Competition within Hubpages

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   janderson99posted 10 years ago

   The recent discussion https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GlxLlpm3Ew and previous feedback from Google has confirmed that G will only present the first and highest ranking search result from a domain in a search result (SERP). Despite the subs, this effectively means that only one result from HP will appear in the SERPS for a topic. This means that contributors to HP are effectively competing with other hubbers for traffic, especially within saturated topics. This internal competition has some profound implications:
   
   => The winners are those that G sees as best, not what HP rates as best in terms of hub score etc. While HP pushes 'big mumma' Stellar pages, there are other issues such as load time which may mean that stellar hubs may not necessarily be the best in Google's eyes. Searches show that smaller pages often outrank bigger pages due to links etc.
   
   => As new pages are added to HP for a narrow topic or keyword set, they compete for pages that are already established. They may eventually 'knock-off' existing pages that have done well previously.
   
   => Obviously the addition of large numbers of Squidoo pages will mean a lot of extra competition within narrow topics for the pages already there.
   
   In conclusion, internal competition within the HP domain should be considered when choosing a new topic for a hub. Do a search to find out how saturated the topic is and what you will be competing against (for example enter site:hubpages.com egg recipes for a test for egg recipes etc.). Your can do other searches to get a ranked list of pages on HP for a given topic. How well will your article compete with existing hubs on the same or similar topics? This also applies more generally in the sense of competition for longtail niches and keywords. Tools such as Jaaxy(dot)com aim to show the amount of competition that exists for a keyword set in the WWW.

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      relacheposted 10 years agoin reply to this

      Interestingly, Squidoo actually experimented for a bit with an internal feature which worked like what you are describing.  Those lenses had their own format and section, and visitors would only see the highest-ranked single lens when they looked for a topic there.  Some of the Squidoo writers got really good at checking out their competition and then designing same topic pages which creamed the competition.
      
      Might get interesting here.

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   2. 68

      brakel2posted 10 years agoin reply to this

      Everything changes. It used to be  one domain on a page, I believe. A little off subject here. My hubs that had 90 scores are disappearing. I still believe that traffic should not lower a score, especially when most of the site has lost traffic. Enough changes happen now . Can't we at least have some pride in our high hub scores until Panda settles. I know the scores mean nothing, but, in reality, in the minds of many, they are the only flags flying in a sinking ship. The shipping sink will rise again. I used to be a manager, and I know it is always important for workers to know they are doing a good job. I love my articles in the 90's, because I feel that they were  finally representing reality. Please don't rain on my parade to downplay scores.
      
      Thanks  Janderson for the information. Reality is important, and we can work with that news.

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      calculus-geometryposted 10 years agoin reply to this

      That's nothing new, but probably bears repeating for users who want to write on, oh let's say, the health benefits of such-and-such fruit, a particularly saturated topic on HP and on the web in general.  Not to mention that sites with more authority than a user-generated content farm are going outrank any hub.
      
      Since it doesn't help HP to have a hundred articles on the same over-done topic, it might be worth HP's time to encourage  users to beat horses that aren't quite so dead yet.   For example, in the hub creation tool, if you write a title starting with "Health Benefits of" there could be a little auto-generated hint that says "It looks like you're going to write a hub for which a billion webpages already exist.  Perhaps think of a new topic."

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      1. 53

         janderson99posted 10 years agoin reply to this

         The host of Squidoo pages is new.

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            calculus-geometryposted 10 years agoin reply to this

            Topics being over-done is a problem that pre-dates Squidoo shutting down.

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               relacheposted 10 years agoin reply to this

               Topics being over-done has been a complaint here since the implementation of the unique URL convention.

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      Brie Hoffmanposted 10 years agoin reply to this

      Very interesting indeed and true as well.  I just signed up for Majestic Samurai and it's true what you say..there aren't two hubpage articles on the first page of Google.  I have found that my articles are on the first page most of the time..nevertheless, I was still hit by a 50% reduction in views and income with this Panda update on the 25th of October.  I'm still trying to figure out why my views and income went down by 50% when most of my articles are between 1 and 6 of the first page entries of Google.  It doesn't make sense to me.

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      paradigmsearchposted 10 years agoin reply to this

      Jeez, you are so totally dead bang right on this.
      
      Just recently I had a top hub of mine slaughtered by another hub on Google. 90% of my traffic gone. I assiduously studied that other hub that killed me. I saw nothing to warrant Google's love of that hub over mine; especially what with me constantly updating mine.
      
      Your post caused me to revisit Google on that. Ha! The good news is the other hub has apparently been booted, mine is once again the first representative for HP.
      
      But don't get too happy for me, several household domain names are now above me. But that is another conversation.

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