess there is not much to do but wait and see, and work on improving our writing.
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makingamarkposted 9 years ago
We had very little notice about the transfer. For most people the main priority was to backup their lenses - and that took ages.

So most people came across with all their lenses intact - and as they have been going through them to resolve matters relating to the transfer they've also been deleting all those they don't think will make it on HubPages.

PLUS I do know for a fact there were a lot of people who let their lenses transfer just so they could get their final payment from Squidoo. There was no option about that. So the notion went, transfer the lens - to get the payment - and then shut it down as a hub and transfer the content to other sites.

Personally speaking I'd check out the traffic profile with the data on the number of transferred hubs and the number still live on the site - you may find an interesting story - which will doubtless impact on traffic.

Plus it may interest those critical of the lenses transferring in that some people had no intention of staying......

Just saying - it's just another perspective to add to life's rich tapestry!
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  Barbara Kayposted 9 years agoin reply to this
  Most of us welcome the new Squids. Please don't feel that we don't.
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  savateuseposted 9 years agoin reply to this
  Thank you, Barbara, it's kind of you to say that.
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  Barbara Kayposted 9 years agoin reply to this
  You are welcome.
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  lisavollrathposted 9 years agoin reply to this
  Most people here have given us a warm welcome. It's just one or two people who seem to be spewing a steady stream of negative posts about former Squidoo writers, our content, our table manners, our monster-themed clothing, and how we're "ruining" HubPages. After a while, it gets old!
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  paradigmsearchposted 9 years agoin reply to this
  I know what you mean. When I went outside just now, someone shot a squid harpoon at me.
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  DrMark1961posted 9 years agoin reply to this
  That goes both ways.
  I have laughed at some of your forum posts and am glad to have you contributing your special views to these threads.
  I have also been attacked by some ex-Squidoo people for chatting with Hubbers. Someone even made a little whiny post the other day about how inappropriate it was to post about something that the person did not understand.
  That gets old too. Comments like that make me a lurker, not a contributor.
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  lisavollrathposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  I never said we didn't bring some idiots with our tribe. Sorry about that, Doc.
  
  I hope you're laughing with me, and not sharpening your Squid harpoons...
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  DrMark1961posted 8 years agoin reply to this
  Thanks! Yes, I´d rather laugh than go out and buy a harpoon. I probably couldnt hit a squid with one if I even tried.
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shellys-spaceposted 9 years ago
Thank you Paul for posting this information on the forum. I am in the same boat as the rest of the ex-Squidoo members.

Learning the HubPages "ropes" and updating my pages to reflect 100% is certainly time-consuming, but I hope to see some traffic return in the near future.

I know I need to go back and re-do many pages ASAP, because I misunderstood what the summary section was...I thought it was an introduction and would show up on my pages when I was done editing. That does not seem to not be correct, the summary is an overview not visible to the public (think that is correct).
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  Paula Atwellposted 9 years agoin reply to this
  Not quite. The summary shows up on search engines often, if you pin on Pinterest, but not on the actual page with the article.
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  shellys-spaceposted 9 years agoin reply to this
  Paula: Thanks for posting this, I didn't know the summary would show up on Pinterest, but that should not surprise me, as often part of my introduction from Squidoo showed up the "Pin".
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  PegCole17posted 8 years agoin reply to this
  The summary also shows up on your profile page beside the thumbnail of each of your hubs and in your spotlight where you select hubs you want to have revolving and displayed there.
  Peg
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makingamarkposted 9 years ago
I've been taking a look at my detailed statistics re traffic on Google Analytics.

I'd very much recommend people do the same and in particular pay attention to:
* bounce rate
* average time on page
* the overall profile of a hub's traffic when reviewed as follows
Behaviour
Overview
Behaviour Flow
Site Content
All Pages
- then specific page - click and you can see the profile for an individual page/hub. Look to see what are the indicators for hubs where traffic is steady, those where traffic is rising and any where traffic has been up and down or is dropping.

Also remember to factor in normal variation in traffic flow between different days of the week e.g. don't compare a Friday with a Monday!

Remember if Google makes an adjustment, some suffer but not everybody does. I also recommend using your other external sites as some kind of benchmark for any changes.

This is what I found on Google+ re. some sort of announcement by a chap called Pierre far who's quoted by Searchengineland http://searchengineland.com/panda-update-rolling-204313 as being some sort of spokesperson for Google

source: https://plus.google.com/+PierreFar/posts/7CWs3a3yoeY
"Panda update rolling out

Earlier this week, we started a slow rollout of an improved Panda algorithm, and we expect to have everything done sometime next week.

Based on user (and webmaster!) feedback, we’ve been able to discover a few more signals to help Panda identify low-quality content more precisely. This results in a greater diversity of high-quality small- and medium-sized sites ranking higher, which is nice.

Depending on the locale, around 3-5% of queries are affected."

So bottom line, the aim of the Panda update is to allow small and medium sized sites to rank better if they have quality content.

So if you've got good quality hubs then in theory, it seems to me you should actually benefit or at the very least be no worse off.
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janderson99posted 9 years ago
Sorry, Google's ranking algorithm is a secret and Google is very closed about providing any details apart from generalizations. The 'quota' hypothesis is my own deduction from analysing the data and traffic trends of various sites. Panda and Penguin are effective tweaks to the original ranking algorithm to impose penalties and adjust traffic according to what Google wants. The outcome of this is an effective quota system to share the traffic. There are occasional adjustments depending on 'quality' assessments. Look at the Quantcast data! Why is the traffic so consistent over a long period of time?
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  makingamarkposted 9 years agoin reply to this
  I'm sorry - you'll need to provide a lot more evidence than that to get me to believe in "a quota theory".
  
  How exactly do they work out these quotas since the total quantum of traffic and sites changes all the time 24/7?
  
  It's much easier to direct traffic to sites according to an algorithm! This produces changes in which sites are favoured but in no way produces a "quota system"!
  
  If you look at the Quantcast traffic (as I have done re Squidoo for many months and also for my own blog) you'll note that
  1) traffic is not consistent for every day of the week never mind from week to week. There is constant variation - and for some sites that variation also relates to an overall trend.
  2) traffic is steadier on more mature sites and fluctuates on immature sites (the latter sometimes characterise "a flash in a pan" i.e. rapid increase and decrease)
  3) traffic varies depending on frequency of posting / updating (which is why "freshness" is factored into the algorithm)
  4) traffic varies according to how accessible archived data is
  5) traffic sometimes moves in line with that of very similar sites ie the algorithm sometimes affects articles sites but not blogs
  6) traffic varies depending on geography. It's always worth looking at the global stats vs the USA stats for a site for example - they tell me a lot!
  
  Do I need to go on?
  
  So how exactly does this quota regime work - on a global basis?
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  Writer Foxposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  Apparently you are unfamiliar with Google's stance on domain clustering.
  http://searchengineland.com/google-doma … nge-159997
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  makingamarkposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  What on earth has that got to do with topics not previously covered by HubPages?
  
  I'd certainly agree that those operating in fields where there is a lot of competition are certainly going to hear the pips squeak as the "cream of the crop" hubs rise to the top.
  
  However such a situation is not unique to Hubpages. This scenario is just a micro version of the situation in relation to competition within Google generally.
  
  Think of the trends on traffic like an incentive to workout to get fit for Google! Or like a message to give up and go and find another topic to write about....
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janderson99posted 8 years ago
My theory predicts that after a week or so HP traffic will fall back to the level it was before the thousands of lenses were added. Why should thousands of extra pages not generate extra traffic. They did initially, but then Google twiddled the knobs. It is the average weekly traffic I am talking about not the daily changes. Why should Hp traffic remain so consistent over 12 months despite all the changes that have been made including all the extra pages added. The consistency implies control. Ie a quota. Let us see what happens. Cheers
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  makingamarkposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  HubPages should get extra traffic for precisely the same reason that people building new hubs will expect to generate extra traffic.
  
  That's because new content - if it is good enough - will generate traffic. Old content - if it is good enough - will continue to generate traffic. The net effect will be an increase in traffic whether the new hub is imported or created from scratch
  
  Please explain how your theory tackles the creation of traffic to newly created hubs.
  
  Are you saying - as your explanation to date implies - that for every new lens created some other hubber should expect to lose traffic?
  
  Do you think this is a viable and sustainable business model?
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  janderson99posted 8 years agoin reply to this
  Yep - the net effect is that
  'for every new lens created some other hubber should expect to lose traffic?'
  in the sense that hubs compete for the limited pie, which remains the same. It is partially due to competition for the same topic and partially due to the ranks being lowered a little, so that they are less competitive. Adding more hubs will not necessarily increase traffic.
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  makingamarkposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  Now explain how a site grows its traffic!
  
  Hubpages did not spring fully formed at this level of traffic! THERE IS NO QUOTA!
  
  All sites that are successful grow their traffic over time - very often in relation to the weight of content of the site which is valued by others. It also works in reverse as a site loses credibility.
  
  I'm speaking as somebody who has a blog which has been growing traffic steadily for the last nine years. Plus I was doing regular analysis of the demise of Squidoo via Quantcast charts on another site re Squidoo for some 18 months - 2 years.
  
  I think I've been looking at statistics for a lot longer than you.
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  Mark Ewbieposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  Jesus.
  
  "I have been blah blah".
  
  Well gosh. So impressed.
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  janderson99posted 8 years agoin reply to this
  Do you think this is a viable and sustainable business model?
  If you are referring to Google, then I think it is. Panda and Penguin apply to sites, domains and subdomains and not to individual pages. Google is assessing sites and tweaking the ranks to give them more or less share based on their assessment of 'quality' and 'what the users' want. They penalise sites that fail their tests. The latest Panda is supposed to give the little sites an extra boost in ranking, because they were hard done by in the past. This strategy of secret quotas is the best way for Google to remain sustainable. IMO
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  makingamarkposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  I am not referring to Google.
  
  My query about a viable and sustainable business model entirely related to your description of the HubPages site as being one where old hubs lost traffic as new hubs were created - because of your notion that every domain gets a QUOTA.
  
  Why would anybody stay on a site when it was an absolute fact that there work would be diminished by every new person who came along?
  
  That's what my question about a viable and sustainable business model related to.
  
  The only way HubPages can stay in business is to keep people on board who write decent content and to keep delivering whatever reward they deem appropriate for the amount off effort they put into writing for the site.
  
  Start trashing the traffic of existing good quality hubs because new ones are created - and there's only so much quota to go round - and you can watch an awful lot of people walk away fairly briskly!
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  janderson99posted 8 years agoin reply to this
  Below is the Quantcast data for HP over the last 12 months, You can interpret the trend as a slight rise or virtually no significant increase in 12 months. HP has done well to sustain its traffic, but it would be hard to argue that its traffic is steadily increasing in leaps and bounds. The addition of the lenses, boosted traffic, but there has been a decrease over the last few days.
  
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  makingamarkposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  Oh for goodness sake, just crunch the numbers!
  
  Since when is an increase of nearly 24% classed as "a slight rise or virtually no significant increase in 12 months"?
  
  Try looking at the numbers on the y axis before arriving at conclusions from visual inspection of a chart…..
  
  Here are the facts with numbers derived from Quantcast
  
  HubPages 2 September 2013
  mobile web 296732
  online uniques 258515
  
  HubPages 31 August 2014 i.e. BEFORE any transfers from Squidoo
  mobile web 465,381
  online uniques 224559
  
  Actual increase/(decrease) year on year
  mobile web 168,649
  online uniques (33,956)
  NET INCREASE IN TRAFFIC = 134,693
  
  Percentage increase (decrease) year on year
  mobile web 56.8% INCREASE
  online uniques 13.1% DECREASE
  NET INCREASE IN TRAFFIC = 24.2%
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  Writer Foxposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  Your crunching is askew.
  
  Total Unique Global Visitors on August 31st: 1,286,672
  Total Unique Global Visitors on September 25th: 1,306,003
  
  Total increase of new pages: 52%
  Total increase in Unique Global Visitors: 1.5% (and, many of those are new users)
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  makingamarkposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  You completely misunderstand
  1) I'm discussing a theory which I can demonstrate is wrong with respect to year on year data for HubPages alone.
  2) With respect to stats on Quantcast, there are a variety of options - global and then national. I quoted the USA stats as this is the default version which most people look at when they visit the site.
  3) Nobody considers statistics in the first month (or even three months) of a major change to be definitive! They take absolutely ages to settle down! Just ask all the Squidoo lensmasters what happened to our traffic when our lenses were shifted to sub-domains and how long it took to retrieve our traffic.
  4) trying to assess site statistics in the middle of a Panda update is even more challenging - not least because it's still unclear whether or not this is a slow roll-out (as has happened on occasion in the past).
  
  The point is still the same - there has been a VERY significant increase in traffic to Hubpages year on year BEFORE the transfer of the Squidoo lenses.
  
  The time to comment on the impact of the import is AFTER:
  * those intending to delete hubs has happened
  * those intending to take their content elsewhere has happened (lots only came so they could collect their final payment from Squidoo; lots intend to place at least some of their content elsewhere)
  * the site has settled down.
  
  One thing is certain, the number of imported sites will reduce significantly in the coming weeks - if they haven't already.
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  Writer Foxposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  There is no 'year on year' comparison. It's been three weeks. That's all there is to compare.
  
  And the only 'increase' to traffic right now is in the number of new users visiting their accounts: 25,827 new Hubbers in the past three weeks.
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  makingamarkposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  You still haven't got it have you? You're talking about something completely different to the topic I made a comment on.
  
  With respect to the traffic AFTER 2 September 2014 - which I was NOT talking about - this is a statement from Paul Edmondson in another thread http://hubpages.com/forum/topic/125162#post2642966
  
  Rubbish this if you are so inclined - I personally think he's absolutely spot on.
  
  "It will take a while for things to settle down for all the content we transferred from Squidoo to HubPages. My expectation is it will be a bit bumpy until we hit a steady state over the next several months. "
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David Stone1posted 8 years ago
Just throwing in my two cents. As I mentioned on an early thread, my traffic has slowly dwindled by about 30%. I don't know about anyone else, but I can't attribute much of it to Google because I am 85% dependent on social media referrals, not search. I got the drop anyway.

I'll add that, where I am dependent on search, my results have gone sour, but have plateaued in the last few days.

What's missing here for ex-Squids is the affect of 301 redirects. Matt Cutts says that 301s will result in a 10-15% drop in search rank. When you consider how damaging a single drop down on Page One, above the fold to below, impacts views, you get the idea that the 301s may be the primary factor for the devastating results for some lens transfers.

Thank you, once again, Seth, Cory, Gil, Bonnie and Robin. One more thing for which we were given no warning.
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  Marisa Wrightposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  I think this is an excellent point.
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Paul Wardposted 8 years ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Filv4pP-1nw
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shellys-spaceposted 8 years ago
Help me understand about all my "hub" URL pages now as I am updating many of my "pins" and links from my own websites to reflect HP and leave the Squidoo URL behind. When I use my HP URL, will it do a 301 re-direct from the Squidoo URL, or is http://shellys-space.hubpages.com/hub/XXXX the NEW URL now?

I am a bit dizzy trying to figure all this out.
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ologsinquitoposted 8 years ago
WriterFox, are you saying this hasn't hit yet? Is it just at the point where all of our hubs have been crawled? I hope something can be done to avert disaster, if that's what we're staring at. I'm praying things work out.
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  Writer Foxposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  Google Panda 4.1 began earlier this week and will continue rolling out into next week. (It takes that long to cover every page in the Google Index from all data centers.)
  
  Google’s John Mueller announced on September 12 that Penguin 3.0 is imminent and is expected to roll out within the next three months.
  
  These are two different algorithms. Panda targets low quality content and the entire website which hosts it. Penguin targets webspam.
  
  (If you won't tell Mark Ewbie, I'll mention that I have Hubs covering both of these algorithms.)
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paradigmsearchposted 8 years ago
11:00 AM, HP time, and Q still hasn't released yesterday's HP stats. What's up with that?
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ologsinquitoposted 8 years ago
I need to go and read them. Individually, is there anything each of us can do to lessen the sting? This morning, I deleted four or five pages from my former Squid account, and got rid of excess affiliate links, to do my part to help the site. Is there anything we can do now for our main accounts that haven't transferred over from HP?
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  Writer Foxposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  Follow the advice in my Hubs. Make very sure that you NoFollow all affiliate links (Zazzle, and the like). Include a few followed links to relevant webpages which provide additional information (not Wikipedia). Do not include any photo credit links in the photo capsules. (If your photos require attribution by the copyright holder, give the credit in a text capsule and NoFollow the link.) Make your photo captions true Alt Image tags and NOT captions. Include information on your Hubs which is unique and is found nowhere else on the Web. etc., etc., etc...
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  paradigmsearchposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  I, too, immediately cleaned up my one and only lens when it arrove here. Amazingly, Google is actually sending occasional visitors to it; which, incidentally, is something that never happened when it was on Squidoo. Come to think of it, there is another thread that needs bumping; stay tuned Squid Folks, it's the one about quickly finding Amazon capsules to delete, hide, edit, etc.
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  Rochelle Frankposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  Arove? "A-roving, a-roving
  Since roving's been my rue-I-ay
  I'll go no more a-roving with you fair maid."
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  paradigmsearchposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  I know, but I love that word.
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ologsinquitoposted 8 years ago
Thanks so much WriterFox. All my affiliate links are nofollow. How do I make my photo captions alt image tags?
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  Writer Foxposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  To learn what an Alt tag is and how to write a proper one, go to my SEO Tutorial Hub and choose this from the Table of Contents: III. A. 3. Meta Tags
  
  HP has not given us an option to add an Alt tag AND a caption. Instead, here the caption you put in IS the Alt tag. That's a horrible idea, but we are stuck with that.
  
  I've lobbied several times for a change, but it hasn't happened yet. (At least we were able to get the NoFollow option for text links. However, most Hubbers are not using these and this is considered webspam by Google – bad for all of us.) See my post here: http://hubpages.com/forum/topic/113562#post2416481
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  ologsinquitoposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  Thanks WriterFox, before you could respond, I already found your article.
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  Writer Foxposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  Care to share your vitamin brand?
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  ologsinquitoposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  Organic tulsi tea.
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ologsinquitoposted 8 years ago
WriterFox, I watched the video by Matt Cutts. There was an HTML code on a whiteboard. Is this what we copy, and put into a text link, using our own descriptions?
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  Writer Foxposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  I'm not sure I understand. For a photo credit, just make a normal link in a text capsule and check the NoFollow box:
  
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  ologsinquitoposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  Writer Fox, where do we put the ALT description and how do we build it?
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  Writer Foxposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  Open the Photo capsule and put it in the box: "Caption (Optional)"
  
  Photos aren't loading on HP right now. Don't know why.
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  JYOTI KOTHARIposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  No, I have uploaded photos today.
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  Writer Foxposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  Me, too. But for some reason I can't get them to upload right now. I'm sure it's temporary.
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ologsinquitoposted 8 years ago
Okay, I'm starting to get it. Instead of just a random captoin, make this short description search engine friendly.
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  Writer Foxposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  A description of what is actually in the photo, not a real caption. (Sucks, doesn't it?)
  
  The images aren't loading right now, but you can view them here:
  http://s2.hubimg.com/u/11839703_f248.jpg
  http://s2.hubimg.com/u/11839651_f520.jpg
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ologsinquitoposted 8 years ago
Thanks so much. Now I get it. What a cute baby in that picture.
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  Writer Foxposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  That's the 'success' meme baby. (He has an attitude.)
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  ologsinquitoposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  Oh, I must be living in a cave.
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  Writer Foxposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  That's where foxes live.
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ologsinquitoposted 8 years ago
I am now unable to edit anything. I get a notice saying there is scheduled maintenance.
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  Writer Foxposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  Curiouser and curiouser!
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ologsinquitoposted 8 years ago
It just says the site is in a scheduled maintenance window, and will resume normal operations in 23 minutes.
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  Writer Foxposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  The baby picture's gone.
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  paradigmsearchposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  I had to go see this for myself. You are right. I don't remember ever seeing that happen before. No rest for HP staff these days. And still no update from Q. Interesting times ahead...
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  Rochelle Frankposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  I've had trouble making connection with Hp throughout the day-- also we are being spam-bombed.
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  paradigmsearchposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  Same here, I couldn't access the site for an hour straight just now.
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ologsinquitoposted 8 years ago
It must be part of this maintenance.
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paradigmsearchposted 8 years ago
And Sunday begins... https://www.quantcast.com/hubpages.com?country=US (only covers through Friday as of this post). For what it's worth, my traffic was a tad higher this Saturday than last Saturday. Personally, I'm going on a hub updating spree today.
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  janderson99posted 8 years agoin reply to this
  Traffic now has fallen to what it was in August 2014. Ho Hum!
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  Barbara Kayposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  Same here, it is dropping.
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  jansharesposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  I'm doing the same, para. I've started by deleting all unnecessary ads and links. I'm up to 15 deleted from 8 hubs. Have also shortened a few titles. Now I'm off to church to pray. Later gator . . .
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LongTimeMotherposted 8 years ago
Hi paradigmsearch. Hard to believe what just happened to you. That should be written into ToS so it never happens again.

Personally though, I wouldn't like the referral program to be discontinued. It is, after all, another way for us all to make a little extra money ... if handled correctly. As a referrer, I consider it appropriate to offer to help new hubbers who sign up under me. The more successful they are, the better the result for me as well. I have mentioned it to a number of other writers I know - and I'm hoping the referral program stays in place until they all sign up.

I'm sure the vast majority of referrers are like me, and would never betray a confidence. A penalty should exist though for those who make reference to income or perceived performance. Perhaps the penalty should be passing the 10% from every month onto you as compensation!
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  paradigmsearchposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  Works for me.
  
  And thanks. Personally and in my humble opinion, I think that my making payout every month is something to be proud of. May we all live long and prosper.
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  Barbara Kayposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  It is. Many of the writers here don't.
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  paradigmsearchposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  Thanks.
  
  Well... The Saturday Q stats are out. It's decelerating at least. https://www.quantcast.com/hubpages.com?country=US
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  Mark Ewbieposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  It was unfair. But some people are desperately, hysterically trying to stop any kind of debate about the wisdom of importing 180,000 pages without any editorial control.
  
  Maybe they think they can hold on till Halloween.
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  justholidaysposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  You're wrong...
  
  175,000 featured and 275,000 unpublished lenses... 450,000 total
  
  Now you have some food for more anger against Squids
  
  By the way, we didn't ask HP to acquire our content or the right to display it, we weren't given any other option but click on that green transfer button otherwise we would have lost ALL our earnings. Most former Squids who landed on here are honest and hard workers. I don't know in which language we have to say it but please allow them some rest.
  
  Thank you.
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  Mark Ewbieposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  Lol. Here's hoping you have a successful Halloween.
  
  As for giving them a rest, being fair and friendly and all that business.
  
  What? I am not here to earn some accolades or make friends. I am here - or used to be - to learn how to write stuff that might get some traffic, earn some money.
  
  This is a forum. That's where people express opinions, make statements.
  
  Jesus. It's not all one big Amazon advert in life you know.
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  justholidaysposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  So you're reducing my writings to Halloween? Well luckily my native HP account shows if ever needed, that I can write about other things too!
  
  And although I've been reading some of your articles outside of HP, I won't be making assumptions nor judge you in regards of what I've seen.
  
  Don't you think that such prejudice doesn't allow you to open yourself to others? Apart from the fact that you're not looking for friends on here, of course. Still you're part of these forums.
  
  I'm not here to earn more friends or accolades either, Mark Ewbie. Real life is outside of the Internet. My friends are outside as well.
  
  I'm not the kind of person who was in favour in Squidoo's forums - I was banned for speaking my mind and even removed my Giant status for a post on my personal blog. Although I rather like the freedom of speech we find here, I also try to keep a respectful attitude towards others. And I expect the same treatment from others too.
  
  "My freedom ends where someone else's begins".
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  Mark Ewbieposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  I just assumed from your name and the first page I noticed.
  
  You can assume what you like about me.
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  justholidaysposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  You assume the wrong way. My native HP account's nickname is entirely unrelated to the actual content of the account.
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  Mark Ewbieposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  OK. I will spend far more time on research in future.
  
  Or maybe less time in the forums.
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  Jayne Lancerposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  I'm sure that publicly disclosing information about the earnings of another person without prior consent is so unthinkable for a reasonable person that nobody ever thought to state it in the ToS. I agree--hopefully it will now be written in. Isn't it a shame that there's always somebody who makes it necessary to add yet another rule?
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  Mark Ewbieposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  It was a cheap shot and typical of the attempts to stop voicing an opinion about the biggest change at HubPages for a long time. I guess none of her referrals will dare say anything now.
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LisaMarieGabrielposted 8 years ago
I would say pull the plug on the redirects as Squidoo is now dead in the water and these may be considered bad links pointing to hubs. I also have to say none of us expected that the site would go down or that we would be transferred here. We were also told only the best featured lenses would transfer and it appears that a lot of unfeatured stuff came over too. That is a let down for those who did try hard to get it right under the old rules and want to improve to comply with the new.
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Savio Dawsonposted 8 years ago
Hi,

By when will the traffic stabilize. Overall my hub hits have fallen by 75% That is a huge number in my opinion. Is this happening with others as well?

So, would like to know:

1. If the hub traffic will pick up?
2. Hopefully, Google will not think of us as a new content farm springing up and block us (because of squidoo content)

Please let me know.
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  neosurkposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  Just to let you know, only handful of users have experienced this (mainly hubbers). This IS due to the Squidoo transfer because the lenses are absolutely zero quality. I'm one of the squidoo transfers and am so happy that Squidoo lenses are not sandboxed while Google is penalizing HP's old hubs. Thank god Squidoo made a good decision by selling out to HP.
  
  Regarding traffic, it seems as if the traffic will not go up until HP users stop blaming everything on Squidoo lenses.
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  promisemposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  I'm curious to know why you think only a handful of Hubbers have experienced a drop. Quantcast shows a significant drop in traffic for HubPages. If only a handful of Hubbers were impacted, I doubt we would see such a big drop.
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  makingamarkposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  You're assuming all Hubbers are equal and the simple fact is they are not.
  
  One of the things which surprised quite a few people coming here from Squidoo was that there were relatively few hubbers with a lot of hubs.
  
  It's very probably an 80/20 scenario with 20% of the hubbers creating 80% of the traffic
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  promisemposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  I am making no such assumptions. HubPages total traffic has plummeted 46% from 1,063,000 on Sept. 21 to 577,000 on Sept. 27. There is no way that kind of drop can be attributed to a "handful of Hubbers."
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  makingamarkposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  
  ...and the traffic at the end of August was......?
  
  what you see on this chart is the steady increase in traffic as Squidoo lenses were imported and transformed into hubs.
  
  The decline in the last week is very probably associated with the shakeout that Google will now give the site as the new hubs bed down amongst the old.
  
  Unfortunately we had a Panda update at the same time which confuses matters.
  
  We should know in about three months time what the steady state looks like.
  
  That will be after
  * people editing their hubs following transfer have deleted unwanted hubs.
  * Plus those who only came here to get their last payment from Squidoo have also deleted their hubs and taken their content elsewhere.
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  promisemposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  And the trendline started when? HubPages had a steady upward trend over a one-year period -- long before the arrival of any lenses. Are you seriously trying to overlook a 46% drop in six days?
  
  While I understand why some people from Squidoo (and I had an account there) would take some of these comments personally, get defensive and try to rationalize what's happening, they shouldn't.
  
  If you write quality articles, we welcome you with open arms.
  
  If you write garbage that has 300 words, no photos and contains only affiliate links, like the one I just pulled up, don't be surprised that some of us are upset at our plunging audience and earnings that we have worked so hard to achieve.
  
  ADDED: For the record, Saturday's traffic to HubPages was the lowest since June 14 (except for the July 4 holiday).
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  makingamarkposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  The chart runs from the end of August to yesterday - in other words it covers the last month less a day or two. The trendline if you exclude the recent increase and decrease associated with the import of the Squidoo lenses and Google trying to get its head around them is not so awful given the fact there has been a Panda update at the same time.
  
  Please don't misunderstand me. The people who have arrived at HubPages who produce quality content are more than a bit miffed that Squidoo allowed so much crap on the site. Many of us spent a long time trying to report it to HQ to no avail.
  
  We would also have liked to see the back of the very short "lenslets" which were created in recent months as "the solution" (hollow laugh) to the traffic decline.
  
  In the meantime lots of people who had lost confidence in the way the site was managed exited the site and took their quality content - and their traffic - with them. Some even came here before the transfer!
  
  Bottom line Squidoo became a very different site from the one it was at the beginning - and not all former lensmasters make lenses in the same way!
  
  I would also not assume that everybody who moved here with quality content is staying - even if we had had "a friendly welcome". Long term strategies in terms of the ultimate placement for content are being discussed at present.
  
  HubPages is a possibility - but no better than that
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  promisemposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  I agree that Panda has complicated the picture. Thanks for your comments.
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  makingamarkposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  My pleasure.
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  maalarueposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  Amen to that @pomiseem,
  
  I wish HubPages would come out with a statement to help us all understand what has happened and what they are doing to correct this mess. Or have they already? If they have, please send me a link. Thanks.
  
  I believe we got hit by Google with the sudden huge influx of lenses to hubs, spammy and non-spammy, quality and non-quality. Unfortunately it is too late and the damage has already been done. Now...what is HubPages doing about it? And why did they let this happen in the first place? Our loss is also their loss. So I am sure they are also motivated to get this issue resolved.
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  ologsinquitoposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  The three-month time frame you mentioned is probably correct. Meanwhile, I'll be doing all that I can to make my work as SEO friendly as possible.
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  janderson99posted 8 years agoin reply to this
  The stats shown are a classic return to Quota after Google twiddled the knobs! It has returned to the average August Pageviews of around 1 Million views. My guess is that it will stay at that level, despite the addition of many many extra pages. Sad loss of traffic for most. Time will tell! Pageviews have average 900K to 1 M over the last 12 months despite all the changes made over that period. And you can't get over that!
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  Marisa Wrightposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  Spot on.
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  Jason Sositkoposted 8 years agoin reply to this
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  makingamarkposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  I agree Jason - there were a lot of inconsequential lenses churned out which won't make it on HubPages. [Note Jason's revised comment is now below this one!]
  
  My personal view is that HubPages should only have taken the ORIGINAL 180,000 top featured lenses (ie those featured as at the date of the announcement) - which was what was indicated would happen in the original announcement.
  
  Instead what happened was:
  1) a lot of people deleted their old crap lenses. Everybody had them - they were old and/or out of date and/or focused on Squidoo and/or no longer relevant - but were still around. So people used the transfer as a reason to get rid. This moved a lot of previously unfeatured lenses into the top 180,000
  2) a lot of people moved their good quality featured content off the site - and deleted their lenses so they could set up that content on new sites. Ergo more of the same - a lot more previously unfeatured lenses moved into the top 180,000.
  3) Hence by the time the transfer started, the 180,000 featured lenses were very different from the 180,000 featured lenses prior to the announcement. This certainly was not an accredited quality 180,000. This was the top 180,000 of what was left on Squidoo!
  
  How do I know this?
  
  Well I ended up with c.100 lenses in the top 10,000 lenses (i.e. the top two tiers) by the date of the transfer. Now virtually all my lenses were part of that original 180,000 featured lenses anyway - but that was a very major shift from the 50 odd which had been in the top two tiers for some time i.e. I'd experienced a 100% increase.
  reply report
3. 0
  darkprinceofjazzposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  I believe one big mistake made was allowing the usually thin on content, "review lenses" to transfer at all.
  
  Many of those had the bare minimum word count of 250, Imagine if accounts full of those came over? I am a realist, those lenses IMHO should be unpublished if they are under 700 words by the author.
  
  I unpublished all of mine that were under 700 words.
  
  Also being a realist, these transferred lenses were suppose to go through Squidoo's quality assessment. Was it wise to completely trust that assessment? They had/have different philosophies?
  
  I wish Hubpages would have demanded at least a 700 "or whatever" word count minimum to allow transfer. I think that would have saved all of us a lot of problems.
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  59
  HomeArtist1posted 8 years agoin reply to this
  Right on. Many of those lenslets were created--mine included-- were written purely because
  HQ told us we must write three to keep our Giant status.
  
  I wrote three as dictated, without heart, without the substance I insist on with my own more current pieces and without a care in the world if it ranked well or otherwise.
  
  Yes, those old lenses should be deleted or moved--and quick like.
  reply report
4. 0
  promisemposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  Based on the number of comments I've seen and the overall drop in HubPages traffic, I suspect quite a few people are experiencing it. I think we need to give HP time to sort out the transfer.
  reply report
0
darkprinceofjazzposted 8 years ago
Sorry @makingamark,

I had deleted the post, and then re-posted under this account as to not sock poppet. I will use the forum under this account.
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87
LisaMarieGabrielposted 8 years ago
"My personal view is that HubPages should only have taken the ORIGINAL 180,000 top featured lenses (ie those featured as at the date of the announcement) - which was what was indicated would happen in the original announcement."

Making a Mark is spot on. All of my lenses were featured albeit some made in response to set tasks (ie "lenslets") were not high quality. Now those who deleted lenses for whatever reason freed up room for some of the "dross" to rise and extending that further to include lenses beyond the featured 175000 will have exacerbated any problem.

If I were admin here (which thank the Lord I am not, because I am a simple musician and writer) I would make some hard decisions about "lenses" and non-QAP hubs that are below a certain score and show no evidence of having been updated for long periods of time.

That decision might be to unpublish, issue a "please update by XX/XX/XXXX" email to be eligible for QAP and republishing. If by a set period after the email they have not been modified and resubmitted then delete them from the database. That would get rid of any unedited link heavy/content poor and/or spun content from abusers on both sites.
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68
justholidaysposted 8 years ago
The biggest difference between HubPages and Squidoo is that on Squidoo the top 1 lens didn't have to be good, didn't have to generate traffic, didn't have to be the best, and so on.

Too many factors entered into what brought a lens from 1,000,000 to the top 2,000. And these factors evolved with time (not always in the right direction) and changed a lot. I believe these past 18 months internal interactivity (along with agreeing with HQ all the time) was more rewarded with a push to the top than it was before.

I've seen such a junk while browsing the site on Easter... It was quite surprising for me since I didn't browse Squidoo lenses for months - since they folded my angel wings to be precise.

Lots and lots of empty lenses with "top blah-blah-blah for Easter" : a short intro and 4 or 5 Amazon modules in which the author made the BIG effort to add a "descriptive" sentence 100% similar to the product name.

Did HP staff think about these differences in ranks when they acquired the "best of Squidoo"? A large part of the best of was already gone as well. Squidoo got rid of it themselves.

Then the mass exodus opened a highway for more rubbish to sit in the 450,000 first lenses out of which only 175,000 were featured.
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1. 67
  makingamarkposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  I'd definitely agree that a lot of quality content exited the Squidoo site well before August given the approach being adopted by HQ towards handling the steady decline in traffic.
  
  Indeed the exit of quality content which attracted external traffic was one of the reasons for the decline in Squidoo.
  
  That said there was still quality content around at the end. I'd argue it was mostly content which was validated by significant external traffic rather than "being in with the in crowd". The internal ranking still paid too much attention to internal traffic as opposed to external visitors.
  
  The people who know they can generate external traffic know who they are. They're the ones that will pick up their content and move it elsewhere if a host doesn't match their expectations.
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  95
  Anthony Altorennaposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  "Indeed the exit of quality content which attracted external traffic was one of the reasons for the decline in Squidoo.
  
  That said there was still quality content around at the end. "
  
  I like to think that most of my articles meet the Quality Content criteria. The traffic to my top Lenses / Hubs was pretty good, and I average about 1200 views a day of external traffic.
  
  Since importing my articles, I've spent a lot of time updating and reformatting my new Hubs. Multiple the editing by all of the other former Squids who are editing their new Hubs, and I wonder if all of the editing and re-publishing has a negative impact on the search engines. Perhaps this surge of activity along with the massive influx of new sub-domains might be contributing to the decline in traffic. Just a thought....
  
  Regardless, I'll ride out the ups and downs in traffic. I just glad that HubPages offered a friendly place to post my articles, and made the transition so easy.
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  68
  Paula Atwellposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  Well said. I tend to work long term online and don't like to jump to any conclusions right away. Instead of the endless speculating, why not spend time getting things in good order and finding more ways to improve a group of different income streams. That way these types of changes won't hurt so much.
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  85
  ologsinquitoposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  +1
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  0
  promisemposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  I make my entire living online. I agree it's best not to jump to conclusions, but I also think it helps to analyze and try to understand these situations. Endless speculating is bad, information and insight are good.
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  68
  justholidaysposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  Add to what you listed the massive unpublishing process that occurs on former lenses - lensographies, templates and other stuff that won't make it on here and that shouldn't have been transfered.
  reply report
60
paradigmsearchposted 8 years ago
Sunday traffic went up!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

https://www.quantcast.com/hubpages.com?country=US

That is the last thing in the world I expected!

If Monday does it some more, it just might be the beginning of happy camper time again. Maybe.
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1. 0
  promisemposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  Sundays and Mondays are usually the two best days of the week. It will be interesting to see the numbers next Sunday and Monday to see if the site is starting to bounce back.
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2. 87
  LisaMarieGabrielposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  Yes, just looking at the graph rather than crunching the numbers, levels at the end of the month seem not much changed from the end of August and also seem to be on a slightly upward trend. Party time if you are right
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promisemposted 8 years ago
I wonder if some content categories have been hit harder than others based on which categories at Squidoo brought the most articles. Some categories might be more disrupted than others.

Another possibility is that certain categories at Squidoo delivered more lower quality content, while others brought higher quality content that created more competition within certain HP categories.

That might explain why some folks have seen a big drop while others haven't seen much of a drop at all.
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84
rainsanmartinposted 8 years ago
I've also experienced a 50% drop in traffic over the last week.
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60
paradigmsearchposted 8 years ago
Well, Monday Q stats are out. I'd hoped to post a celebratory image of a rainbow here today, but such is not to be. The traffic did increase from Sunday, but my optimism has disappeared. Let's hope the lackluster performance is due to server issues and not Panda issues.

Obligatory link. https://www.quantcast.com/hubpages.com?country=US
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1. 85
  ologsinquitoposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  Let's hope so. It is taking me forever to even log into my account.
  reply report
  60
  paradigmsearchposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  Yep, I'm still running across glitches here, too.
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  59
  HomeArtist1posted 8 years agoin reply to this
  It's maddening when one has many hubs to edit. I'll delete the same
  image three times before I realize I need to refresh the page.
  
  Out of frustration I just hit 'done editing' and check it out when all is well.
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goodnews11posted 8 years ago
My traffic dropped from 600 per day to less than 100.
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1. 61
  JYOTI KOTHARIposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  I an also witnessing fall in traffic. It is about 35% of the last week.
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2. 60
  C.V.Rajanposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  badnews101!
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95
Kierstin Gunsbergposted 8 years ago
Paul, has HubPages given any thought to a more rigorous filtering system for Hubs and Hubbers as well as a stronger social media presence? Two things that I think will be very important to HubPage's survival through all of these Google updates.

Otherwise I see HubPages going the way of a lot of the other content sites. Google doesn't like fluff, it doesn't like spam, it doesn't like poor spelling, grammar, or English, and unfortunately there is quite a bit of that here on HubPages.
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1. 82
  Mark Ewbieposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  HubPages has had rules in place - getting more and more strict - since the Panda strikes that started in 2011. Up till this hit things had been wandering along in a flat line.
  
  Panda might have struck anyway.
  
  But there were two hugely obvious things - at least obvious to me.
  
  1. You do not take 175,000 or however many pages from anywhere and publish them without applying your own site rules.
  
  2. You do not play with a server upgrade over the weekend that the world knows Panda is running.
  
  This is not to attack anyone - it is merely making a statement of the blindingly obvious.
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  89
  Marisa Wrightposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  1. As I've said elsewhere, there are thousands of Hubs already on HP which have never gone through QAP, so I think the quality comparison between Hubs and Lenses is a tad exaggerated. Especially as ONLY Featured lenses were allowed to be published.
  
  2. The server upgrade was announced before anyone knew about the Panda update. Google doesn't announce Panda in advance. Though I agree, I think it was taking a risk to do the transfer and THEN do a server upgrade - it should've been done the other way around IMO.
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  82
  Mark Ewbieposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  With the greatest respect Marisa - that Featured thing does not seem entirely reliable to me. I say that with huge respect and love for the Squidoo writers - many of who are now my personal friends and who knows - maybe more one day.
  
  Without denigrating (new word learned it today) anybody - be they man, woman or whatever - and certainly without implying anything towards the great majority of all content writers everywhere - especially ex Squidoo...
  
  I was genuinely shocked to see SOME of the imported pages. Only SOME. Not ALL. No I don't personally know the writer and no am not singling them and while I don't wish to have their babies I mean them no harm.
  
  I was shocked because they were alien in appearance and content to what the rules imply on HubPages. The sheer number of the Amazon adverts was the main thing.
  
  That content is what HubPages stopped being created. When all the affiliates left a few years ago now.
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  89
  Marisa Wrightposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  It's great to hear you say that, Mark. The trouble is, because you're inclined to make short, snappy remarks, your respect for Squidoo members does not usually come across. Haven't you noticed how Squidoo members react to your comments? To them, they sound like a blanket condemnation of the lot of them. I've read them the same way. It's good to understand that you're aiming at the bottom-feeders but I feel you need to make that clear when you post.
  reply report
  91
  Ilonagardenposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  I was shocked at how some of my work looked when imported to the hubpage format, too! The setup was different at Squidoo, and it is taking a tremendous amount of updating, changing, and adjusting things to make the imported work look good and comply on Hubpages.
  
  That is by way of explanation for the way some lenses look here.
  
  That said, I am pretty happy with how things look once they are brought into alignment with the requirements here. I have had to unpublish some things and removed a couple, but so far, -even with glitches- the mere fact that I am looking with new eyes and working afresh on pages that were "done" has infused new life into my work.
  
  I hope it doesn't reflect badly on me, but I've been reviewing the stats on all my sites, and everything took a downturn in pageviews and general traffic. I am suspecting it to be the result of tighter search results.= -but I'm a total amateur in interpreting that stuff. The biggest change is what Squidoo and Hubpages both saw coming is the rise of mobile versus "web" visits. For my own blogs I am considering whether my pages are good enough in that format, or need changes that come across the mobile devices better.
  sorry for the small book here!
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2. 89
  Marisa Wrightposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  Kierstein, HubPages has given a great deal of thought to its filtering system. All new Hubs have to go through the Quality Assessment Process, and all Hubs go through it again if they are edited.
  
  However, the QAP is still relatively new and there's several years' worth of old Hubs which have to go through the system. HubPages said it would be working on that backlog but we don't know how far they've got. Clearly, it takes human beings to do the work and there is a substantial cost to that, so that's an obvious limitation.
  
  One stopgap measure they've introduced is the "unFeatured for lack of engagement" process. If a Hub isn't getting traffic, it will be unFeatured (made invisible to the search engines). It's not an ideal process, because it may be a great Hub on an obscure subject - but the theory is that bad Hubs shouldn't be getting traffic, and therefore it's one way of trying to knock out those old Hubs until they get QAP'd.
  
  If you have any other low-cost suggestions for improved filtering, I'm sure HP would be glad to see them in the Suggestions forum.
  reply report
0
promisemposted 8 years ago
I'm curious if other Hubbers can comment on the level of traffic over the last seven days versus the last time it was that low.

It does make sense that HubPages had a temporary boost in Google visitors because of the influx of new content and then a steep drop when the latest Panda update hit.

But I found that my audience over the last seven days took me back to the same level I had in April, which is before the new content started arriving and my pages had been growing steadily. Here's hoping I will regain some of the difference.
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1. 82
  Mark Ewbieposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  Here is my HubPages Search traffic since June this year - barely registered any movement in either direction.
  
  reply report
2. 85
  ologsinquitoposted 8 years agoin reply to this
  My traffic is off here as well, but my blogs have been like a roller coaster for the past week. They seem to be showing signs of stabilizing today. My Hub Pages traffic is down. But it's impossible to tell what's really going on here, between the Panda update and the site being unusually slow. Another thing to factor in is that people around the world, especially in America, are following the ebola outbreak very closely, and may be spending more time on Twitter and other social networks, and they may be sitting in front of their television, instead of in front of their computer.
  
  My Pinterest activity was unusually low yesterday as well.
  reply report
75
maalarueposted 8 years ago
I have noticed my Google positions have dropped enormously! And with it, of course, my traffic; over 50%. Every Hub I have has dropped. And not only a few positions, but many pages and in some cases completely wiped off of Google search.

Besides the Google upgrades, I believe we are being especially hard hit and penalized by Google due to all the changes going on at once; editing and changing of information, slow response time, and many timeouts. Regardless of Google Panda, etc, HubPages did not plan this change and move very well and now we all must suffer.

As long as this continues, our rank will continue to drop.
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91
Rock_njposted 8 years ago
I have been on HubPages for over 3 years and have had nothing to do with Squidoo, and my traffic is down around 50% over the past week. Not sure where you are getting the info that established HubPages accounts are holding up well, as the HubPages forums are full of well known Hubbers reporting dramatic decreases in traffic over the past week.
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94
PaulGoodman67posted 8 years ago
My experience is pretty much as Paul E says. I have been on here and Squidoo for several years and have multiple accounts.

My Squidoo accounts soared when they were first imported to Hubpages, then they abruptly dived and crashed.

My established hub accounts have done relatively okay.
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81
Linda BookLadyposted 8 years ago
I will just say that I'll miss Octavia's Offerings, and also that if you want a username people can remember and put into a search engine to find you, then using the letter rather than the number makes sense for branding purposes. I too always thought they were O's and not zeroes.

In any case, I respect the work and writing you did on Squidoo and am sorry you're not making the HP journey with us... but I understand, and I agree that the current username is unworkable... so sorry that happened to your account.
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