Does Hub Rating Go Down Because Hub is Long?

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   Judy Filareckiposted 10 years ago

   I have a hub on simplifying mixing colors for artists. It was always my best or second best lens when in Squidoo. It still gets as many hits as it did then. It is one of quite a few hubs on painting instruction. The majority of these hubs are rated high 90's to mid 80's. This one is 72 now. It was 77 last week, but I took out several amazon capsules and unlinked links that went to my fineart webpages figuring that that might help. Instead it went down even further. The only thing I can think of  is that it is 2400 words so that might be to long. I do have clearly titled text capsules, several demo videos and, I believe, quality content.
   
   Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. If you feel it is too long, I probably could break it up into two hubs with a link near the bottom to the second hub.

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      calculus-geometryposted 10 years agoin reply to this

      Scores don't mean much if anything on HP, and why they go up and down is a mystery.  Unlike on Squidoo where the tiers determined how much you got paid, on HP the scores determine nothing.  You get paid based on how many impressions you get. Google and other search engines cannot see scores,  nor do they take them into account when your pages are ranked,so they have no effect on views and earnings.  They are purely an internal metric.  Best to ignore them.
      
      If you make changes to hubs, do so with readers and SEO in mind.  Add/change/delete according to what would improve reader experience and what will help the hub be found in search engines more often.

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         SmartAndFunposted 10 years agoin reply to this

         +1
         Throw out the scores -- try not to look at them or think about them. If your articles are getting views and earning money (if that is your intent for them), then use that to determine how well you are doing. I see hub scores causing unnecessary anxiety and concern for those who have moved over from Squidoo. It is a shame, because scores here are basically meaningless.

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      rebekahELLEposted 10 years agoin reply to this

        Scores fluctuate daily, it's almost impossible to figure out why.  Your hub looks fine. 
      I probably wouldn't have unlinked a link to your own fine art website.  Keeping one is fine. 
      Possibly you could include a table of contents? 
      I also noticed a few related hubs covering the same topic with similar content, two of them being Editor Choice hubs.  I think scores can be affected by other very similar hubs, especially if another hub has more diverse capsules like HP encourages us to use for stellar hubs.  ( I don't know that for a certainty, just an observation.)
      I did see one reference in your hub to another of your Squidoo lens, so I would edit that.

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         Judy Filareckiposted 10 years agoin reply to this

         Thanks for taking the time to look at the hub. I'll check out the lens error and I am going to add the link back in to the Yosemite painting. I appreciate all the comments and will try not to be so upset by the ranking number. I'm glad it has nothing to do with google search.
         
         Our Squidoo lenses always had a table of contents which really did help. I'm not sure how I can link that to the different topics like it was in Squidoo or if that would put too many links in a hub.

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         sallybeaposted 10 years agoin reply to this

         I am curious, how can one see if someone else has an Editors Choice Hub?  I did not know that was possible.  Also, I have many hubs on my niche subject.  Can it be that hub scores are badly affected by hubs which contain similar subject matter?

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            calculus-geometryposted 10 years agoin reply to this

            If you click on a hub and the address bar of your browser shows the url as
            
            http://hubpages.com/hub/blah-blah
            
            then it's an EC.  if the address bar shows the url as
            
            http://some-username.hubpages.com/hub/blah-blah
            
            then it's not EC.

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               sallybeaposted 10 years agoin reply to this

               Thanks, I forgot that the Editors Choice hubs are on a sub domain - that bothers me when I have a lot of hubs in my niche with an Editors Choice award and yet some are not - I wish sometimes that they were all on the same domain because I think that it harms them when they are not on the same one!
               Sorry this is not the same subject thread - it was just that it fitted with the comment above.

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                  Judy Filareckiposted 10 years agoin reply to this

                  I'm glad you asked it, because I was just going to do that also and I'm the one that started the discussion.

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               Venkatachari Mposted 10 years agoin reply to this

               Thanks for the clarification. I do not know about the URL differences in EC hubs and other hubs. Now, I  can easily find out them.
               Regarding scoring, I do not understand how they score the stuff. It is not based on pageviews either.
               My scores go up and down every one or two days even though there are nil views.

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            rebekahELLEposted 10 years agoin reply to this

            EC hubs have the hubpages.com URL and have different breadcrumbs at the top of the hub. 
            Hubs on our subdomain simply give author name and category of the hub.  EC hubs have more specific navigation at the top to HP topic categories.  There is no special designation stating that it is an EC hub. 
            
            In answer to your question about niche hubs and scores, I don't really know.  The only reason I stated it above is because a lot of the content was very similar.  I think HP likes niche subdomains and if the content is relevant and relates to each other, but doesn't repeat itself, I can't see how that would negatively affect scores.

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      peachpurpleposted 10 years agoin reply to this

      No, i don't think so. Hubscore depenfs on your activities, hub hopping, forums, anwers, new hubs

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         Venkatachari Mposted 10 years agoin reply to this

         True. That is a major factor in hub scores. Keep active regularly.

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   marcfrecceroposted 10 years ago

   Honestly I'm not sure exactly why your Hub rating went down, but I would maybe split it up into 2-3 parts. Like Painting Instruction (Part 1), etc.

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   janderson99posted 10 years ago

   I think it is silly that experienced Hubbers have to tell everyone to ignore hub scores. Come on HP staff get your act together a provide a real quality score that is meaningful and acts as a guide for authors who want to improve their hubs and writing skills. Why not simply display QAP score. Tell it like it is. The argument I think, against this, is that people would complain and request reviews. But there is so much discussion about the meaningless Hub Score and Hubber scores already, without any resolution. What it also says is that HP is not convinced that the Hub score is reliable and accurate, and so it is not defensible. HP is unwilling to have to deal with the errors and inaccuracies. The scores are meaningless because there are so many secret elements and apparently random factors and errors. Even the HP Learning Center tells people to ignore the scores!!!!  Hubber score should be the average QAP score for all articles written in the last 6 months - the other stuff about participation is meaningless, IMO.
   Simply tell us what the QAP scores are and say - "no correspondence will be entered into".
   Get Real Man!

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      Judy Filareckiposted 10 years agoin reply to this

      Me Too! I use those scores as an assessment of how good my hub is and make adjustments, assuming there is a problem. In this case, I can't find anything significantly wrong with it that it should be so much lower than all the others. In some cases, I think it is better than some of the higher scoring ones.

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         Marisa Wrightposted 10 years agoin reply to this

         If you're using the scores as an assessment of how good your Hub is - don't!  They can lead you down the garden path. 
         
         It's especially important not to meddle with a Hub that's getting good traffic, because you may be tempted to undo the very things that are attracting traffic!
         
         You should definitely have a link to your own site on the Hub, it won't do your score any harm at all.  You are allowed only two links to one website per Hub, but otherwise it's not a problem.
         
         I notice you're using the image of an Amazon colour wheel but don't advertise the product - if you deleted it, I suggest you put it back in, or make the "source" link an affiliate link so people can buy the product.

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            Judy Filareckiposted 10 years agoin reply to this

            Thanks,
            I did delete it thinking In had too many. I'll put it back and do the source link for the enlarged image. I really appreciate all the help I'm getting. I've been afraid of making changes that will reduce the traffic instead of increasing it. Thanks for the reinforcement.

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   LindaSmith1posted 10 years ago

   janderson99:   Exactly!  Totally agree!

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   SmartAndFunposted 10 years ago

   Me, too.

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   CuAllaidhposted 10 years ago

   I agree with others on here, ignore the hubscore, it is meaningless.

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   sallybeaposted 10 years ago

   Thanks rebekahELLE -  the problem being that one cannot at time help repeating oneself because similar techniques are used to describe the art of wet felting. I just wondered if the repetition could negatively effect scores.  I  I should add that I will never understand hub scores - best to forget that I said that:)

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      rebekahELLEposted 10 years agoin reply to this

        None of us do.    I meant repetitive almost to the point of duplicate content.  I don't think in your case that's what you're talking about.

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   Arco Hess Designsposted 10 years ago

   Aren't hub scores how the hubs are listed in the "explore hubs" section?
   
   It definitely does matter, if that is the case. There's traffic to be had there.

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      calculus-geometryposted 10 years agoin reply to this

      The discover more hubs section is determined by similarity in hub titles.  There is nothing in the Learning Center nor any staff forum posts that say hubscores factor into the hub selection at the bottom of every page.
      
      edit: I think you are talking about the topic pages, not the list of related hubs at the bottom of every hub.

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      calculus-geometryposted 10 years agoin reply to this

      I have a lot of hubs listed on this "explore hubs" topic page http://hubpages.com/topics/education-an … heory/3741 because I probably write more about it than other hubbers. I can tell you that among my own hubs that are listed there, they are not in ordered according to hubscore.  In fact, the very first hub has a score of 70 and doesn't get all that much traffic either.

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         SmartAndFunposted 10 years agoin reply to this

         My guess would be not too many readers find our articles through the topic pages, anyway.

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            calculus-geometryposted 10 years agoin reply to this

            I don't think so either. Maybe there is some slight SEO benefit if Google regularly crawls those pages and factors that into its rankings. I wish we could know what determines the order of what shows up, but I guess that is a secret as much as hubscore.

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               SmartAndFunposted 10 years agoin reply to this

               Chimps throwing darts, perhaps.

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                  calculus-geometryposted 10 years agoin reply to this

                  I tried to find an old post made by long-gone Simone that said the topic pages were determined by a super-duper-secret thing called "heat score," but I can't find it.  But whatever the hell that is or was, it's probably outdated by now.  Chimps it is!

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                     SmartAndFunposted 10 years agoin reply to this

                     I vaguely remember that discussion on heat score. Something about the topic trending online, plus the views the article gets, and the number of comments, IIRC.

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      Marisa Wrightposted 10 years agoin reply to this

      Not really.   90% of HubPages' traffic is readers who arrive at a single Hub, having found it on Google or Bing or Yahoo.   Those readers don't even realise they're on HubPages so they don't know the Topic pages exist.   If they stay on the site after reading that Hub, they're most likely to navigate by clicking on the related Hubs displayed at the end.  If they want to do a further search, they're more likely to click back to Google than use HubPages' search.

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   Shades-of-truthposted 10 years ago

   New here from Squidoo, also. My hub scores have jumped all over the place, so I asked about it in another forum days ago. Hard to understand how the one who gets the most traffic has one of the lowest scores, so I decided to "tweak" what I could, and not be concerned about the scores.
   
   They do not make any sense to me at all.

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    SmartAndFunposted 10 years ago

    Hot chimps.
    
    

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    LindaSmith1posted 10 years ago

    SmartandFun: I have a hub now that is high in score. Others are higher than some that is getting more traffic than they are. Hub scores have no logic to them. I have some now that have dropped over 20 points within a day.

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       SmartAndFunposted 10 years agoin reply to this

       I guess it really is chimps, then. Who knows? LOL.

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          Judy Filareckiposted 10 years agoin reply to this

          That chimp looks pretty smart to me. LOL

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             aesta1posted 10 years agoin reply to this

             Judy, thanks for asking this questions as I have several hubs doing well with traffic but have low scores. Erased some of my concerns but reading through the responses, I've learned about other things I never even knew about hub pages.

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                Judy Filareckiposted 10 years agoin reply to this

                I'm glad it helped you. It certainly has enlightened me also and the help that people have given has been invaluable.

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    LindaSmith1posted 10 years ago

    I look at it this way.  Hub scores don't earn a thing.
    Traffic does.

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    RockyMountainMomposted 10 years ago

    I have gradually accepted the wise advice to worry less about scores.  I do watch my Hubber score more than my individual hub scores now.
    
    What this has shown me is a personality flaw I clearly posses...a pronounced disjunct between my conscious decision to let it go (based on sage advice) and my inability to stop looking for patterns, especially when a nonsensical drop occurs like the one you described.
    
    I recently changed the order of photos in my highest scoring hub and had it drop 15 points.  I changed it back and it dropped 4 or 5 more. 
    
    Typically making a change causes an initial drop and then a later gradual rise.  Since August, some rules of thumb such as this still hold true some of the time, but just often enough to keep me involuntarily expecting and looking for patterns----while chaotically seldom enough to cause a pattern-seeking person considerable frustration.
    
    I seem to have flare ups of pattern seeking when I go away for awhile and come back, or when I try to make constructive changes and then see all of my scores drop (even for hubs I didn't change).  All could be coincidence.... but that's also part of the rub.
    
    The system is not enough to outweigh what I like about Hub Pages, but if it were at least as predictable as when I started here I'd have written more here so far (being better able to gage what works and what doesn't).
    
    The community of writers here is top notch, so I mean it when I close this with ~ Welcome to Hub Pages!

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