Why Did Hundreds of Hubs Become Unfeatured for Quality Today?

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59
MelissaBarrettposted 10 years ago
Here's my two cents...

If you want to remove any risks of your hubs being seen as over-promotional, stop trying to sell things.

I've read somewhere around 50,000 hubs, give or take a few thousand, and I am well aware when someone is trying to sell something. So are your readers. So is Google.

If you are writing content just to have a place to put an amazon link, your hub is going to read like it. Period. That mindset will inevitably cause poor writing, because you are writing for yourself, not your reader. That's almost as bad as writing for Google.

If you have a true love for shower curtains, by all means write about them. Tell your reader about grommets and mold-resistant coatings and well... whatever a shower curtain needs. Help them understand the difference between a crappy shower curtain and a superb shower curtain. Improve their lives, make them the best shower curtain owners they can be...

And then, if you absolutely must, show them ONE amazon product that is the epitome of shower curtain godliness.... Readers are much more intelligent than you think they are. They know when they are reading a sales pitch. They know that 15 different shower curtains aren't ALL the best.
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1. 66
  OldRosesposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Oh, I am so glad that you posted this. I was reading this thread yesterday and wanted to add my two cents, but was afraid that I would get shot down as a Hubber who feels superior to ex-Squids. That is not at all the case. Since I'm not the only one who feels as you do, I will now post what I wanted to say yesterday.
  
  I have been on and off HP for 7 years. Seems every time I return, the rules have changed. I whine and complain, and then I get with the program and follow the new rules.
  
  After the merger, I started reading former lenses after reading complaints in the forums about HP rules about word count per Amazon capsule. I was shocked to see what can only be called shopping lists. What little text there was, was only promotions for the sale items.
  
  These same ex-squids were complaining that they were following all of the rules, but their hubs were not being featured. I'm sure that they did read everything available about writing on HP but they didn't seem to have read any actual Hubs. If they had, they would have realized that HP is not a virtual storefront. It is more like a magazine with in-depth, media rich articles.
  
  If that is not what the ex-Squids want, then perhaps HP is not the right platform for them. Maybe they should move their content to a platform that welcomes cyber merchants who post long lens/hubs of Amazon products with minimal text. HP is a writing site, not a retailing site. It is a great platform for me because I am a writer who "sells" knowledge and information. I would never have survived on a site like Squidoo which appears to have been more sales oriented.
  
  So my suggestion to ex-Squids is this: you are not being singled out by HP. You need to rethink what your goals are, read a lot of Hubs by long-time hubbers, and then decide if the HP media rich magazine format is a suitable format for you. If so, then you need to change your mindset, lose all of those Amazon capsules and start actually writing content.
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  justholidaysposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Please be reminded that when HP acquired Squidoo content they were well aware of what that content was made out of.
  
  Squidoo was known for selling and being sales pages pushy. So there is no reason for agreeing with anything - and this response applies to the one Hubber you quoted as well.
  
  They KNEW what lenses were made out of. And if they didn't want those sales pages, they should have kept away from acquiring so-called "key content" from the big awful disgusting sales-y Squid.
  
  I've been on HP for 6+ years as well but I'm more than tired to see people shooting the Squids who didn't ask for anything and were FORCED to join HubPages at the risk of losing their work and their deserved earnings.
  
  HubPages has never been a commercially oriented platform, we all know that. Still the staff ACQUIRED Squidoo's commercial content!
  
  Now can we have a constructive debate, please?
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  Titiaposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  "You need to rethink what your goals are, read a lot of Hubs by long-time hubbers..."
  
  I did just that and that's when I came across the sales hubs from a few long-time hubbers and those were NOT transferred lenses.
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  Dressage Husbandposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  I fail to see how your comments related in any way to the Hubs that have been un-featured as you say it is quite evident from your comments that you read neither one.
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  MelissaBarrettposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  It was a response to the thread in general, not any specific person. Not even really to the Squids. I was commenting on what I see, I have no way of knowing whether a "sales" hub was written by a squid or not. But please, feel free to take it personally. Whatever makes you feel better.
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  Dressage Husbandposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Deleted
3. 90
  carnyposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  I believe the official rule is still 50 words per Amazon capsule?
  
  If Amazon capsules are so bad, perhaps HubPages should limit their number per Hub, or increase the word requirement. But it has to be an official rule, not some hidden parameter in an automated filter.
  
  Otherwise, we get this situation where a Hub is successfully published and QAP-approved (and has 50+ words per Amazon), but then gets unpublished, supposedly due to having too many Amazon capsules. Makes no sense to me.
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  makingamarkposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  If Amazon capsules are so bad perhaps the best solution would be to eliminate them entirely.
  
  While we're at it let's no confuse the reader with all those totally unrelated adverts - let's get rid of those too!
  
  I do hope readers can understand the English use of irony!
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  LindaSmith1posted 10 years agoin reply to this
  If Amazon capsules are so bad, then why not remove them it has been said.
  
  Do you realize that according to HP rules, that a 1200 word hub is permitted to place 24 Amazon products on the hub. The 50 words minimum now includes product descriptions that are placed in the Amazon capsule, which is a good one for somebody to us in order to bring up that word count. Hey this is HP rules!!!! Don't hate on those who follow these rules to the T. Is 24 products on a 1200 word article a bit much, of course it is. But hey, HP says it is permitted.
  
  Do you realize the HP is the only site that I am aware of that has the lowest word count requirement for Amazon products. The rest of the sites have 100 words or more, many requiring at least 200 words per product and at least 400 words for an article to even be published.
  
  I have seen remarks about this is not a site for selling things!!! If that was the case, then there wouldn't be any affiliate marketing allowed, no Amazon, no Ebay. Hey, Ezine articles is such a site, and it is another site that has been slammed by Google.
  
  Supposedly Google does not like ads above the fold, but we have ads at the top of hubs. We have ads next to the first paragraph, sometimes right next to each other. So much for appeasing Google.
  
  When hubs were flagged without explanation, we were given a link to Matt Cutts who makes me laugh! Duplicate Content? Matt Cutts says it is okay!!! So what is the big deal about duplicate content then, Google's own Matt Cutts says it is okay.
  
  http://searchengineland.com/googles-mat … kay-180063
  
  Those with a mixer added to a cooking, or recipe hub are told that a mixer is not related. Well let's look at that gem of a complaint! I call this one a double standard!!!
  
  Links etc are to be closely related to the hub: Well here are some doozies for my can opener hub:
  
  One link to related hubs is about a weed wacker
  Another is about a coffee maker
  
  ADS: Adwords ad
  Whirlpool appliances
  Table Saw
  Children's Institute
  
  No more than 2 links to subdomain. I laugh now at this one. Take a peek at that list of sponsored links: I picked a hub at random and counted 6 sponsored links that all lead to the same domain.
  
  Then hubs get unfeatured for quality!!!! Excuse me, but hubbers have nothing to do with the unrelated crap that has been plastered on their hubs.
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  Sue Adamsposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  I believe you are miss-interpreting the rules Linda. Where does it say that the rules allow 24 ads on a hub? My own rule is to not place more than 2 or 3 content related Amazon capsules in a hub with over 1250 words and to adhere to the minimum 50 words per ad rule. That seems to work fine.
  
  I repeat, the bottom line is: HubPages is not a shop. If readers want to shop, they can go straight to Amazon or eBay.
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  Ramkitten2000posted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Yes, of course they can. But they often don't, which is why well curated, organized content with personal recommendations does work ... and why I respectfully disagree with your generalized statement. It worked very well on Squidoo and other sites, and it has continued to work well for me personally (although not AS well, I believe partly because ad blockers hide Amazon capsules here) on HubPages.
  
  I often make purchase decisions after reading a review on someone's blog or other web page and viewing the selections they've made and narrowed down, rather than going directly to Amazon, eBay or any other large shopping site, where I'm often overwhelmed by choices. If I know exactly what I want then, sure, I may go directly to Amazon, etc. or shop around for the best price, but that's often not the case.
  
  Edited to add: At the moment, several of my most successful sales-oriented pages are unfeatured. These are pages that have earned me and the site they spent most of their cyber-lives on (Squidoo) hundreds if not thousands of dollars in commission. Perhaps they can't be modified to adhere to HubPages' vague rules (at least, I find them vague and confusing), so I'll move them if that's the case ... along with, eventually, the rest of my content as I have time.
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  OldRosesposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Ramkitten, I believe that you are missing the point that Hub Pages is not a shopping site. Take a look at the home page. It says:
  "DISCOVER a wealth of genuine, unique information
  CREATE original, in-depth, useful, media-rich Hubs
  CONNECT with a passionate community of writers and enthusiasts"
  
  Nowhere does it refer to "well curated, organized content with personal recommendations". Yes, those sorts of lenses worked very well on Squidoo. And look what happened to Squidoo. Hub Pages is trying very hard not to end up like that, so they are pushing hubbers to write content, not shopping lists. Ex-Squids need to get out of the Squidoo mindset and adopt the Hub Pages mindset when writing hubs. Writing as they did on Squidoo doesn't work. That's why Squidoo no longer exists.
  
  Evolve or die. It's as simple as that.
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  Ramkitten2000posted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Evolve or die.Yes, I know how to do that quite well, and I continue to. So do many, many former Squidoo lensmasters who've been through that scenario many times.
  
  But perhaps HubPages should have thought twice about taking on Squidoo content, then, because that is very much what was encouraged and worked well there. I would have been happy to have taken my sales-oriented pages elsewhere had we had enough time to make that decision. But as we did not and since it takes a lot of time to do that, it will have to be a lengthy process for me and many others.
  
  That said, I was responding to your general statement that people will go directly to Amazon, etc. if they want to make a purchase. I was not specifically referring to what HubPages wants or does not want ... which I find vague and oftentimes contradictory.
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  makingamarkposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Squidoo no longer exists because a very large number of very successful writers who curated content from Amazon among other things removed their content in 2013 and 2014 and took it elsewhere. This predominantly happened after Squidoo got into guessing games about what it needed to do to satisfy Google and started making people jump through hoops with their lenses.
  
  One of the reasons the traffic started to crash was because of the quality content being removed. Then the income went down - and yet more content was removed and so the death spiral began.
  
  A lot of us who remained did so in full knowledge that the site was going to sink - it was no surprise at all when it finished. I remember actually calculating how many weeks it had left at one point based on the attrition rate in terms of falling traffic.
  
  As a result a lot of lensmasters people were moving their content off or planning to do so when the transfer to HubPages happened.
  
  The reality is
  1) if you don't have sites which bring in traffic and sales then you don't have the income to run the domain
  2) if you fail to communicate effectively and treat people with respect (as happened on Squidoo and has just happened on HubPages) then writers/curators will lose confidence and take their content to their own sites
  3) If you fail to maintain traffic and income for writers then they will seek it elsewhere - with most now recognising the need to transfer content to their own sites
  4) if you lose enough writers and content and traffic (and advertising and sales and income) then ANY article site similar to Squidoo or HubPages will go under.
  
  ...and that's what happened to Squidoo.
  
  At present HubPages has very healthy traffic for the site as a whole even if it's poor for some people. However most sites like this will get 80% of their traffic from something like 20% of their sites. If that 20% lose confidence and walk it could be a very different story. It's happened to a lot of article sites before Squidoo.
  
  Chances are Google is not going to let up in its unrelenting attack on articles sites - so who knows what's in the future for HubPages. Nobody can be confident that it will still be here in 12 months time. Just look back 12-24 months and look at how many sites have disappeared in that timeframe.
  
  (POSTSCRIPT: For what it's worth, I think the huge mistake HubPages made was in taking on board and featuring too many lenses which were NOT featured on Squidoo as at the date the transfer was agreed.
  Between the date of the announcement and the start of the transfer a huge amount of FEATURED content left Squidoo.
  The reason I know that is because I ended up with more than 100 lenses in the top 10,000 sites on Squidoo including some 20+ in the top 2,000.
  That means a huge number of the better lenses left. If Hubpages had pulled in the lenses by NAME (according to a list of titles and URLs as at the date of the announcement) and not according to which lenses were in the top 180,000 featured lenses when the transfer started then a lot of the problems experienced after the transfer would IMO NOT have happened.
  I thought I was coming to a site which was only going to take the top featured lenses - not one which was going to take and feature content which had not been featured on Squidoo prior to the announcement)
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  85
  Marisa Wrightposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Linda is absolutely right. HubPages rules say you can have one Amazon ad for every 50 words in a Hub.
  
  That has always seemed absolutely crazy to me. We all know that if anyone followed that rule, it would be far too many ads - so why does HubPages send a mixed message?
  
  I started a thread to petition HubPages to increase the number of words required per product and I'd love people to support it:
  
  http://hubpages.com/forum/topic/126321
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  MelissaBarrettposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  I'd also like to see that the product descriptions themselves are not included in word count... There are entire hubs that are nothing but product descriptions.
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  TIMETRAVELER2posted 10 years agoin reply to this
  I have said many times that when using ads you must be judicious. It does not matter about what HP says is OK as far as word count, you are supposed to use some common sense and be able to know what spam is. If you get zapped because you got greedy, that's the price you pay!
  
  People seem to forget that HP has its own ad program from which you also make money. So, you do not have to place any ads on your posts in order to earn. You may not earn as much, but you still earn...and your posts look more professional as well.
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  MelissaBarrettposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Judiciousness seems to be at a premium. Rules lawyers abound... So why not make it official so everyone can stop "but the rules say....."
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  snakeslaneposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Interesting, thanks.
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61
LindaSmith1posted 10 years ago
This is getting beyond ridiculous!
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61
LindaSmith1posted 10 years ago
I love it. Stop trying to sell things? Yet, I looked a hub that has products from Amazon which is trying to sell things
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  Nancy Hardinposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  You betcha, it IS getting ridiculous LindaSmith1. The most ridiculous part is that Hubbers who have nothing to worry about are smug in their assumption that we (meaning ex-squids) have no idea about "good writing," and are simply marketing our "shower curtains." That's easy for them to say, because they are securely "in the bosom of HP." It must be nice to have it so good you can sit in judgment on a whole group of others. None of you really know us at all, yet you think you can look down your noses at us. You want us gone, and I for one, will oblige as soon as possible.
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  OldRosesposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Nancy, I'm so sorry that you feel so unwelcome at HP. Not all Hubbers harbor ill-will towards ex-Squids. I believe that there was a forum thread welcoming ex-Squids to HP.
  
  Can we all take a deep breath, step back and look at this in a slightly different way? Let's suppose that you (and I) moved to a different country. Would we expect it to be exactly the same as the US? Of course not. The language would be different. The food would be different. The customs would be different. Would we expect our new country to adapt to us? Of course not. We would, instead, adapt to our new country.
  
  HP is a very different site from Squidoo. I know this because I looked at moving to Squidoo a few years ago. But after reading a lot of lenses, I decided that it wasn't right for me and I stuck with HP. You (and I) are now "living" in Hub Pages, not Squidoo. Things are different here. We have different "customs". Our expectations are very different. Our goals are different.
  
  No one is saying that ex-Squids are bad and should be banished from the site. We are saying that you need to adapt to our different environment. We are not "smug" here, we are just more adapted than you are. Give yourself some time to adjust and try to change your viewpoint from Squidoo to Hub Pages.
  
  And please, please, please read hubs. It's the best way to find out what works and what doesn't work on Hub Pages.
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  LindaSmith1posted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Absolutely, until it happens to them! The smugaroos seem to think this unfeatured thing was for one day. What about today, tomorrow and all of the tomorrows that follow. How many times are they going to change this, change that, get their hub featured again, only to have it unfeatured again for quality reasons and no explanation from HP.
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  Nancy Hardinposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  LindaSmith1, HA! I had to grin when I saw your word "smugaroos!" Yes, what many don't realize is, it's a slippery slope. When you don't stand for fellow writers today, it may be YOU tomorrow. You think it won't happen to you? Think again, because even though you've been writing on Hubs for years, it won't make one iota of difference when they want to change the rules. We learned that on Squidoo, where I wrote for nearly five years. Some had been there from the beginning, but they meant nothing to TPTB when the chips were down. You have no idea what you're up against!
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endamclarnonposted 10 years ago
Hubpages are a commercial business and their entire existence depends on Google. The company Hubpages must earn a large amount of money from Adsense, other advertising, Amazon commissions and eBay commissions. Squidoo was exactly the same and both commercial type businesses.

Getting a clear answer from Squidoo was like talking to a politician and getting a clear answer here is actually even more difficult.

I had around 50 lenses on Squidoo and was making $500 a month there with good traffic. They moved to Hubpages and in month 1, I received about $140. Then they died a death but stayed featured. Clearly this has been a deliberate thing done by someone and no I don't know who, but hopefully you will agree that is at least "strange." Why would high ranking article suddenly just disappear out of sight???

It is also remarkable how much Paul Edmonson sounds like Mr Godin. All of my Hubpages have 3 or more pictures, 2-3 videos, over 1500 words of unique content and no more than 2 links to Amazon and I never use eBay. My hubs on similar topics are linked together. Referring to good quality hubs as "spam" will wind up any good writer.

I also deleted 50 Squidoo lenses before the changeover to Hub and set up a brand new website from scratch around one subject. It took some time to rank but is now making sales of around $250 a month, and I use about 5 Amazon links per page. The number of Amazon links has no relevance to Google ranking.

The similarities between what happened at Squidoo, which Hubbers only, will never understand because they were not there to witness it, is quite incredible. Exactly the same advice, if it can even be called that, is being offered once again.

The advice sounds like, "Do some things to your Hupbpages...like you know...yes those things...and then tweak that little thing...yes 2 of them...and then add one of those...avoid spam..but we won't say what spam is...."

I think that just by reading what ex-Squidoo people are saying here, you can form an opinion, that they are intelligent enough people. They were treated really badly at Squidoo and it appears that it is also happening here.

I keep hearing about "limited staff resources" both at Squidoo and now here at Hubpages. There is a pretty simple answer, get more staff!!! I have no idea how many Hubs are published each day but let's assume there are 10,000.

If 1,000 of those could be manually checked, so around 10%, that would be a good filter. It would certainly be better than machine built filters and so called "hub hopping" where other people can ridicule a great article or praise a useless one.

I have no idea what Hubpages spend their money on. I assume they have around 2 million Hubs and around 120,000 actual writers on here. Surely they must be making a lot of money. I fully appreciate they share 60% of this with us who write here, but 40% is not bad.
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1. 60
  Nancy Hardinposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  enda mcclarnon, I SO wish there were like buttons on these posts, because I'd like yours a dozen times. Thanks for telling it like it is!
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2. 91
  Sue Adamsposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  According to http://hubpages.com/authors/best/
  
  there are around 84.000 hubbers on the site.
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  LindaSmith1posted 10 years agoin reply to this
  A lot of these have not published on HP for several years. Many jumped ship, took what they wanted and left the rest.
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3. 84
  misterhollywoodposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Endam,
  
  I am curious - were you leery of coming here when the Lenses were purchased from Squido? What motivated you to come here rather than put your own lenses on a private blog? I ask because it sounds like at one time you were making really good money. Please don't take my question the wrong way - I'm just trying to understand what happened in terms of what kinda time you guys had to make a decision.
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  Virginia Allainposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  I'll answer part of this question. We had a warning of 2 weeks to either move to Hubpages or rescue what we could. People with 50 to 600 pages could not easily move them elsewhere in the time given us.
  
  Coming here thinking we would have 4 months to adjust our content to fit bought us some time to consider other options. Given the current changes, many now opt to move on.
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  Solarasposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  I think I heard that you needed to come here to receive your final payout from Squidoo too.
  
  You guys have had 3 months already - it's not like you got caught out after 3 weeks. The Internet landscape is ever changing, and HP needs to keep up with it, or risk destroying us all.
  
  A few of the folks who have had unfeatured articles, whose articles have been discussed here, are obvious candidates for unfeaturing. 10+ Amazon ads per article, with little text next to them, stacked at the end of the article. That is exactly what Paul was talking about. It does not work in today's landscape.
  
  I still don't understand why you would despise being warned that you were risking a Google punishment. Would that manual action feel better to you? Manual actions affect all of us; I don't want to see it for anyone.
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  justholidaysposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Some more on that:
  
  1. We had to agree to move to get our final payment. Since we had little notice, we clicked on that big green move button.
  
  2. Right before the big move, we were told we would have had our payment even if we left without moving - too late: the big move was about to begin.
  
  3. Those who cancelled the move realized that their earnings were cut in the end - no tier payment for deleted lenses.
  
  4. They agreed - me included - to click on that big green button becauses we were given a 4 month grace period to modify the lenses. I deleted most of mine before the big move, though.
  
  5. The big travel started right before the Halloween period - the biggest earner for us. Why deleting those lenses? We worked hard to put them together, we deserved to get our piece of the cake. I knew HP very well, knew it for a serious place, with a responsive staff. So it wasn't a heartbreaker for me to move on here. Though I only took the lenses I thought would get traffic and money.
  
  6. ALL former-Squids started to work on their former lenses when they reached their HP accounts. But for some with 500 or 1,000 lenses you can't require from them to translate them from S to HP in 4 months. It's huge work. Takes hours and hours. This can't be done in such a short period of time. So most knew their lenses would be unfeatured AFTER the grace period. I turned my 34 former lenses into HP very quickly, working on them only, overlooking the Halloween season and forfeiting my sites' earnings!
  
  7. Now that those moved lenses have earned a bit of money and that we have worked a lot on them we deserve to get the earnings they generated on here. Sadly for some - including me - the payout threshold won't be lowered so as to allow us to leave HP or move those "ugly, spammy, disgusting, -you name them- " pages else where.
  
  8. For most Squids the best season was Halloween even on Squidoo on its very last days. On HP it's nothing or next to nothing. Once again, they're losing something (money, time, traffic, and more).
  
  9. At the time of HP acquired the so-called key content from Squidoo, they KNEW what Squidoo lenses were made out of, what they were all about. Even though some pretend that the best of Squidoo was ranked in the top tier (0 up to 2,000), a big part of those were pure sales pages. Even so, HP acquired this key content.
  
  10. It's time to stop putting the fault on former Squids, they followed the crowd, they tried to secure their hard work and the money that goes along. It's human, it's normal.
  
  11. Don't tell me you're ready to work 24/24 and 7/7 on hundreds of HP for months for peanuts and without getting sick in the end... I wouldn't believe you.
  
  Then it's also time for all of you to understand that, without sales pages, HP will not earn enough money to pay for the servers and their staff. It is a business, a business works with the adjunction of money. A free platform like this one can NOT survive without money.
  
  Unless you are all ready to pay a fee to have the right to publish your writings here. But here again it is going to be a free option that you can choose or not. Squids did not have any kind of choice. Not even today...
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  Sue Adamsposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  On the contrary, what people still fail to understand is that HP is NOT a site for sales pages like thousands of those imported from Squidoo.
  
  HubPages has always thrived without sales pages and will continue to do so. There is a big difference between a sales page containing 10 Amazon capsules with 50 words each purely to sell stuff and an article with 1250 words of valuable content with 2 related Ads.
  
  Go for the latter and you should be fine.
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  LindaSmith1posted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Yes!!! Write a hub on mountains and get your page plastered with ads for pooper scoopers, links to related hubs on the latest weed wacker, and 6 or more related searches which are text links to the same domain which the Hubbbers that you are slamming didn't put there
  
  Not a sales site! HP has more information about the making money with HP earnings program, Amazon program, Ebay program than it does anything else in their learning center and FAQ's page.
  
  Not a sales site!!! Why not get rid of all of the Amazon Capsules, Ebay Capsules, text links to all affiliate programs???? Maybe because across the board, HP is making a nice chunk of change from the sales being made here!!!!
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  endamclarnonposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Linda you are so sceptical...lol
  
  Ever checked out the 5 best charcoal grills in Hubpages..not salesy at all
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  Marisa Wrightposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  But Sue, the point is that HubPages' rules specifically ALLOW one Amazon capsule per 50 words. I agree that is not what HubPages is about - so why do the rules allow it? Why not change the rules so no one can say they didn't understand?
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  LisaMarieGabrielposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  I submitted my page and had a nice reply from Paul. As a result there was what we Brits call a "lightbulb moment". The 50 words per capsule may not apply to informational hubs which preferably contain no sales modules at all because Google is listing them for information not products.
  
  At Squidoo, Adsense was never shared fairly. The Tier system was set so so that the "best lenses" shared all the adsense. The algorhythm figured in backlinks, social interaction, visitors, sales and click outs on related links therefore a LOT of purely informational lenses never made anything. At the point Squids realised this, they added links and they added sales modules. Even those who were not interested in selling added sales modules because if you made a sale or two you might make it into Tier 1, 2 or 3. Payments in Tier 1 were good so people found all sorts of ways and means to get there and stay there including spammy topics and spammy pages and good pages were forced out by bad ones. Therefore when some otherwise good pages came over but had lots of links and included sales modules it was only a matter of time before the proverbial was going to hit the fan.
  
  There will be those who disagree with me, but in my experience even purely informational pages were forced to have ads to survive on Squidoo because once they dropped below a certain point in lensrank they became totally invisible. Now I know the distinction is so black and white, I will be able to act on it. In the meantime I just hope people learn to get along together because the sniping is not helpful to anyone. Some understanding of the historical background and a little compassion would go a long way to help.
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  Millionaire Tipsposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  This is very helpful, and I am glad you were able to see things in a different way. It is normal to have some culture shock when coming into a new place, but sometimes if you sit back and analyze it, you can realize that the way they do things is for a reason.
  
  I think that the Squidoo team was milking a cash cow. They realized that the site was going down, and were going to get as much money out of it as possible in the short run, knowing there was no more long run for them. So it made sense to reward the one articles that made a lot of sales. But HubPages is in it for the long run, so they are willing to try to figure out what the reader, and therefore Google, wants. They reward long-content informational hubs.
  
  Spam is in the eye of the beholder, and what may be treasure is likely to be trash to most. The only time I like seeing ads is when I am ready to buy and you introduce me to the thing I didn't know I needed. Otherwise, it is all clutter. A lot of people say they write quality hubs, but many of them (including me) have thrown in a capsule or two just to make that bonus sale.
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  justholidaysposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Then tell me how to build a correct pages on chocolate themed Christmas ornaments without featuring more than 2 Amazon products on a min 1250 words page.
  
  Must be entertaining and lead the potential customer to buy some of those ornaments. Plese do not provide instructions on how to build a virtual sleeping pill of course.
  
  Maybe you don't write for the sake of money and good on you, really. But I don't have time to waste writing for the pleasure, I also have bills to pay each and every month and have to make ends meet. Squidoo sold to HP, I didn't ask for anything, just let me get my earnings and pack and leave after my next payout.
  
  By the way, but you might not be interested, I have a historic account on here filled with something else than sales pages.
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  Sue Adamsposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  My 3 digit monthly income from HubPages contributes towards my bills without me resorting to writing sales pages.
  
  As stated in the recent newsletter:
  "Products are considered spam that are ... excessive, meant to benefit the Hubber and not the reader, and unnecessary to the reader's experience (i.e. the Hub would work fine without them). "
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  justholidaysposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  If HP doesn't want my pages, they're free to show me the door, but before I'd like to get my deserved earnings which haven't reached the min payout threshold... That's all I have to say about the newsletter.
  
  Still I have no unfeatured Hubs - at least not for lack of quality.
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  Marisa Wrightposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Exactly. So a Hub helping people to choose the right Christmas decoration could well have multiple Amazon and/or eBay capsules, because they would be very helpful to the reader and therefore not regarded as spammy at all.
  
  This is my experience on my own website, where many of my pages have up to 20 eBay capsules, but ONLY if that page exists to give the reader information on their choices. Since the last Panda, my traffic has gone up 50% so clearly, Google has no objection to multiple affiliate ads IF they are there to assist the reader.
  
  I would also second what someone else said in response to "we're not Amazon". When I started my eBay affiliate websites, I was absolutely astonished at how many people bought from my site. Why would they bother, when it's so easy to go straight to eBay?
  
  What I found, over time, was that the average person has no idea how to search on eBay, so they appreciate a site offering to find the products for them. It still bewilders me because I don't see what's hard about eBay search, but there you go.
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  Ramkitten2000posted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Yep, uh-huh ... what she said.
  
  Oh, I guess I'm supposed to do this:
  
  +11111111111111 (or is it ++++++++++++1 ?)
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  Deborah Sextonposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Someone else and I are having a debate about what you mean by 3 figures, is it:
  A. $100.00 to $999.00
  Or
  B. $1,000.00-$9,999.00 ????
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  Millionaire Tipsposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  You forgot another possibility:
  c. 1.00-9.99
  
  My guess is A. I don't use terminology like that, but when I hear it, that is what I think it means.
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  calculus-geometryposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  lol!
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  psycheskinnerposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  A -- there are three figures in 100
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  Deborah Sextonposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  I know how many figures are in $100 but I was asking Sue
  ( the person who said it). what she meant by three figures
  Your statement doesn't settle our debate, but thanks anyway
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  TIMETRAVELER2posted 10 years agoin reply to this
  When people speak of three figures, that usually means 100 to 999.
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  Deborah Sextonposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  But I'm not looking for what people usually mean, I was asking Sue what she means
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  fpherj48posted 10 years agoin reply to this
  She did NOT say 3 FIGURES....she said 3 DIGITS......Big difference. 3 digits begin at 100 and go to 999.
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  pkmcrukposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Squidoo had a considerable number of pages which were the sales pages which you so clearly dislike. That was obvious from looking at the site.
  
  One assumes that the HubPages Management team actually looked at the site before purchasing it? That they did due diligence? That they knew what they were buying and were happy at that point to buy access to an enormous number of high income generating sales pages?
  
  So please if you want to direct your angst anywhere direct it at the appropriate people! Also just step back and think about how you would feel if you were given as little time as Squidoo Lensmasters to decide how to move many hundreds of pages. A little human compassion goes a long way to making people feel welcome - something which this thread has clearly demonstrated is not the case when it comes to former Squidoo Lensmasters who are being made to feel very unwelcome.
  
  Perhaps you also need to reflect on your frequent assertions that if someone wants to go shopping they will go straight to Amazon etc. The evidence from Squidoo and from many thousands of Amazon Affiliates is that is simply erroneous thinking.
  
  There is a lot of spam on the internet including the dangerously misleading "quack" ideas around how to cure acne, boils and the like. Carefully curated products enabling individuals to make informed buying decisions is not spam as has been shown again and again across many sites.
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  makingamarkposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  I endorse what Paul says. I've been curating Amazon content for years into more accessible listings with my comments.
  
  The reason being that:
  1) some maunfacturers/retailers haven't got a clue about how to list items on Amazon - they don't investigate categories and sub-categories and they don't list items where they would be best listed
  2) some retailers do NOT list an item where they should quite deliberately - because they know where the traffic goes so they list under a well trafficed topic so they pick up the type of traffic which might click on the equivalent of a non-relevant advert in the side column on a hub
  3) it's EXTREMELY DIFFICULT for some items to actually find the best "whatever" - and that's a fact!
  
  It's also why the type of sites people made on squidoo did so well
  
  At the end of the day, people simply don't have the time to search through Amazon to find the best given Amazon listings are so corrupted.
  
  Of course if that's what you call a sales hub as opposed to an information hub - and the former is 'outlawed' - then that will be content AND INCOME that helps to finance Hubpages which will disappear off HubPages and go to niche blogs where it will happily generate both traffic and income untroubled by Google.
  
  That'll be because it isn't on a site called an "article farm" by Google - who have made it very clear just how much they dislike multi-topic sites.
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  misterhollywoodposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Thanks just Holidays for this bit of insight.
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  misterhollywoodposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Thanks! That doesn't sound like much time at all if you had a lot of lenses.
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  endamclarnonposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  No worries at all..you asked a good question. I was doing really well at Squidoo and was happy there. They made a lot of changes near the end and introduced a lot of peculiar changes. None of us there could really understand why and then the big announcement came, and as far as I know, it was a shock to everyone there.
  
  Imagine if Hubpages said tomorrow we have been bought over by Blogger and you can either move all your Hubs there, or download them and move them somewhere else. If you are earning decent money at Hubs then it is a considerable blow to your day to day online work.
  
  That is pretty much what happened. I moved half of my lenses to here and half to my own blog. I wasn't sure which would work best is the reason I split them. It is tough to rank a new website and Hubpages already has some authority.
  
  The peculiar thing is my own small blog is doing really well and my Hubpages are a train wreck. My blog is earning me around $200 a month and my Hubs around $30 a month.
  
  The content is pretty similar in terms of quality and quantity. I hope this helps explain things Mr Holywood and thanks for the genuine question.
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  LindaSmith1posted 10 years agoin reply to this
  I am also doing better with my blogs than here with the same type of content. One of my hubs that was unfeatured, which is called Spam these days, by those who never layed eyes on it, was on Page 1 of Google search. Oh well, I have deleted it, will save it for next year to put on my blog.
  
  I have 2 blogs now that have older URL's but I have dumped much of what was on one, put what I have deleted from here, or found sitting in my computer, so it is new content and is doing better traffic wise than here, more sales than here as is the other one that I have not touched in a year or more.
  
  I have or should I say had hubs that were ranking high in Google search engine which are either on my blogs now, or headed that way.
  
  Funny how so many say that they are doing better with their own blogs, other sites than HP.
  
  Bottom line, Google does not like Content Farms and HP falls into that category.
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justholidaysposted 10 years ago
When my site received that manual penalty from Google, what did I do?

Did I change a single thing on the site? NO.

Did I modify my articles and write content only? NO.

I sent a removal request right away and waited for 48 hours for the reply. The response was: manual penalty gone.

I am a little one in Google's playground. I am a NOTHING in their eyes. Still they removed the penalty in 48 hours.

HubPages is a giant compared with me. Don't tell me that they can't ask Google to remove the penalty. Don't tell me that a site that is of such an interest for Google can't have a manual penalty removed. A manual penalty has been set by a human being, for whatever reason. Sometimes by vengence, sometimes by ignorance, sometimes by mistake.

Because both Google and HP make money when HP has featured Hubs... And both are losing money with unfeatured Hubs - which are certainly for most, still viewable but not indexed.
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Mark Ewbieposted 10 years ago
Here is Quantcast showing HP before and after the Squidoo take-on. See the rise in traffic and then the drop?

For whatever reason that throw of the dice has not worked.

Everyone - or most people on here - complain about spam. They have different views of what constitutes it - but they mostly complain.

HP are trying to police this mass of content as best they can. They - and we - want to make some money.

Arguing over the rules will make not one shred of difference to what happens. It is done. These arguments are exactly the same as we had back in 2011 on here when the first waves of affiliates started to leave.

As for smug...

I have spent years of being totally hacked off by generic content that adds to internet spam. Being penalised time and again because Google looks at the whole picture. Yeah - my stuff isn't great but it is hopefully not the same old stuff that clogs up the internet. Maybe if Google relaxes its grip on HP I will write some more.

After the reception I got for saying wtf is this when I first saw the calendar pages, the Barbie pages, you all know the ones I mean... perhaps I am a bit smug.

As for friends. I have a few friends on here. Generally we don't hunt in packs. I am not so keen on that game.

And here are some shower curtains...

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  Dressage Husbandposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  
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  MelissaBarrettposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  So glad I didn't use something less appealing as a random example.
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  Snakesmumposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Where can I get these? Just what I'm looking for! :-) :-)
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  fpherj48posted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Thanks a lot Mark.... the most beautiful shower curtains I've ever seen, but you don't tell me how to order them. My head hurts from reading this entire thread. Quite clearly a great many writers are terribly upset. I feel badly for them and wish I had a magic wand, but nothing I could say would be of any help. I will hope that the issues can be resolved.
  Will stop reading now and take a bath (because I don't have a shower curtain)..and go to bed ( I don't have a nice pillow either). Can I borrow some money?. .
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psycheskinnerposted 10 years ago
HP today is very different from HP last week, which I think is as much of the problem as being different from Squidoo. Last week they had a grace period to get up to speed, now it has vanished and staff will not even comment on that happening.
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  MelissaBarrettposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  I understand that. My point was that it shouldn't be assumed that if your hub is unfeatured, that it necessarily has anything to do with the changes. Especially if it is a new hub or one that was edited and has to go back through QAP.
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  TIMETRAVELER2posted 10 years agoin reply to this
  It appears to me from what Paul wrote that he thoroughly explained what he is doing...which is to try to save this site from being decimated by Google.
  
  I suspect that lots of people took this hit, not just Squids, because for some time now we have had to suffer as the result of spammy articles that were here long before the former Squids showed up.
  
  After reading other posts by Paul about what spam is, I realized that using those affiliate links is very tricky business, even for those who have the best of intentions.
  
  This site cannot afford a penalty from Google, and what happened to those subdomains he mentioned must have been a big red flag for Paul.
  
  He has every right to make decisions about how he runs HP, whether we agree with him or not. Personally, if it were me, I would be doing exactly what he is doing. He is not out to "get" anybody, he is trying to survive in the midst of a very hostile environment created by Google.
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  Marisa Wrightposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  That's not the point, TT2. I 'm delighted to see Paul taking firm action to try to recover from this latest Panda, but it does seem (from reading the reports) that this new filter penalised a large number of Squidoo ex-lenses incorrectly. Look at the post by Janet:
  
  http://hubpages.com/forum/topic/127101? … ost2681586
  
  I can also understand why Squids feel betrayed by this action. They were offered a 4-month amnesty. That was offered without knowing Panda was about to hit - so I could understand if HubPages has decided they can't afford to give Squids that much time. But to start chipping away at the amnesty without warning writers is not a nice thing to do.
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  Dressage Husbandposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Thank you Marisa, more people with the attitude like yours would make life a lot easier for those of us still suffering from being hit by the unreasoned approach from Squidoo HQ.
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  LindaSmith1posted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Janet's post blew my mind. Then it became apparent that the majority of hubs hit were from the transfer. The more i think about it, I smell a skunk in the woodpile.
  
  If this little bit of crap was done randomly, then how do you do a random selection which 99 percent of it comes from the same pile?
  
  I did not transfer the lenses that I had on Squidoo, so the few hubs that I had hit with the crap bomb, were hubs not transferred content.
  
  But, there is so much about "This is not a store" blah, blah, blah.
  I challenge every person who is beating up those of us of have had the guts to speak out,
  
  Remove every Amazon product on your hubs. After all, this is not a store and products are spam, of which HP gets 40 percent of.
  
  If you don't have 1100 words, go back and add enough text to make the 1100 words.
  Remove every affiliate text link that you have as well. After all, this is not a store.
  
  You may as well get rid of your adsense account for HP anyway since this is not the place for you to make a buck. Or just leave adsense and wait for 5 years until you get payout from them, if they even give it to you.
  
  In the meantime, try to figure out why you have hubs with scores of 90 and above, suddenly drop to 80 and below, may down to 60 or below because the hub scores are going to haunt you. Hub scores that we know little about. Hub scores that go down when you decide to edit a hub whether it is because you caught a typo, or have new information to add to it, or maybe need to do an update on it.
  
  Guess what! Your day is coming as well! It is in that precious newsletter from yesterday!
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LindaSmith1posted 10 years ago
Nancy: At first I was going to say Smurfs! But the word smug kept coming back, hence, Smugaroos! Yes, we saw the die hards, the Happy Dancers, and the almost cult like worship of Seth! What did it get those people? Where is their Seth now? Where is their Squidoo now? I jumped ship before Seth jumped ship and left everybody to save themselves if they could! I saw the one recent post that made comparisons between Squiddo, Seth and>>>>. Hey, it is the truth!

People who have not been hit yet, don't get it. They are not protected by some HP invisible shield. They don't get it that this is not about sales pages. However, there are sales pages that are published every day and that have been left alone? Why!!!!

I saw one this morning, 380 words, 10 products, and content was a bad joke which was primarily the product description.

What is going on with HP right now is like trying to get a straight answer out of a politician.

Smugaroos need to look at it this way: Class assignment to write a report. Students given rules and guidelines. Student A thinks they did a pretty good job, followed the rules and guidlines, but ended up with a D on their report. They go to teacher and ask,, "Why did I get a D on my report. I followed the rules, etc?'

Teacher says, "Because that is what you got, your paper was crap.:

Student: "Why was it crap? What did I do wrong?"

Teacher: 'Because I said it was crap. End of conversation.
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  MelissaBarrettposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  And is there something to be accomplished by giving cute little insulting names to those who disagree with you? Or to those who weren't even disagreeing but just saying things you didn't like?
  
  Did you actually want to accomplish something with your posts, or did you just want to complain and fling insults?
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  Nancy Hardinposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  I would say, it's only in retaliation to the insults that have been thrown at us (ex-Squids) The shower curtain example is one, and there are many more. You see only what you WANT to see, not what is right in front of your nose. BAH!
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  MelissaBarrettposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Nope, the shower curtain example was an example of an over-promotional useless hub. It didn't have anything to do with squids or anything else. I see LOTS of over-promotional hubs and could give a crap less who wrote them (and don't know anyway). I was speaking on what I see, everyday, right in front of my nose.
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  LisaMarieGabrielposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  The impression I get having read every post in this topic is that:
  
  1. Posts about informational pages are being lost in all the shouting about sales heavy pages
  
  2. All squidoo users were writing only sales heavy pages so this serves them right
  
  3. Promotional pages by Hubbers do exist but are acceptable enough not to name and shame (or don't exist) whereas we all know most squidoo lenses were by affiliate marketers.
  
  4. If poetry is unfeatured it must be bad poetry
  
  Am I right on any of those four?
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  MelissaBarrettposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  1. I don't know.
  
  2. No, I don't think anyone said that. Not that I read anyway.
  
  3. No, promotional pages by hubbers are unfeatured everyday.
  
  4. If it is unfeatured, it is unfeatured because it doesn't meet the standards of the QAP process.
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  Titiaposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  2. No, I don't think anyone said that. Not that I read anyway.
  Then read again. Squids as a group are blamed all over the place, but it was HP's choice to transfer all the crap sales lenses that Squidoo had ranked high because of their earnings.
  
  3. No, promotional pages by hubbers are unfeatured everyday.
  I've seen enough promotional pages (original hubs) that contain nothing more than numerous Amazon capsules with 50 words description in them, nothing else, still featured.
  
  4. If it is unfeatured, it is unfeatured because it doesn't meet the standards of the QAP process.
  How can it be that a hub that has passed the QAP process, that has not been touched after, still gets unfeatured? This has not happened to me, but to lots of others who had updated their squbs to the standards of HP and had passed the QAP.
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  MelissaBarrettposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  3. Then report them. Overpromotional has always been in the QAP process. If some slipped through, then by all means they need to go. However, that doesn't mean that the vast majority haven't been caught and unfeatured. Be sure to note if the ones you've seen are actually featured.
  
  4. They were unfeatured as part of the new rules by HP. I thought we had gone over that already. However, that wasn't what I was addressing in the comment you are referring to.
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  OldRosesposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Nancy, no one is insulting you. We are trying to help you. We are trying to give you the benefit of our experience.
  
  I have had hubs unfeatured in the past. When I looked at them, I realized two things. One, they had been written years ago and badly needed updating. And two, compared to other hubs written by both myself and other hubbers, my unfeatured hubs were not good quality. So I worked on them, retitling them, adding photos and text, and they were featured again.
  
  I didn't complain. I didn't write angry posts on the forums. I rewrote my hubs. And that's exactly what we are suggesting that anyone who has had hubs unfeatured, do to get their hubs featured again.
  
  And if all or most of my hubs were suddenly unfeatured, again, I would not complain or write angry posts in the forums. Having researched the changes in Google search, I would simply move my hubs to my own websites.
  
  I think what is missing from all of our discussions is the fact that Hub Pages does not belong to us nor does Hub Pages owe us anything. If the owners/moderators of Hub Pages wants to suddenly change the rules or implement sweeping changes, that is their prerogative.
  
  All that we can do is to change or move on. Whining, complaining, insulting fellow hubbers won't accomplish anything.
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  Sue Adamsposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  +1
  Thank you Old Roses, well put. Time to calm down.
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  janderson99posted 10 years agoin reply to this
  This comment by Paul E, earlier in the thread is relevant - perhaps you missed it. HP needs to act to avoid manual penalties even for unintended "spam" in Google's eyes.
  
  "One example I've used before is Google put a manual action on a site for spam where the author wrote about a family incident that caused quite a bit of stress. At the bottom of the article a few products were placed on it to help someone relax - bath soaps, candles. I don't think the author was intending to spam in this case, but it did have a manual action."
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  Susana Sposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Yep this.
  
  And I'm a firm believer that UGC sites such as HP are held to higher standards than other websites which is why we need to be much more frugal with the affiliate links.
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LindaSmith1posted 10 years ago
As to word count for Amazon products.

The rule was 50 words per product. It was changed recently to count the product description in the Capsule as part of the word count. In fact, the word counter has been adjusted to do just that. It counts what is in the text capsules and anything added to the Amazon capsules.
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LindaSmith1posted 10 years ago
If the owners/moderators of Hub Pages wants to suddenly change the rules or implement sweeping changes, that is their prerogative.

Absolutely! HP needs to tell us what the new rules are, or are they TOP SECRET!

HP is skirting the issues, and there is more than one regarding the unfeatured hubs yesterday.

People are assuming the hubs were all sales pages, too many affiliate links etc.
They can assume til the end of time.

Bottom line is nobody knows why one, let alone hundreds if not more got unfeatured yesterday.

A lot of these unfeatured hubs were still in the grace period from Squidoo transfer. Ah, they get unfeatured, so now hubber will have to hit the edit button which will take them out of the grace period.

Fix them!!!! Fix what?? No outside links. No affiliate text links. No text links period. No products. These are the types of hubs that got unfeatured yesterday as well.
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  OldRosesposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Linda, did you miss the part where I also noted that Hub Pages doesn't owe us anything? They don't have to tell us what the new rules are.
  
  What I'm reading here are a lot of spoiled, petulant children who don't want help, they just want to have tantrums. The "smugaroos" are trying very hard to tell you what the "new" rules are. They aren't new. They have been here all along. If the non-smugaroos had actually spent time reading hubs, rather than complaining, they would have understood the rules and not had their hubs unfeatured.
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  Nancy Hardinposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Okay, I'm done with the forums. There's no one here who listens to what we're saying. We've been through this continual updating of content WAY too many times before we ever got to HP. And yes, someone said it, instead of whining and complaining, I'm doing just as they suggested. Moving my content, but because I DID have so many pages, it takes time. Right now I'm almost finished moving the unfeatured and unloved, and then I'll start on the ones that have been "accepted for the moment." Good luck to all of you.
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  Sue Adamsposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Well done Nancy! Think of how much work you could have been doing in the last 40 hours.
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  sockiiposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  And snark is just SO helpful in times like these, truly.
  
  Nancy, you were always one of the most cheerful and positive people on Squidoo - sometimes to the extent that you would frustrate ME in your optimism! It really makes me sad, and I think it only goes to show, how trying things have become for a lot of ex-Squids to see you reach this point now as well. I wish you luck but I also know you will find it...elsewhere.
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  justholidaysposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  I'd move my content as well if I could but I'm stuck here till I reach the payout. Otherwise, I'd pack and leave as well.
  
  They don't think to understand that we were FORCED to join HP... Though I already had an account here and would have loved to merge the former Squidoo one with the historic account... But they decided otherwise
  
  With friends like some here, there's no need of enemies...
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  LindaSmith1posted 10 years agoin reply to this
  I am moving some right now. I am trying to learn some coding for blogger to be able to do what I want before I do the big move per niche.
  
  In the meantime, which is a slow process, is to remove every Amazon Capsule. Yep, I may lose sales, but I won't be alone on that one. Why remove them? I will have to ask my filters. After all, I have invested a lot of time in my hubs, blah, blah blah!!
  
  When I am done, HP might get to keep what I don't want and there isn't enough to create new sites for. But they will not have Amazon products added back to them.
  
  I have another place for the products. So, I can still make sales, but it just won't be here at HP.
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LindaSmith1posted 10 years ago
If they don't tell us what the new rules are, then they have no reason to unfeature hubs. They have nothing to complain about then.

People have a tendency to jump on those affected by crap, UNTIL they are affected by the same crap. So many think it will never happen to them, until it does!!!

We want straight answers!!!!!
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  TIMETRAVELER2posted 10 years agoin reply to this
  LindaSmith1:
  
  You might consider taking the time to read the information in the Learning Center along with numerous posts by Paul warning people about posting articles with many advertisements.
  
  You can quote rules all you like, but the truth is that Google frowns on hubs that oversell and nicks all of us because of people who continue to produce them.
  
  We are not children. It is up to each of us to know the guidelines and use some common sense when using them. In the world of Google, nothing is every just black and white.
  
  Paul explained what he did and why, and he also gave a warning that there is more to come. This is a wake up call for all of us, and we should heed it.
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LindaSmith1posted 10 years ago
If they don't tell us what the new rules are, then they have no reason to unfeature hubs. They have nothing to complain about then.

People have a tendency to jump on those affected by crap, UNTIL they are affected by the same crap. So many think it will never happen to them, until it does!!!

We want straight answers!!!!!
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  OldRosesposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Your sense of entitlement is mind-boggling.
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psycheskinnerposted 10 years ago
Except the new rules are in fact new as per the hubstaff explanation about the *new* filter, albeit without saying specifically what it is filtering out. And some people were in fact insulting anyone who had a hub unfeatured by agreeing it must by definition be spam. I think it should be possible to accept that it is normal to be frustrated by that before moving onto to addressing how to, somehow, work out how to get those hubs refeatured.
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  MelissaBarrettposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  I think their frustration has been addressed. I'm not sure what else is expected.
  
  It sucks to have hubs unfeatured. That's been acknowledged. They feel some promise has been broken to them... also acknowledged.
  
  How many pages does it take to acknowledge that? Until they aren't angry anymore?
  
  Sure. Look me up when that happens. Some people can stay angry for a very long time. I'm not sure how many pages are necessary for complaining about their anger are necessary before actually discussing solutions is appropriate.
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  Marisa Wrightposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Melissa, I think an apology is expected, and a willingness to investigate.
  
  HubPages is saying, we ran a new algorithm: these are the results guys, so your unFeatured Hubs must be garbage because we know it's 97% accurate. That's not very sympathetic and is ignoring the testimony of someone like Janet, who has two accounts - one a long-established HubPages one and the other a recently transferred Squid one - and has had a heap of Hubs in the Squid account unFeatured by the new algo (and none in the other). She knows HubPages rules well and the structure of her articles is virtually identical across both accounts.
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  MelissaBarrettposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  I'm not sure whether an apology is needed or not. I would say no. An explanation was likely required and was provided.
  
  Paul explained what HP did and why. He also made an offer to investigate hubs that hubbers felt were unfairly penalized.
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  Marisa Wrightposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  I noticed that, but I wonder how many of the Squids did. It was right at the end of a very long post. Most of the people affected are so angry, I suspect they stopped reading before they got to that point.
  
  It would have been so easy to start with an expression of concern, and a request for some examples, then follow up with the explanation. Opportunity missed, unfortunately.
  
  I notice Nate has given some examples as requested, I wonder if Paul will respond.
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  sockiiposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Marisa, I think many of us DID see it, but as at least one person expressed right afterward in his comment here, a lot of former Squids are loathe to put their lens/hubs up on the forum here for public (and not just private) scrutiny. Paul E might mean well but there are people here who have taken to calling out transferred Squids and linking to their accounts even on other sites, like Bubblews, to point out how bad their content is and basically engage in bullying. Given this experience over the past few months, I understand why a lot of people are hesitant to want to post a link here instead of having somewhere OFF forum where they could get direct feedback on why a hub has been flagged.
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  Marisa Wrightposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Goodness, that's dreadful, I had no idea.
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  snakeslaneposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Did Paul E not offer to address individual concerns privately through his personal email on his profile page ? (to find that click on his Fan Mail, the email link is at the top).
  
  Ah, yes, here it is:
  
  "Also, if you have a URL for a Hub de-featured for quality yesterday that you think was a mistake, email it to me via my profile and I'll take a look."
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  bravewarriorposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Why have we gotten so bitter? This is a social problem that has been compartmentalized into our HP community.
  
  Take a deep breath, open your eyes and minds, and learn. Complaining changes nothing. Knowledge and actions do. So does accepting the fact that we, as humans, have flaws.
  
  See them. Accept them. Make changes. Otherwise, as I previously stated, "like it or lump it".
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  Solarasposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  No one said their hubs were "garbage." They tripped a filter, and writers need to investigate why that happened. Is this something they can correct on that hub to keep it from tripping a Google filter or algorithm? Why take this as such an insult, when it is an opportunity to get better in line with what Google wants.
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  makingamarkposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Let's be precise here - this is not about what Google wants. This is what HubPages THINKS Google wants.
  
  That doesn't make it what Google actually wants.
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  LisaMarieGabrielposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  +1 x 1000
  
  Yes, yes, yes... and remember Squidoo got it so very wrong! They tried and they tried. (Don't be blinded by the shower curtains - that is just a diversion). They spent months and months trying to guess what Google wanted. We saw the result of months of guessing, filtering and punishing... Google wants only one thing and that one thing is? Nothing any of us is able to provide...
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  misterhollywoodposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Actually, it might be better to focus on what Google doesn't want:
  
  - spammy sites
  - low quality content
  - link farms
  
  What exactly should HP be doing?
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  makingamarkposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  You left one out - Google has been going after what what it calls "article farms" ever since it released the first version of Panda
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  Millionaire Tipsposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  I don't think it is just HubPages that should be deciding on what to focus on. HubPages says that there has to be at least 50 words per Amazon capsule. I think this is too lenient, and Google might not agree with that ratio, so I apply my own common sense and have made my own rule more strict, and have many more than 50 words per capsule. I also make sure I have some hubs that don't have any Amazon capsules at all.
  
  This way, if HubPages does change their mind about the minimum, I won't get caught up in that filter. Some of the rules they make are to avoid angering so many people - so they are fairly lenient. I can be more strict with myself and my own subdomain. We all know that nobody likes spammy sites and low quality content, so when I write, I try to make sure that I personally wouldn't consider my own site spammy or low quality. And sometimes I go to an extreme to make sure someone else might not either. Yes, I do have hubs that are there purely to sell stuff, but I also have many more hubs that simply provide information.
  
  When they tell me that some people get tripped up by having links that aren't directly related, even though they haven't told me to do so, I have scheduled time to go through all of my hubs and check to see that I haven't inadvertently added ads that aren't directly related. I'm sure I might have made a mistake or two in my early hubs, but even my recent hubs aren't immune to errors.
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  Solarasposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  I think HP staff has a better handle on this than the average writer. Paul said they had been working on this for 3 months, running simulations to get it right.
  
  Currently my account is experiencing pre-Panda highs. This may be due to holiday searches, but 2 months ago I would have given up on seeing these numbers again. I don't think HP staff are totally "off the mark."
  
  Just because the current Algo is in favor of small niche sites, does not mean that that is Google's end game. It may just be one small step in a series of many aimed at getting rid of their competition. This is a US based company, a country with a long history of building up ruthless monopolies that stop at no extremes to destroy their competition big and small, until the federal government steps in to control them.
  
  I give HP staff credit for being proactive.
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  Marisa Wrightposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Did you read the post from Janet, who says she's had a heap of Hubs unFeatured on her Squidoo account, which are written exactly like the Hubs on her main HubPages account?
  
  The concern here is not that Hubs have been unFeatured for good reason, but that something about Squidoo accounts has caused their Hubs to be caught up in this filter when they shouldn't have been.
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LindaSmith1posted 10 years ago
TimeTraveler2: Not all, but most of the hubs hit were from accounts created for the Squidoo transfer. One hubber had 100 hubs hit. There were hubs hit that were informational without any products, etc. We have yet to get a straight answer as to what was wrong with the hubs that got hit yesterday. It is obvious that human eyes did not see them.

Paul told us that if we disagreed to send hub to him. We should have bombarded him with hubs that were needlessly unfeatured.
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  bravewarriorposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Those who feel they've been hit by the bots should email team@hubpages.com with a link to the hub(s) they feel were unfairly hit. Matt responded to me within 24 hours and gave me the reason my hub was unfeatured.
  
  Everyone needs to quit being so defensive. Be objective and open to criticism. HP is working with Google's algorithms in order to help us.
  
  Like it or lump it.
  
  It's funny how, if you ask a question of someone who can actually provide an answer, you just may learn something.
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  makingamarkposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Not if you get automated answers to queries
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  misterhollywoodposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  I've never seen such ugliness here before.
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  janderson99posted 10 years agoin reply to this
  January should be a fun month after the end of the moratorium.
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  colorfuloneposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  I had to pause and think on this.
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  Solarasposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  +++1 Thank you for going to the source to get your answer. That was brilliant. I hope you see ample rewards; please keep us posted on how that hub does. I think we will all be interested!
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psycheskinnerposted 10 years ago
There are options other than life or or lump it. Like not like it but be pragmatic. Or go and write some other place. Or try and take part in a feedback process to make the situation better. Or protest. All viable choices actually.

The only content site I ever got banned from decided any criticism was forbidden. They closed down years ago even before the current pandemonium. (Anyone remember Today.com? Used to be a good earner).
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  bravewarriorposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  All I'm saying is we can and should investigate before we start raising a ruckus. Not everything we present as writers is quality. That goes for all of us. Even the authors we read today had their lumps to overcome. Why are we any different?
  
  Like it or lump it is a Southern saying. It means accept what comes your way or mope about it. I choose to take it a step further and find out why something is unacceptable. This relates to anything in life. We learn from our mistakes or we don't - thus, like it or lump it.
  
  Contact HP admin and ask for explanations. I've never been ignored when I reached out those who can answer my questions.
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  makingamarkposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  "Like it or lump it" is a very victim oriented perspective on life - as if we have no choices to do anything which might change what has happened.
  
  That's certainly not a perspective I share. It's not one which is shared by people who make something of themselves, who strive to do better, who actually make things happen. Who actually get up and leave when they think the environment they are in no longer fits with their ambitions.
  
  You be a victim if you want to be.
  
  That's not a road I'm going down anytime soon
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  jeffryvposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  +1 MaM
  again
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  Titiaposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Bravewarrior: "Like it or lump it" might be a USA Southern saying, but even I, a Dutchie, feel the negativity behind this saying. You can't even come close to imagine what it feels like seeing all your hard work completely messed up (again) like we found our former lenses after they were transferred. Yes I said 'again' because most of us have had this happening to our lenses a few times over at Squidoo in the last year.
  
  For many Squids who've not even had the time to recover properly from the unexpected blow of the sell out, it's a déja vu all over again and though I personally haven't been hit that bad at all, I fully understand where the anger in this thread is coming from.
  
  We have a Dutch saying and translated it says: "In a hen house all hens will pick on a sick hen". Well that's what a lot of hubbers have been doing over and over since our healthy lenses transferred into 'sick' hubs.
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  Ramkitten2000posted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Regarding our work being messed up ... again:
  
  I lost count of how many times Squidoo pulled something on us, sometimes with a little notice and oftentimes with none, that made a mess of our work. Or changed some rule that would cause our work to be locked if we didn't act quickly enough. I think I had to do damage control on my 250+ lenses at least half a dozen times, if not more, over the last year there. And what made it all the more frustrating was that, in many cases, the very thing we were rushing to try to "fix" or edit was something they had encouraged and even rewarded not all that long before but then decided to backtrack on. Sometimes I'd barely caught my breath from the last round of damage control when the next one hit.
  
  So, yeah ... many of us are really worn out and fuses are short, to say the least. Not to mention all the work we've done to fix our lenses after they were transferred here. I'd gone through my 200+ lenses-turned-hubs at least twice -- more for some -- after the transfer when the latest surprise came.
  
  Thinking back to 2008, when I first found Squidoo and started writing there, my work was all about info and sharing what I was passionate about, like Search & Rescue and backpacking and some other topics based on personal experience. Then, as time went on and I saw how much sales were rewarded and encouraged by Squidoo and, for many lensmasters, were very successful ... well, I gave it a try. I'd never tried to sell much of anything before, other than my novels. And lo and behold, my salesy lenses were rewarded (ie. with really good lensrank and promotion by HQ) and, by george, my income went up and up, too. So I drifted more and more towards sales. I worked long and hard on many of those lenses (not including those dreaded "lenslets" we were forced to make if we wanted to retain Giant status), and many of those sales-oriented lenses worked really well for me, especially those with some humor in the mix. I can't believe how many sales of men's footed PJs one of my lenses made!
  
  So, anyway, it's tough to suddenly find those pages are not wanted, after they've had so much success ... and after they've been approved by HP QAP multiple times since the move. I thought I could finally breathe a sigh of relief. But nope.
  
  So far, I've moved several lenses-turned-hubs to other places, but -- I don't know about any of you -- the process takes me hours sometimes, to rebuild a hub somewhere else. With the time it takes me and the time I have to devote to that endeavor, it could take me the rest of my life to move everything. So, for now, I'm just going to try to find new homes for my sales stuff (if or as they become unfeatured) and leave the rest until ... whenever.
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  Millionaire Tipsposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  I understand your frustration. We have gone through changes here too, and have had to make changes on our hubs. For me, I had to manage my own expectations that writing for the web is not a one time deal - you do have to make changes and keep up with the times. HubPages realized that focusing on sales was not helping, so they encouraged us to reduce our sales modules. It helped them / us survive Panda. I try to really listen to the logic behind what is being asked, and if it seems like a correct reasoning, then I have to take the time to go through all my hubs. I had over 200 at one time, and hope to write more to get them up higher, so I do understand the pain.
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  Ramkitten2000posted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Yep. *sniffle* You can get so attached to those pages, just the way they are. I don't wanna change my onesie footie PJs for men page again. **stamps her foot** I mean, thousands of men have gotten onesies from their significant others for Christmas just because of ME! But I guess HP doesn't appreciate that, so my boys and their footie pajamas will just have to go somewhere else to peddle our products.
  
  That's OK. I just feel bad for some of the collateral damage, with informational hubs getting caught up in the new filter. That happened a LOT on Squidoo, where the filters really ... um ... sucked. (Can I say that word here?)
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  Mark Ewbieposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  You can say pretty much what you like here without obvious attacking of course. The HP forums are far more open and free than Squidoo.
  
  There is a big difference between HP and Squidoo. Seth was a player and he showed his true colours when he cut a final deal for himself - shafting Squids and Hubbers alike.
  
  Paul believes in this site and has shown that time and again with the efforts he makes.
  
  In some ways this thread has shown the best of HubPages - we are as much a community and as supportive as anywhere else. It was never about knocking Squidders - it was about the deal - the deal that Seth shafted us ALL with.
  
  HubPages are applying their rules. They are different to Squidoo, the site is different. Less colorful, quieter, more reserved somehow. HubPages is still here. Squidoo is not.
  
  Whether it will keep going is another matter but mostly, apart from scoring occasional points in the heat of the moment, we would all like to be happy.
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  Phyllis Doyleposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Many blessings and hugs to you, Mark Ewbie. Thank you.
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  bravewarriorposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Mark, it's nice to see a positive comment in this thread.
  
  For the rest of the naysayers, I'm outta here. Y'all can bitch all you want. Where's it going to get you?
  
  If you don't like your new neighborhood, you know where the door is. The rest of us are a community who stick together through the changes. Just like life. If you're that in-adaptable, you need to rethink your objective as a writer.
  
  I'm not targeting any one person when I use the word 'you'. If you have any knowledge of the English language, 'you' is both singular and plural.
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  justholidaysposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  You know, former Squids have already been there, done that.
  
  Cutting on Amazon and eBay modules : done.
  Requiring more info text : done.
  Reducing keywords: done (up to 1% allowed only).
  Quality backlinks only: done.
  No follow links: done.
  And so on.
  
  Squidoo did it. For 18 months they did it.
  
  But they never questioned themselves and asked if their spammy ads - those that writers do not control - were the culprit. They never questioned what THEY did wrong.
  
  Result: Squidoo's death.
  
  We've already been there, we've already done that with the consequence that we're now Hubbers. Nothing that HQ did saved the site from its penalty. And we have that very strange "déjà vu" feeling.
  
  I may be completely wrong, I'm just saying that it might be a good idea to, as a test, get rid of automatically playing and opening ads, trojan downloading ads, etc. and ask for a manual penalty removal.
  
  I may work, it might not work at all.
  
  Obviously Paul Edmondson and staff know better than us what's the real problem - but unless the page PE directed us to in one of his interventions is not the only one communication they've received from Google regarding this penalty, it's not clear as to what is the actual problem with the spammy side of HubPages.
  
  And it might just not only be what authors publish.
  
  As an example, SpiritHalloween is regarded as a spammy site (and noted as is by WOT). They're listed in spam sites because they use redirects that open a pop up when people click on their links or those of CJ.com. I'm not sure they are penalized by Google but they might be one day, when enough reports are recorded.
  
  Next year, all sites will have to have an SSL certificate and thus, those that won't be on an secured encryption will not be ranked as good as others. Will HP penalize us, writers, in case they don't get their SSL certificate and are deranked?
  
  I've always liked HP, I've been here for 6+ years and never closed my historic account even at the time of the mass exodus after the subdomain implementation. But there are times when, as said earlier, giants may fall from their pedestal. Not because of someone else, but just because they forget to look at their own weaknesses.
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  Millionaire Tipsposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  They are also reducing / eliminating their related links. See the sticky post about the change in the layout.
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  bravewarriorposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Mark, it's nice to see a positive comment in this thread.
  
  For the rest of the naysayers, I'm outta here. Y'all can bitch all you want. Where's it going to get you?
  
  If you don't like your new neighborhood, you know where the door is. The rest of us are a community who stick together through the changes. Just like life. If you're that in-adaptable, you need to rethink your objective as a writer.
  
  I'm not targeting any one person when I use the word 'you'. If you have any knowledge of the English language, 'you' is both singular and plural.
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  Millionaire Tipsposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  If I had a hub where people are actually buying footie pajamas, I would definitely keep it, and do what I can to get it featured. People need their PJs!
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  bravewarriorposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  One thing I've noticed about the 'lenses' that have been imported to HP is they are rife with Amazon links. Many of the posts I've read looked like a series of product reviews/promotions. I think that may be the problem.
  
  This forum is becoming a place to bitch. If you have questions about why your hubs (no longer called lenses) have been unfeatured for quality (empty circle in your Account page), email the staff and ask questions. You'll get answers because I did when a few of mine became unfeatured after having been featured for years.
  
  Seek and ye shall find. Quit bitching and solve the problem. Are writers beyond reproach? I think not.
  
  Try querying agents for real works you want to put out there. How will you react to rejection?
  
  Live and learn. Ask questions and quit thinking your work is perfect. I haven't seen anyone on this forum whose name is God.
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  Solarasposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  +++++1
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  sockiiposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Ramkitten, I am pretty much with you. I am just so tired at this point. I've had to deal with Y!CN shutting down this summer and moving the content I wanted to save from there (plus the fact that most of my best articles there had been plagiarized so I had to try to deal with the DMCA mess as best I could with Wayback Machine copies of my articles. I worked like crazy in September and part of October in transitioning my lenses before more pressing personal matters had to take precedence. At this point...I am trying but it is hard for me to even care after being beaten down so much. I started at Squidoo primarily writing art tutorials based on my own work, and some of those did great. And did so until the very end of Squidoo, both in traffic and in sales of related materials. I only got on Squidoo in 2010 and yes, after a while I realized the lure of creating sales pages but always tried to focus on subjects I actually was interested in, had experience with, and could accent with personal experience.
  
  People seem to think sales pages "sunk" Squidoo and I'm sorry but that was not what I observed. What sunk Squidoo? An HQ staff that turned a blind eye to consistent abuse of the tier system: favored lensmasters who had liking and blessing circles to keep each other's lens ranks improperly inflated and not based on real search engine traffic. An HQ staff that never cared when people called out lensmasters who were promoting crap affiliate products, abusing hotlinked/non-licensed images (because if the copyright holder never complains it's totally ok, am I right?!?!?!) A staff that responded to every Google challenge out of fear and paranoia instead of doing what they should have from the start to stamp down on the abusers and stop the problems before they got out of hand.
  
  They turned away the honest affiliate marketers who played by the rules. They discouraged the people who wanted to create information-only lenses because they could never rank with the liking and blessing abuse that went on unchecked. And some of those people are here now and trying to kiss up to the system here and well, good luck to them.
  
  I want to move my stuff when I can. But right now? It's December, I've got family/holiday business that takes priority, a gathering of 50+ people next weekend to plan for, and more important things going on in my life. I just had to deal with getting one of my websites upgraded last month at considerable expense (and running a GoFundMe campaign for it since it's a non-profit site I've had for 7 years to serve a community, and quite honestly it means a lot more to me than anything else I have online right now.) So yeah, some will probably go, "LOL yeah she was so angry but then didn't move her stuff!" but it's just I do. not. have. the. time. for. this. crap. right now.
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LindaSmith1posted 10 years ago
I used the Classic version. Now that is gone. So I won't do any hub hopping for that reason, and because of what happened yesterday. Let HP deal with it.
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  naturegirl7sposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  The new version of Hub hopping does not work on my iPad. The sliding scale won't slide. Since I use the iPad for most of the hubbing I do. I used the classic verson, but I guess I won't be able to hop anymore. I wonder why it isn't mobile friendly.
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LindaSmith1posted 10 years ago
I follow HP guidlines. If they are not within Google guidelines then they need to make changes. It is their site not mine and I am not responsible for keeping up with Google.
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  TIMETRAVELER2posted 10 years agoin reply to this
  LindaSmith1
  
  Yes, but you are the one who pays the price when you make Google unhappy, yes?
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  Sam Montanaposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  With all the talk about Google, I wonder what makes Bing happy or is all search just Google related.
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  Solarasposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Whatever makes Bing and Yahoo happy seems to be the exact opposite of pleasing Google. I get hits from either one or the other on any given article. Very few search engines, in my experience, share the joy with readers.
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  justholidaysposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  What makes Bing happy is located in your Bing Webmaster Tools account. As long as you correct the mistakes - some are beyond your role since HubPages design is HP staff's role - they'll index your pages.
  
  I'm a big affiliate marketer and have lots of Bing and Yahoo traffic to my own sites. And when Google deindexed one, Bing was my 1st traffic driver and big time... big deal.
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jeffryvposted 10 years ago
Linda, the "Ads not above the fold" is a myth, like most seo stuff
2 pages by Google
http://as-abovethefold.appspot.com/
Click "Best layout"
https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/1282097?hl=en
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LindaSmith1posted 10 years ago
jeffryv: That one has been an issue for awhile now. I just read a 2014 article by Matt Cutts where in one sentence above the fold is not okay then turns around and says it is okay.
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  jeffryvposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Google has never changed it's acceptable use policy, it has always been that content must be visible above fold. but you can still have ads.What they do not like is JUST ads above fold!
  Example from Google
  https://storage.googleapis.com/support- … C416A1DBD6
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  TIMETRAVELER2posted 10 years agoin reply to this
  The reason for this is that they want to have that real estate available for their own ads!
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LindaSmith1posted 10 years ago
I understand what you are saying, but here we go again with Google'ss Super Duper Matt Cutts who contradicts the subject.

I was putting images at top of hubs, then read somewhere that it was not good to do that either. Besides to do that on HP, the images swallow up the page anyway.

Essentially, I do what is pleasing to my eyes and what I don't like seeing when I read an article or go to a site looking for information.
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  Sabre1000posted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Facebook uses Bing.
  Firefox is using Yahoo now. The latest FF version does everything it can to discourage using Google.
  There are rumors Safari will go to Bing.
  Google search may not be the one to be sucking up to so hard in the coming years.
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  OldRosesposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Sabre, just a small correction. Firefox will begin using Yahoo in January. Their contract with Google runs through the end of December. I'm looking forward to more traffic in January when Firefox users start searching using Yahoo which does send me traffic rather than Google which has sent me very little since the Panda update in September.
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  Sabre1000posted 10 years agoin reply to this
  I just got the latest version yesterday.
  Like I said, they are already trying to discourage using Google.
  You are given other search options with every search automatically now.
  BTW, my Hubs that are not on Google search, are first page on Bing and Yahoo.
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Jodahposted 10 years ago
A Letter to Google

by John Hansen © 2014

Mr.Google how do you do?

I'd like to have a word with you

I'll write nice content that people view

To keep you happy and Adsense too.

Even though I feel unclean,

While my poetry remains unseen.

Your Panda updates make things rough,

For creative writers times are tough.

Your algorithm seems so unfair

That many writers pull out their hair.

If you want "how to" I'll obey,

Write, "How to get up every day,"

"How to this and how to that,"

"How you should put out the cat."

It goes a little past a joke,

Your rules upset so many folk.

Disillusionment with you is rife,

Just like so many things in life.

You are the king of online search

Please look down from your lofty perch.

Creative writing must survive,

Please help us keep the art alive.
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  GiftsByDianaposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Awesome !
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  LisaMarieGabrielposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  +1
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LisaMarieGabrielposted 10 years ago
I am using Google Chrome on a laptop. When I use the Tweetdeck App to showcase pages I have just edited it gives a little hiccup but does it anyway. Google is about control other search engines are about finding what you want without the pages and pages of ad sponsored stuff first.

Back to the original question I had, and although I can send an email asking why I would rather not do it for every unfeatured page. The editing tool top right suggests ways in which hubs can be improved but is not giving any suggestions at all how to improve these unfeatured pages with high hub scores. There is nothing to say too many products. I use that tool to improve my hubs but if it doesn't help, what are we to do? Other than the pages I mentioned that are informational, in my case at least it seems to have hit what were the most successful pages on Squidoo. This leads me to think there is an element in the algorhythm of how many sales a page makes. I don't see that helping anybody. If the editing tool said "not niche enough" or "too many products" or "please don't write with a sense of humour when you sell jewelry" I could understand. If my subdomain has been flagged, nobody has told me about it.

Finally, just to reiterate - I am not angry. Angry is a pointless emotion that directs us all away from the main point which is to improve our pages (wherever we came from) and thus hopefully to improve HubPages' performance. I am confused and puzzled. I am also a little miffed that this is hitting page after page of content that has been edited whereas it seems to bypass anything that has been left alone.
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LindaSmith1posted 10 years ago
Sabre: I have it fixed so my hubs are indexed with Bing. There is a group on FB for HP writers called The Writers Door. One of them members posted about how helpful Bing is with keywords, etc.

I am doing what I need to do to be indexed by other search engines as well.

It can be a bit of a pain because you may need a Yahoo account, a MSN account, but hey, I am sick of fickle Google who will leave you alone if you pay to play.
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JulieJohnson3posted 10 years ago
Most of my traffic comes from Google, even though my Hub has much better search result placement on Yahoo and Bing. So, while writers say they are going to cut Google out of the picture, searchers will not. I only have the one Hub that was transferred from Squidoo. I didn't pursue Squidoo further because putting my content on a site someone else owned seemed too risky. But sites you own can also be penalized by Google and may never recover. My Hub is 2 years old, and its placement in Google has always fluctuated. But it's never been past the second page of search results for my chosen keyword, and the second page does not get you traffic. I don't think what Google wants now is much different from what they've always wanted. But some things I have noticed is that it hardly ever beats out YouTube, Blogger or Amazon for the first page of Google search results. You do need to choose a low competition keyword to target that people actually search and also use LSI keywords. You need a lot of content. Some sites rank with very little content, but that also depends on the site and how competitive your keyword is. When I created my Lens, I just assumed that Squidoo Lenses didn't rank well and hold their rank without less than 1000 words. I also assume that of Hubs. And you do need to include your main keyword in your writing. At least two quality backlinks help, but no more than two. And I'm not talking spammy backlinks. My Hub does have products. It is a sales Hub, but at the same time, it provides people with information they're looking for because people do search for the keyword phrase I chose. Learn keywords, write with a lot text and integrate smart product placement. It also doesn't hurt to promote on social media, because everyone is on one or more social media sites these days.
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LindaSmith1posted 10 years ago
Mathmatics: 50 words per amazon capsule 1200 words divided by 50 words per capsule equals 24 Amazon products.

There is not one rule that says that you are not allowed to have more than 1, 3, 5, 100 Amazon capsules per hub. The rule is 50 words per capsule which now includes added product descriptions in the capsule description box.

Not store, Products are bad, so why allow them to begin with, other than HP gets a cut of sales made. They even started their own Amazon program which is to SELL products.

This is not You Tube either, but now we have video hubs.
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LindaSmith1posted 10 years ago
I love it. Not a store, no more then 2 or 3 products. Pot calling kettle black.

Hub about stocking stuffers for dogs, 18 products. Short paragraphs with product for each one.
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  Ramkitten2000posted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Are you referring to my hub on that topic?
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  LindaSmith1posted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Ramkitten: No
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  Ramkitten2000posted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Okay, lol, just wondering because, coincidentally, I have one that fits the bill ... although I wouldn't say the paragraphs are that short, and it does have other info. It hasn't been unfeatured (yet?) ... but we'll see. Who knows how many times HP will tweak and re-run the filters. Reminds me of Squidoo.
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  LindaSmith1posted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Yes I was, but I got mixed up there.
  
  But see, even your hub there are those that would say that is spam, crap hub because of the products
  
  Sorry, pimples and fat butt cheeks isn't my thing to write about. A lot of topics people write on don't even have products to promote to begin with unless they promote some fat buster cream.
  
  Anyway Ramkitten, my dog would love a stocking stuffer with all 20 plus products in it, preferably treats.
  
  The hubs that kill me, are the ones that have a couple of paragraphs, followed with 10 products and nothing else, another paragraph with another string of products.
  
  The way the template is set up now and the size of products, it is horrible. The old look where we could put multiple products in one capsule looked a lot better.
  
  I have done what you did with yours and mine looked so hideous, I ended up either removing products or simply deleting the hub and putting it elsewhere. Your products line up evenly, mine ran over into the next paragraph. When I say it looked hideous, I mean it looked hideous.
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LindaSmith1posted 10 years ago
Roses: Rules of HP allow it!
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  OldRosesposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  And it looks like the rules have changed. Actually, if you read the older forums, you will see that hubbers have been down this path in the past. Shopping list hubs have always been considered "spammy". What's happening now is not new. It's just new to ex-Squids.
  
  Really, I wish that the people who transferred over from Squidoo would take some time to read the older forums to get a sense of the history of Hub Pages. It's very different from what I am reading happened on Squidoo. This is a much friendlier site with pro-active management that does its best to communicate with the users. Of course, no one is perfect so there are upsets like now, but in general, Hub Pages is not dysfunctional like Squidoo.
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Rock_njposted 10 years ago
I am sorry that former Squidoo Lensmasters are learning about the arbitrary way that HubPages unfeatures Hubs. Quality has nothing to do with it. They appear to only be concerned with traffic as far as I can tell. This has rubbed many Hubbers the wrong way for a long time, and caused many of them to pack up and leave. They should give gentle warnings and a lot of time to fix a Hub before unfeaturing it for traffic reasons. If there really is a serious quality issue, then I understand them moving quickly, but few Hubbers ever complain about low quality Hubs being unfeatured. Usually, the quality is fine, but the traffic is not.
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  Kim Milaiposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  That makes sense. Thank you. I was thinking the whole process was giving me a chance to improve hubs mainly because of low traffic. My higher traffic hubs with equal issues (which I also fixed) were never unfeatured. I make so little money on this anyway that for me, I didn't lose too much sleep when they went offline.
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Mark Ewbieposted 10 years ago
Clearly HubPages have overstepped the mark with this arbitrary change. I have drafted a letter for them to use in future.

Dear valued and esteemed writer,

We have noticed a tiny issue with some of your pages which could harm our site. If you have time we would be very grateful if you could have a look at it and maybe, if it is not too much to ask, you could perhaps tweak them to be more in line with our silly rules.

If this letter offends you in any way please take no notice of it.

If you feel you know more than us about running a user generated content site please feel free to contact Paul at any time of the day or night and he will offer a full apology for disturbing you.

We may send another letter in a year or so - if HubPages is still operating - and apologise in advance if this seems overly heavy-handed to you.

Once again we value your contribution which has set a new benchmark in content creation and our team are on stand by to receive any abuse you have to offer.

Yours with love and many apologies, HubPages.
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  Kim Milaiposted 10 years agoin reply to this
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  Susana Sposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  That is utterly perfect.
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  Rock_njposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Funny Mark :-), but in reality the way that they unfeature Hubs has caused a huge exodus of good quality writers over the years. The only thing that appears to have stopped this exodus was the buyout of Squidoo. I think HubPages has a strong business reason to quickly act to remove or requirement improvement to low quality material on their site, mainly because Google doesn't like it, but the low traffic issue is handled in a way that has really turned off a lot writers over the years. There have been whole discussions here in the forums about people leaving over the issue of high quality Hubs being unfeatured due to low traffic. It could be handled better IMO, and they indicated that they would be making changes to that effect, but they never happened.
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  MelissaBarrettposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  So tell us how YOU would have handled it. Please keep in mind that no matter what you do, someone is going to be pissed off over it. I've seen "good writers" huff off because of minor cosmetic changes. See the thread for the hub-hopper... I'm surprised no one has taken their ball and gone home over that one yet.
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  Rock_njposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  A series of warnings about traffic being inadequate, providing plenty of time for Hubbers to update and improve low traffic Hubs, before they get unfeatured. That issue in particular seemed to really cause a lot of Hubbers to leave over the years. I know people tend to complain a lot, but that one really set off a lot of people. Many writers left HubPages. Now, I see a whole new slew of former Lensmasters talking about the same exact topic, and some saying they are fed up and leaving.
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  MelissaBarrettposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  I'm not trying to be argumentative... but everyone is capable of seeing their traffic numbers. In addition, it takes almost no effort whatsoever to get a hub that was unfeatured for engagement featured again. Seriously, like none. Unfeaturing was announced way prior to the actual implementation.
  
  But practically, how many warnings would you suggest to a hubber? It's obvious when a hub is only getting a handful of views a month. How many times should they be told? What is adequate time? Three months? Six months?
  
  Meanwhile, low performing hubs sit there... doing whatever it is they do in Google's eyes.
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  DrMark1961posted 10 years agoin reply to this
  I had about 5 hubs unfeatured when this program first started, I think in early 2013. Do you know what I did instead of getting on a forum and whine about it?
  I fixed them. And do you know how long it took?
  A lot less time that it would have taken to start a forum and moan about it. You are right, they do not need a "grace period"--they just need to be fixed.
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  Jadelynx-HPposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  There is a big difference between fixing 5 hubs and having to fix hundreds. We were giving less than a months notice that we were being sold out.
  
  No, we didn't need a grace period, we could have quit out jobs, neglected our families and worked 24/7 to try to get done, right?
  
  You need to walk a mile in our shoes before you start spewing garbage. You have no idea what you are talking about.
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  DrMark1961posted 10 years agoin reply to this
  I wasn´t even talking to you nor about your situation, as sad as it might be, so you can moan all you want about your situation but do not tell me I am spewing garbage.
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  Jadelynx-HPposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  I call a spade a spade. If you don't want to be called on it, don't spew.
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  endamclarnonposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  With the deepest of respect it is not easy to "fix" 100 hubs..and it is very difficult when you already know that there are over 1,500 words of unique content..my own pictures etc..and maybe 1 or 2 directly related Amazon products. All of these ranked really well in Google, Bing & Yahoo as Squidoo lenses and all of them solved problems for real searchers.
  
  I think it is also worthwhile noting we did not ask to move here, we were told to move them here, or save them and go somewhere else.
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  TIMETRAVELER2posted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Thus you had a choice, yes?
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  Rock_njposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  We've been through this angle too. That's fine for someone who has a few dozen Hubs. But what about Hubbers who have been around for years and have 100s or 1,000s of Hubs. They could spend all their time updating Hubs rather than creating new ones. I understand what HubPages needs to do what they are doing. I just wonder if there is a better way, because the approach they initially took alienated a lot of writers. The exodus was really astounding. Something like 2/3rds of the writers left since the peak, which coincided with the start of their unfeature (formerly idling) policy.
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  TIMETRAVELER2posted 10 years agoin reply to this
  I'm not buying that logic because I just took a horrible hit last August when I had 147 Hubs. I deleted all but 78 of them and spent months upgrading those so that now they comply with what both HP and Google want. People who write thousands of hubs should know that work becomes outdated over time and needs constant pruning. By the way, nobody told me I had to do this, I knew it was what I needed to do to be able to get my ranking back. This has not happened yet, but I feel that it will, in time. There was no other choice for me...just as there was no other choice for the people who came here from Squidoo or those already here who know their hubs are low quality or spam.
  
  Personally, in my mind, if I had been on Squidoo and then transferred, immediately following that transfer I would have unpublished every hub and then slowly reworked them so that I could meet the standards at HP. Yes, this would have been a huge amount of work, but I would not have been so stressed and since I would have had to do it anyhow after 4 months, why not do it this way? At least I would not be sitting here now all upset because my work was unfeatured!
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  Marisa Wrightposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  ....because the whole idea was that during the move, the lenses would not lose their reputation with Google.
  
  I'm sure you know that when you publish a Hub, Google doesn't decide where it should sit in the search results and then it stays in the same position for ever. It can take months and months for a Hub to build its reputation and rise in the ranks. Unpublish it and it loses the benefit of all that age.
  
  If Squids had unpublished all their transferred Hubs to work on them, then by the time they republished, Google would've wiped their reputation and they would be treated as brand new Hubs, starting out at the very bottom again. So if they were going to do that, they might as well have deleted them from Squidoo then taken their time to decide where to move them.
  
  Remember, the Squids who are upset are the Squids who WERE getting traffic from Google while they were on Squidoo, so their lenses were ranking well, and it made sense to make sure Google was able to follow them to the new site.
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  TIMETRAVELER2posted 10 years agoin reply to this
  That makes sense, but look at the results!!
  
  What did people think was going to happen? Did they not check this site out before deciding to move their articles? The whole thing is a big mess, and I know what happened is very unfair to the people who transferred here both because of Squidoo and now because of changes in HP's algorithms.
  
  When they move their current articles off this site they will have to start over again, won't they? So now they've only increased their problems.
  
  It may have sounded good, but obviously, it has not worked. The stress people have had is terrible, but doing as I suggested would have eliminated that. People could have started fresh and slowly built up again. A lot of work? You bet. I've been there, as you know. But in life, you gotta do what you gotta do.
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  Marisa Wrightposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  They didn't expect Panda to hit just at the time they moved, that's what.
  
  And they didn't expect HubPages to run a filter WITHOUT WARNING, after promising they would have 4 months to fix any problems on their articles. If they hadn't been given that promise it would be a completely different story.
  
  And they didn't expect Hubs which they HAD edited, and which had passed QAP, to be unFeatured by that filter without any explanation (some of these are Hubs which meet the Stellar guidelines, by the way!!).
  
  You know how it feels to have your Hubs wiped out of Google without any explanation. So why don't you have more sympathy for writers who have had their Hubs unFeatured without explanation? Have you actually bothered to take a look at some of the work by the writers who are complaining, before you accuse them of writing spammy rubbish?
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  LisaMarieGabrielposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  +1 x 10,000 Marisa - yours is a voice of sanity. Thank you.
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  TIMETRAVELER2posted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Actually, yes I have...and one who is screaming the loudest has some of the worst spammy articles I have seen! And I've read numerous others that are also pretty bad. Now maybe these people were "going" to update their work and ran out of time, but frankly, if I was that far off from the guidelines in my own articles, I would be ashamed to even have them published in the first place, let alone allow them to sit online for several months.
  
  It is not that I do not sympathize, I do...and you, of all people, should know why. I agree that people should have been warned about what was coming...but what if they had? Do you think they would have been able to upgrade in time to avoid the current problems? I mean, if three months worth of working to upgrade has not taken care of the majority of the problems, how is one day or two weeks of warning time going to help people?
  
  Listen, I think there are some really great writers who came to HP from Squidoo. Undoubtedly many have somehow been caught up in the latest changes. There is not one thing any of us can do about that. It stinks, it is unfair, and it has created a miserable climate here for everybody. The bottom line is that if we have absolutely no control over any of this, all of the whining and fighting in the world is not going to fix the problem.
  
  People who are unhappy will have two choices: stay and fix what you can, or leave and start over somewhere else. Neither of these is very appetizing, that's for sure. This includes not only former Squids but also HP writers.
  
  Whether people here want to admit it or not, this has not been easy for HP writers either. Yes, we did not have the mess those folks had, but we have had plenty of our own here due to the many changes. All of the in fighting has added a great deal of stress for us, as well.
  
  It does not help that people are being so sensitive about things that they are lashing out against anybody who says one word that they disagree with. We all have a right to our opinions, and granted, some are harsher than others, but after three months of being constantly inundated with complaints about how unfairly people have been treated, it gets old.
  
  Enough already. We are all tired and many have lost status and income. Now it is time to make decisions and follow through with them. This is what I did when I took my own bashing from Google, and I think I was hit as hard if not harder than anybody who came here from Squidoo.
  
  At first I thrashed and whined and sought answers, but finally I realized that the only thing I could do was make the same choices I mentioned above.
  
  I chose to upgrade and stay, and it may or may not have been the worst decision of my life. However, I'm here, and so are the rest of us. We need to try and make the best of a bad situation, or we will beat ourselves to death and ruin any chance we have for picking up the pieces here.
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  OldRosesposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Melissa, if the criteria for unfeaturing is traffic, then most of my hubs should be unfeatured. My niche is gardening. My traffic falls dramatically in the fall and winter. This year thanks to Panda, my traffic since September has been almost nil. Yet all of my hubs remain featured.
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  MelissaBarrettposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  The thread went slightly off topic.... There is unfeaturing for quality which is what the majority of this thread is about... and a mention of unfeaturing for engagement.... which was a side bar.
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  OldRosesposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  My point exactly, Melissa, and one I have been trying to make for 2 days. The majority of hubs that were unfeatured were poor quality, NOT low traffic. The authors refuse to accept the fact that what worked on Squidoo, is considered spam on Hub Pages. Quite frankly, I am sick and tired of listening to their whining. What's next? Are they going to collectively hold their breath until they turn blue if Hub Pages doesn't immediately morph into Squidoo? They need to get over Squidoo. It doesn't exist any more. This is Hub Pages. Things are different here. They need to stop complaining and get to work reworking their lenses into hubs.
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  Sarah Switalskiposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  And the point that many others are trying to make is that we were told we would have 4 months to update our content for HP standards. That grace period was cut short without warning.
  
  It's not that we can't get over Squidoo, it's that we are refugees here trying to find our footing. We were told we could have shelter and sanctuary while we got our bearings. We've been working hard to adjust to a new space and (for many) drastically reduced earnings. On the groups I'm a part of we have mostly remained optimistic that things would look up. But, while we were working, our sanctuary was stripped away and we're feeling like we're left out in the rain again.
  
  I realize those of you who are not transfers from Squidoo can not understand this confusion, anger and hurt but it is there all the same. Telling us to "get over it" or to "stop selling things" or to "like it or lump it" is just salt in the wounds and not at all helpful.
  
  Now to continue the work of moving my content away from Hub Pages...
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  OldRosesposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Sarah, blame Google, not Hub Pages. There is a Penguin refresh going on right now: http://hubpages.com/forum/topic/127128#post2682385 . As has been pointed out over and over and over and over in this thread, Hub Pages took these actions to save the entire site. Which would you rather have, a stripped bare sanctuary or no sanctuary at all?
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  Sarah Switalskiposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Believe me, I understand the panic that Google changes can cause. When Google first hit Squidoo my income went from over $800 monthly to around $80. And that's only a small piece of the pie.
  
  I understand if HubPages felt that they had to remove the grace period in order to save the site. But, not issuing a warning to tell us that the grace period was ending early was dishonest and wrong in my opinion.
  
  Paul telling us that unfeatured content is nothing but spam without any other explanation is also hurtful. People are wanting to know what rules were broken, why their content was deemed unworthy and all HP can say is "our filter said it is spam". This is the opposite of helpful and for many former Squids, it is horribly reminiscent of Squidoo in it's dying days.
  
  HP is free to do what it feels is necessary to save itself but they shouldn't be surprised that people are upset by some of the recent actions.
  
  When the OP started this thread she wanted to know why hundreds of high ranked lenses were unpublished. Some had already been edited to meet HP qualifications, some were still supposed to be protected under the grace period. The vitriol filled answers from some people in this thread is disturbing.
  
  Continuously telling us to "follow the rules" and "stop selling things" is not helpful. Mocking the bad content from Squidoo and implying that things like "selling shower curtains" is the reason certain hubs were unfeatured is cruel. I'm sure you would be upset too if we held up some of the worst hubs here as representatives of the entire site and the writers on it.
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  MelissaBarrettposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Once again, I was speaking in general. If you took it personally, or anyone else did, then well...
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  Jadelynx-HPposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Old Roses, you are the one that needs to get over it.....or rather get over yourself. You don't have all the answers, and you have no idea what the majority of the people from Squidoo have been through. Your nastiness and high handed attitude is not helping the situation, so why don't you pipe down?
  
  You and your pompous buddies that have been so hateful to the Squidoo refugees should be happy, most of us are leaving thanks to the spiteful treatment we have received since being on Hub Pages, especially in this forum. You have succeeded in making us feel unwelcome. Many of us are packing up our spammy, overly promotional, low quality articles and moving on. We won't let the door hit us in the arse on the way out.
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  misterhollywoodposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Jade,
  
  I don't think attacking back helps. I hear your frustration but remember not all of us who were here before the squids came over were unwelcoming
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  Phyllis Doyleposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  +3 Thank you, MrH.
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  OldRosesposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Yes, Jade. Personal attacks are not allowed in the forums. You should also be mindful of the little button in the upper right-hand corner of your profile page that allows people you abuse of reporting that abuse to the management of Hub Pages who can then take disciplinary action(s) against you such as banning you from the forums or even banning you from Hub Pages.
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  Virginia Allainposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  If you are sick of our whining, I suggest you unfollow this thread and go about your business.
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  OldRosesposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Virginia, perhaps you missed the rule banning personal attacks in the forums. You could find yourself banned from the forums. Another one of those pesky Hub Pages rules.
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  LindaSmith1posted 10 years agoin reply to this
  I thought those pesky rules applied to everybody not just a few!! There has been a lot of personal attacks by those who want to browbeat those who have spoken up, while others walk a fine line of whether or not HP would consider it a personal attack or not which is how some get away with it.
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Dressage Husbandposted 10 years ago
!
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LindaSmith1posted 10 years ago
HP unfeatured hubs for no specific reason.
Rules and guidelines remain the same.
Former lenses that were still in Grace Period unfeatured for Quality which was not to happen.

If you don't know what is broke, you cannot fix it.

This Guessing Game is a Squidoo Game that was played with writers for over a year. Now HP is playing it.

If they don' t say what is wrong with the hubs, then they cannot be fixed properly.

If they don't say, why a hub or hubs are unfeatured, they cannot be fixed properlly.

HP can unfeature 20,000 hubs a day, BUT it won't solve a thing until they tell people what the problems are. If their rules and guidelines are wrong,THEN FIX THEM!!
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  LisaMarieGabrielposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  We are advised to contact the team and ask what is wrong. Presumably the team can handle telling us what is wrong with 20000 hubs with this sort of direction?
  
  NEED SOME GOALS? help
  Hubs with these attributes typically get 300% more traffic.
  etc etc etc...
  
  907 words
  Are you providing more informative, useful, and interesting information than your competition? The best articles appear first, so make sure yours is the best.
  
  If there were too many products, it would say. If there were too many links it would say. So what is wrong? I have a feeling that it has something to do with the approach not the content. On Squidoo, every lens had to have an introductory photo - is that what is tripping the filter? We were also encouraged to write about things we knew, owned or loved - is that wrong? Squidoo had a keyword density tool - HubPages does not - is the new process objecting to keywords? A sense of humour? A poem? English spelling and grammar? Should we be more niche and less general - ie Dolphin rings, not dolphin jewelry? We just don't know and not all the unfeatured pages ARE sales orientated.
  
  Asking for guidance is not moaning. It is a sensible response to a bewildering change.
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  LindaSmith1posted 10 years agoin reply to this
  What HP could have done was hand reviewed a sample of let's say 25 hubs. Then they could have easily said: This is what we saw.
  
  If they saw and didn't like, they need to review their own rules and guidelines, then CHANGE THEM~
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LindaSmith1posted 10 years ago
TimeTraveler: They did not have time. There was no warning from Seth or his staff. Some were on vacation, in hospital, , etc to come home and not only find out about the takeover, but hubs were days away from transfer. People do have lives, children, jobs etc. A lot of lensmasters tried to get through their lenses move or delete those they no longer wanted. So they come here, with hundreds of lenses that don't fit HP format, allowed something like 25 links, some crazy stuff, other things that HP does not have. Not only that, they had to learn a new platform. They had various parts of their lenses that did not transfer. The list is endless. I started Squidoo just before they started playing the guess game with less than 30 lenses to deal with. I went ahead and went over mine due to changes that were being made, and over them again and again and again because of whacky filters, changes being made, and the guessing game continued. Believe me, those 30 lenses and the ones I added took up my entire day, day after day after day. Unlike many of the lensmasters, I am not working and don't have kids. It was still time consuming and nerve racking. The filter crap, with no real answers to question from staff, just like what is going on now at HP, I followed many of them who threw the towel in and left before the ship sunk. Many are packing up with the feeling "No way I am going to play this game again."

Those who are constantly turning their head, beating the ones who are complaining here, while others are complaining elsewhere, may wake up tomorrow and find a ton of their hubs unfeatured with no explanation. HP needs to stop playing with the new look, and deal with the current issues. A new look to HP is not going to solve anything, other than they get a few pats on the back.
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  TIMETRAVELER2posted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Linda:
  
  I didn't say it was easy, I said there was a choice.
  
  I didn't say it was a good choice, I simply said it was a choice.
  
  Nobody was forced to do anything, despite the disgusting circumstances. People had to choose to try to work things out, give it all up or go someplace else and start over.
  
  Those were the choices.
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  LindaSmith1posted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Yep, and that is exactly what a lot of people are working on doing which is moving!
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  MelissaBarrettposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  I think the suggestion is possibly, no offense intended, to get on with that if that is what you've decided to do. Otherwise, maybe something constructive would be in order?
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  LindaSmith1posted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Exactly! I have learned one new trick for doing what I want with Blogger template. Another writer is teaching me how to do some more things with HTML and CSS code. So I am busy. Gotta get those new sites up and ready to go!
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  MelissaBarrettposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Good luck with that.
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  gaymuscleandloveposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  I think the idea of moving is all puffery. Where are people really going to go? There's no place left except a personal blog and I doubt most people have the time or expertise to maintain them.
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  LindaSmith1posted 10 years agoin reply to this
  You have 4 hubs and have been here less than a year.
  
  A couple of years ago there was a mass exodus by big writers who were making decent money here. They left, maybe left some hubs, but don't write on here anymore.
  
  People do have sites and they are doing better with sites right now than HP is doing.
  
  I have a little blog, that I just cleaned out and started over with, and it is doing better than what is happening here.
  
  Puffery! I don't think so!!! In fact, I know there isn't any puffery!!! A lot of these writers have been doing this for years.
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  gaymuscleandloveposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  So you are leaving?
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  Marisa Wrightposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Not true. It's true that setting up your own blog is a big learning curve, and working out how to monetize it even more so - but once you've got started, writing material for a blog is no different to writing material for Hubs. It's a complete myth that you need to publish new posts every day or even every week - and if you have a Wordpress site, maintenance is as simple as pressing an Update button occasionally.
  
  On the plus side, when you write for your own blog, your posts can never fail QAP, or be unFeatured for lack of engagement, and you're never going to make rule changes without telling yourself. On the minus side, as others have said, it's a lonely business.
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  gaymuscleandloveposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  This is true TT - it was a choice to come here.
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  justholidaysposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  You had a choice. Former Squids did NOT have a choice. They were forced to enter HP otherwise they'd have lost their deserved earnings. They were lied, they were misled, they were badly treaten, they were victims of a system. They're tired as well. Can you understand that?
  
  The situation is not the same.
  
  I have not a single Hub unfeatured for quality motives, I have a historic account at HP opened years ago, filled with content that isn't sales oriented. Still I do understand former Squids because JustHolidays' account is a native Squidoo account and I was FORCED to join HP with my lenses - loss of earnings, loss of traffic, loss of creativeness, loss of personality on my former lenses. That is what they have become. Still I'd agree to close that account in case it hurts HP as a whole. But I will NOT close it before I get payout.
  
  Sadly staff isn't ready to lower - even for former Squids and to save their site - payment threshold.
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janderson99posted 10 years ago
The new FAQ explains a lot and may be the basis for the filter that caused so much angst.

see: http://hubpages.com/faq/#Spammy-Elements
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  colorfuloneposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Thank you, that is something everyone should read.
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  MelissaBarrettposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  That is brilliant. I could actually kiss someone right now. Well, not really, but it is awesome.
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  GiftsByDianaposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  I am just now reading this as I saw it in my email this morning.
  Hopefully, it will give us some much needed insight.
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LindaSmith1posted 10 years ago
Some of that makes no sense. So, now affiliate text links are not allowed.

The anchor text bit is totally confusing.
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  endamclarnonposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  So if I have got this right we need to look at three potentially spam areas. These are links, products and text. The links for the most part I do understand, not all of it, but most of it.
  
  Products I don't quite get - If we recommend an Amazon product, then they want us also to tell the viewer all the other places they can get this..now that I don't get at all.
  
  TEXT - I get most of that.
  
  In summary for me I think the answer is write lots of stuff, have no links at all and certainly no Amazon products. Then rely totally on a few cents from Adsense and other Ads.
  
  Time to say ciao I think
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  MelissaBarrettposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  No, that's not at all what was said...
  
  I have a crappy hub (several actually) that was created a long time ago and was specifically a sales hub. It is barely marginal, and in all reality should be unfeatured. It gets traffic because it is nichey... not because it is good. It's entire purpose was to sell things. It's spammy.
  
  I have a fairly good hub. (Although upon inspection, it also needs an edit) that is tight, gives ridiculous amounts of information about WHY products should be used, what benefits they offer, etc. It also gets traffic because it is nichey... and because it is good.
  
  Now, one is spammy and the other isn't. Google would disapprove of one and likely be okay with the other... and coincidentally, just for the person interested in profit, the hub that actually makes sales is the later.
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LindaSmith1posted 10 years ago
There is more to it: http://hubpages.com/faq/#Spammy-Elements It is above the information from link

Here is a goody : permalink
How much engagement is needed for a Hub to stay Featured?

Your Hub needs a heartbeat to stay Featured. We consider a heartbeat to be signs of engagement from readers (total Hub views, comments, and search traffic).

The Hub initially gets a free pass for a certain period to get a heartbeat. We've seen Hubs that eventually draw traffic typically start off with a little spike that would easily get them over the traffic thresholds we require. Even Hubs that don't get a lot of traffic for a long time but do eventually get some traffic typically have at least a heartbeat while they are in their "dormant" stage. That's all we require.

The period of time a Hub is given to prove it has a heartbeat depends on our estimate of its quality, which is determined by a combination of HubScore, Hubber Score, and scores acquired through quality ratings (which are also utilized in the calculation of HubScores and Hubber Scores).

Hubs written by Hubbers with very high Hubber Scores will have up to one year for their Hubs to prove themselves. Those with lower Hubber Scores may have as little as one month (we're talking pretty low Hubber Scores in that case).

New Hubbers are given a generous grace period, even if they have relatively low Hubber Scores, as we acknowledge that it can take time for new Hubbers to get their bearings and for their Hubber Scores to normalize.

Hubs with lower Hub Scores may have to prove they can win up to twice as much traffic during their Hubs' grace periods (to prove their worth) compared to Hubs with high Hub Scores.

Essentially, we are being held responsible for poor traffic to HP!

How many times has staff told us Hub Scores mean nothing and should really be gotten rid of! Scores at 90 one day, and 60 the next. None of us know who these scores are determined, why they fluctuate so often and so drastically, but now we will be judged by hub scores.

Yep, ,Time to Say Ciao!
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  Valerie P Davisposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Yes, the content is responsible for the traffic. That's the way it works. That is the way the web and search engines work. Life is hard.
  
  You are a <personal attack>, and I wish you would ciao off to some place where I don't have to read the forums.
  
  (Admin, I quite understand if you ban me. I have violated the rules. I will welcome the rest.)
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  Sarah Switalskiposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  No one is forcing you to read this thread.
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LindaSmith1posted 10 years ago
WE have no control over the traffic. Google does not like content farms which is what HP is,. We are not responsible for that either. The site is buggy constantly which Google sees as a site that is not maintained. We are not responsible for the bugs.
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MelissaBarrettposted 10 years ago
Just to mention, the spammy faq addresses things that crop up with or without squids. They are things that happen all the time and are usually caught by QAP. They aren't new, they are just "official" now. Hubs with these qualities get low scores on QAP and always have. It's right there under the substance rating and always has been. Some squeaked by, but many, many more have already been netted and unfeatured.
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  LindaSmith1posted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Nobody really knows about Hub Scores except HP. Even Simone told us that they meant nothing and should be gotten rid of.
  
  If a hub is ranked 90 by QAP, a computer, then there is no reason for it to drop to 60 tomorrow, but they do fluctuate up and down with same content.
  
  How those scores are determined is a HP Top Secret!
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  MelissaBarrettposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  No, it's really not. If you would like me to explain, in detail, how qap scores are determined... I would be more than happy to help.
  
  Hub scores and hubber scores? Yeah, I have no idea about that.
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  LindaSmith1posted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Hub scores is what I am referring too. Hubber score is another bad joke!
  
  If you are referring the hopper scoring system which is also the same hopper used by MTurkers who don't know, don't care as long as they get their 5 cents per hub, well, yes, I got lost on that one, even after reading their explanation, examples etc.
  
  I liked the classic better.
  
  I don't care at this point. I won't be doing anymore hub hopping, or reporting spam forums that are started, or spun hubs which I can tell in about 2 seconds, etc, etc. Let HP filters read them and figure it out.
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  MelissaBarrettposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Yep.
  
  Not knowing... that's what's messing you up right now.
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  gaymuscleandloveposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  True!
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  LindaSmith1posted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Not everything was in that FAQ Number 20. Better start worrying about traffic and Hub scores that supposedly mean nothing.
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  Solarasposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Right now my traffic is better than it has ever been before. I suppose I credit time and the Holiday season for this, but my point is not all of HP is gloom and doom. When we hit the tank in September, I made a lot of changes, albeit in the dark, since stats did not update for a week. I continue to make changes in the hopes of improving my articles and search results.
  
  It is on no one but me to get good pageviews. If I have an article that is unfeatured for any reason I will edit it or delete it if I don't feel it has merit.
  
  My point is that HP has merit. My hubs are up over pre-September Panda, and I am optimistic about HP. I don't see the point in wasting so much effort throwing bile and vitriol at the staff when you can fix your articles and move forward to bigger earnings. They have offered to review them, and tell you why they were unfeatured. Take a lesson and ask them.
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debW07posted 10 years ago
I'm frustrated with the un-featured process. In an earlier post, Paul Edmondson stated we could email him the URL to Hubs we believed should be featured, but I'm unable to find an email link on his profile. I didn't read all the posts on this thread so he may have changed his mind. Truly frustrated.
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  colorfuloneposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  It is there, http://pauledmondson.hubpages.com/#email
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  LisaMarieGabrielposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Thank you so much I shall send him the link... it is obvious I need some help here.
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  colorfuloneposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  You are welcome, Lisa. Yes, I would take Paul up on his offer if I was having problems.
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  debW07posted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Thank you!
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Sam Montanaposted 10 years ago
I finally got to part 20 of the new FAQ and it doesn't look overly difficult to follow. As for Amazon ads or eBay ads, the way I read it, it just means if your article is about the best boots to wear in the rain, it would be wrong to have Amazon ads for a garden hose.

The spammy links and spam anchor text links are about the same rules as on most article sites. You cannot promote other businesses or websites with links, or it will be considered spam.

Unless I missed something, these rules look like they have always been and similar to Squidoo. I didn't get the idea that HubPages does not want Amazon or eBay ads.

As for traffic, I don't know what to say. Google is Google and they will continually change their rules. I recently read that Google Page rank doesn't matter anymore. I think backlinks from websites in related subjects is a very good way to get more traffic.
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LisaMarieGabrielposted 10 years ago
I am still trying to figure out what is wrong with my Elizabethan music page. It has yet again failed QAP despite having a reasonable hubscore and it must therefore be extremely horrible and spammy, but how would I know? I am only a music graduate with years of experience in my field, writing in simple language and in my own words as to why music from Shakespeare's time (aka Elizabethan Music) is worth listening to. It is obviously extremely horrible spam, but it never made me any money anyway so I accept my fate with grace...
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  Sam Montanaposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Lisa, you might check the keyword density of your article. One way to make Google think an article is spam is keyword stuffing and that can happen unintentionally. For example, if an article about guitars happens to have the word guitar in it at a density of 10%, the robots could consider it spam.
  
  And this can happen especially when you write an article about a subject you love to write about and or know a lot about. I use this keyword checker online, but there are many. This is easy because you just copy and paste your article into it.
  
  http://textalyser.net/
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  LindaSmith1posted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Cool Sam! Thanks! I hate sitting counting and calculating.
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  LisaMarieGabrielposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Thank you Sam. I appreciate that.
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  GiftsByDianaposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Thank you !
  I wonder if this is what is wrong with some of my pages as they are informational and about topics I love - not sales pages.
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  MelissaBarrettposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  At the risk of being jumped upon... the first third of the hub was great. The last 2/3rds was a jumble of videos and 12 amazon ads with very little information about music, not a whole lot of text in general but what was there was about the products, not the music.
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  LisaMarieGabrielposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Not going to jump on you Melissa. I just checked the keywords and that is not an issue. The videos are there so people can hear the music. The products are there so they can see the instruments. It may well be that more text would be useful. Bear in mind we came from an environment where brevity and visual content was important. Thank you for the input.
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  MelissaBarrettposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  The videos are great and there's a lot of wonderful information... I just think it's being swamped out by the ads. You really are a very good writer with a lot to offer.
  
  My-completely unrequested- suggestion would be to break the hub into a couple of parts and expound a bit on each part. Some of the ads probably should be removed too. Although a hub on Elizabethan sheet music would be awesome with information on each selection as would be separate hubs on the break downs of each instrument... with focused ads.
  
  Also, for readability, it would be a little easier on the eyes if not all the ads and videos were grouped together like that. It's really hard to pick out the information because my eyes want to go everywhere.
  
  Load time is kinda rough too... for us poor souls with slower connections.
  
  Just as an aside, I actually got to one of your hubs through Google a couple of days ago. I'm picking out a guitar for the 15 year old for Christmas.
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  LisaMarieGabrielposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Well it's nice to know Google had me listed. All the best with your choice , I hope my page helped. As a matter of fact I was thinking of doing a guide for what to look for when you buy in an actual shop then I got distracted by all this. Your suggestion about the sheet music works and I hadn't thought of load time. We take broadband for granted perhaps. It is well past my bed time but I will take another look tomorrow and thank you for the constructive advice.
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  Dressage Husbandposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  As a fellow guitarist who found your advice on broken guitar necks helpful, I have sympathy. Strangely all of my guitar Hubs seem to be doing well.`However if you got the Hubpages newsletter today concerning the Spam rules, I think the Chief Editor is probably the root cause of all the confusion. She totally misstated their policy so that it made it appear like no Hub could possibly be anything but spam.
  
  No links allowed, no products and even no text. If Hubs were as poorly written there would be no Hubpages already. This lack of care and attention by the senior staff was exactly what led to the demise of Squidoo.
  
  The point is that they are trying to define a line and the Editor is just that an editor, she does not seem to have a grasp on the technical side of how the internet works and the purpose of each of the things about which she was trying to be definitive. The result a total mess!
  
  Excess products and non related can be spammy, but the new standard is being enforced by a machine that does not and to date can not make anything like a reasonable judgement on the writers intent. Until the machine can think to do what they are trying to do is in fact not possible as it is like us trying to think like a horse or other animal that does not have the capability of creative thought. It can be done, but we are only right sometimes (in other words a lot of mistakes can and are being made).
  
  Hence todays forum post`and all the vitriol. By the way I love Elizabethan music so I hope your Hub issues get resolved soon.
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makingamarkposted 10 years ago
All I know is that when I read what Google has to say about spam it doesn't have a list like the one in the new FAQs

What it does say is this http://www.google.com/insidesearch/hows … -spam.html
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sandres38posted 10 years ago
I know mine too considering i really made an effort researching making my article and i really wanna share it to the world i edited for 3 times and still it did not featured really frustrating..
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LindaSmith1posted 10 years ago
Dressage: Did you read Number 17. Same page!
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  Dressage Husbandposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  I believe you are referring to the FAQ, I was actually referring to the newsletter sent to each Hubber. If you read that as written it says that all links are spam and all product links are also spam as well as most of the text.
  
  The writer never proof read her own work and never got someone else to do it and she is the Senior Editor here.
  
  In that world then the confusion and upset being caused are inevitable. Had she referenced the FAQ page then she would have written that some links to non related sites are spam and some products (if not related to the content of the Hub are spammy) and that even your text can be spammy if it does not stay on topic. She actually wrote it as though all Hubs were like that, which is quite evidently incorrect.
  
  The issue here is that HP, like Squidoo, are short on staff and try to use algorithms and automation, or farm it out to inexperienced and under paid people (Mechanical Turk). In this type of situation the message of those that do understand (Paul Edmonston) can and does become distorted. The inevitable result is the chaos we are seeing here.
  
  I was merely pointing out that until HP can get the message clear and consistent, then there will be a lot of angst among the writers. I was well aware of what the FAQ page says, it appeared from the newsletter that our venerable Senior Editor was not, or worse did not care enough about us (the writers; that ultimately are the providers of her wages) to ensure that a paragraph in a newsletter, sent to all of us, was correct and properly edited. In other words she is negligent, and is so in a document which was berating the people that pay her for the self same thing. For Hubbers there is a minimum requirement of around 1,000 words, considerably more than she wrote in the newsletter, and therefore that many times more complex.
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  Millionaire Tipsposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Maybe you should read the newsletter again. She says "... to help Hubbers identify spammy elements in Hubs and rectify them" She doesn't say that all hubs are like that.
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  Dressage Husbandposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  This is what it said:-
  New Spammy Elements FAQ
  Check Your Hubs for These Issues
  Based on recent information about what Google considers "spammy" we've created a new FAQ entryto help Hubbers identify spammy elements in Hubs and rectify them. Here's the gist:
  
  Links are considered spam that are misleading, keyword stuffed, unrelated to the Hub, identical to what's in the Hub, or link to window confirmation boxes that interfere with site navigation or redirect users to unwanted websites.
  Products are considered spam that are unrelated to the Hub, excessive, meant to benefit the Hubber and not the reader, and unnecessary to the reader's experience (i.e. the Hub would work fine without them).
  Text (yes, even plain text can be spam) is considered spammy when it is keyword stuffed, contains plaintext urls to a business, excessively promotes a business or product.
  For a more detailed explanation, read the whole list in the FAQ.
  
  Christy Kirwan
  Editor & Web Content Manager
  
  Now I agree in the light of day if you read the beginning, and link it to the following points then it is in fact correct. However I was an auditor for many years (30+) and we were taught when writing to never assume that the reader will carry over something from one sentence to the following ones.
  
  She made the elementary error of assuming that all readers would do that. In actuality they do not. Try this delete her first paragraph and does the rest still read understandably? NO! this is the type of elementary writing error made all the time by politicians etc. Everything you write needs to stand sentence by sentence and paragraph by paragraph. If it does not then it will be misunderstood and misrepresented. It is that issue that they are trying to address when trying to stop spam. People are all different the product of their experiences, and not all have the same language skills.
  
  The art we are trying to master is being clear in communication and it is self evident from this thread that even those of us that are experienced and qualified still do not succeed in making our points clear to all. Then it follows that to remove confusion we need to be even better. Slamming people is like hitting the horses we train. They may just be bigger than you, and stronger, so be careful how you handle things. Get it wrong with the horse and be aware it kicks with a force of many tons, and it is accurate enough to kill a mosquito on its back - If it hits you it meant to! Fortunately horses are more polite, and intelligent than many people - they always give a warning first, if you know how to watch for it.
  
  I am only trying to help out and make valid criticism in the hope that people will treat each other more kindly, and discuss such major changes with the concerned parties before creating major issues for them. Making a change like that to a horses situation, without careful preparation would likely get you seriously hurt, or even killed.
  
  It is quite evident that the recent changes have provoked that feeling in many people, and that the newsletter poured oil on a blaze. It certainly did not help.
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  GiftsByDianaposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Thank you !
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  Jodahposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  There is not a minimum requirement of 1000 words.
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  psycheskinnerposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Indeed. Another example of how even people who think they know what the requirements are often have some inaccurate beliefs.
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  LindaSmith1posted 10 years agoin reply to this
  They read the "Stellar Hub" thing and think those are die hard rules. No, it is simply a list of opinions of HP.
  
  In fact there isn't a minimum word count at all, other than a 50 words per product. So in reality you can write 200 words and put 4 products in it according to HP rules,o or you an write 200 words and put zero products in it according to HP rules.
  
  Or you can write 100 words and put 99 photos and a dozen videos on it according to HP rules.
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  Dressage Husbandposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  @Psycheskinner Do not assume you know what is in the mind of another or you will likely be wrong!
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  Dressage Husbandposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Indeed there is not, but try to get a much shorter Hub past QAP. They are not rules and hence are impossible to write an algorithm that is correct all the time. There are certain tasks much better performed by humans.
  
  The problem at HP is that the humans are on Mechanical Turk over which HP has little or no control until after they have performed the task and affected a maybe innocent writer either for the better or the worse.
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  LindaSmith1posted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Dressage: MT is a joke. People there are to take time to evaluate hubs for a lousy nickel and do their job correctly!!!! Yeah, right!!!
  
  I have seen hubs lately that are nothing but a paragraph, and a ton of photos. That is it!
  
  The crap I saw in news feed this morning made me laugh! Did I report it, NOPE not my job!! Let the filters read it.
  
  I wonder what HP is going to do with the Old hubs that have sat for several years, ot been changed, in fact, no activity at all for several years from the hubber who wrote them. I was not doing anything for a year. When I came back, I found my hubs when I went to edit a message about Amazon capsules which I could have left alone by the way. I decided to go ahead and change them to the new ones which I regret doing now. These were the old capsules where we could put multiple products in one capsule, which actually looked better than the way it does not, IMO. So there are hubs that have multiple products together due to the use of old capsules and they have not looked at a hub forever.
  
  What about the accounts where not one hub has ever been written. The person who has the account, comes in, signs up, no hubs and posts in the forums which is usually spam.
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  JulieJohnson3posted 10 years agoin reply to this
  I was enjoying rating Hubs on MT. There were some really good ones and some really bad ones. My score was up to 95%, and with bonuses, I was making more than the five cents per Hit. But there hasn't been a substantial amount of Hubs to rate in a while, and I check MT daily. There might be a handful here and there, but those go quickly.
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  Dressage Husbandposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Exactly my point Linda. The issue is that HP and Squidoo before were both trying to manage on minimal staffing and computer based algorithms. It is not surprising that standards vary and that this upsets people who are trying hard to make a little bit of a living from their writing here.
  
  Google are even more guilty as most of their stuff is algorithm based and they never admit to being wrong. They will change things if you complain enough though. I got banned on Adwords and they lifted that after I complained (a lot of people said that was impossible, what do they know?).
  
  I think Squidoo and HP need to ask for why they got hit. Was the manual penalty Paul referred to site wide? or was it just that some sub-domains were affected? There is a huge difference, and there is a lot of grey area in what is and is not a related product.
  
  If you are writing about Canon for example it can be anything from a camera, printer, video camera, Copier machine etc. etc. take my point? If you write about Mitsubishi did you know they own Hitachi and Nikon? So your area of related is much broader.
  
  No machine and few humans have the breadth of knowledge to understand this, but none of those companies has been hit by Google for having unrelated products on their pages. So why am I a horse owner and trainer banned from putting a horse themed blanket and gifts on a horse Hub?
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  MelissaBarrettposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Yep Five cents a hub.
  
  Some of those people have been doing it for a couple years and can do so with 99 percent accuracy... Those people can tell you exactly what kind of crap is NOT passing QAP. Surprisingly, it is exactly what is in the spammy faq. It's almost like HP paid attention to the hundreds of thousands of ratings.
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  LindaSmith1posted 10 years agoin reply to this
  They are missing the copied content, the spun content, the ones that make no sense what so ever that are featured.
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  Dressage Husbandposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  True!
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  Millionaire Tipsposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  How do you know they are featured? As far as I know, there really isn't a way to tell that. People have the option on their profile page to show unfeatured content.
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  MelissaBarrettposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Copied is not our job... but please feel free to report any that we've missed. You could also take the test and become a rater yourself. It pays rather well for home-based work, but only if you are very good at it. Otherwise, you will fail the test or one of the many, many quality checks they have in place and not be qualified to do the work anymore.
  
  But you knew that, right?
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  TIMETRAVELER2posted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Where did you ever read that 1000 words is required here? That is not true. It has been suggested that between 1000 and 1200 words is the "sweet spot" for getting views, but many people here write shorter articles and do well with them.
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  Dressage Husbandposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Not a requirement, but if you have less then the Hub may well be picked up as lacking Quality, and and get a nice big black O behind it.
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  TIMETRAVELER2posted 10 years agoin reply to this
  I hate to disagree with you, but many of mine are below the 1000 mark and none have ever been unfeatured for quality.
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LongTimeMotherposted 10 years ago
In real life, some people say 'goodbye' and promptly walk out the door. Others start their goodbyes but end up chatting and still haven't left when the sun rises next morning. That's life.

In theory, moving content from HP to an independent, self-run site makes perfectly good sense ... however once you leave the party, you find yourself alone. I do encourage squidoo refugees and long term hubbers to remember that.

Recently I began the exercise of setting up an independent site (with the help of one hubber who understands the process), not to replace HP but just as an extra online activity. It is proving rather frustrating and, much to my surprise, I find it rather lonely to be the only voice on the site.

Might be worth thinking about for anyone considering making a move and removing all their content. As annoying as you might consider other hubbers to be, they are here and accessible to you. If you like the sound of your own voice, it might work really well for you. But if you like company and someone to chat with between tasks, you may well find yourself missing HP.

Best of luck to everyone, no matter which path you take.
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  misterhollywoodposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  
  What's sad to see is how many Hubbers have turned on one another!
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  Solarasposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  LOL - Perfect image - what kind of varmints are these?
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  Phyllis Doyleposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Online writers in a forum. LOL
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  Solarasposted 10 years agoin reply to this
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  misterhollywoodposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  They are Hub-e-Dos (half Hubbers and half Squido). Part of the squirrel family
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  Phyllis Doyleposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Very good thoughts you have here, LTM. I second the "Best of luck to everyone, no matter which path you take." Very well said.
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  Jodahposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Well said LTM. I have my own website but it is a lonely place. I only spend the minimum time there as I miss the community feel of Hub Pages. I spend more time conversing on HP than other social media sites like Facebook also. Everyone on here has something in common, they are writers.. So the conversation should be more relevant to everyone. Pity there is so much disagreement in the forums at times. After all we really all do want the same thing.. Our hubs to be successful, read, found informative, and enjoyed.
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  makingamarkposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Don't fret, we very definitely won't be alone as we leave!
  
  I think LTM (and others) are maybe unaware that there are a lot of Groups out there (e.g. closed or secret groups on Facebook) of former Squidoo lensmasters.
  
  They arose for various reasons during the lifetime of Squidoo - but at least a couple that I know of started up as a result of the transfer. In terms of the older ones they have already morphed from being about Squidoo, briefly flirted with being about HubPages and are now emphatically based in being about writers and content providers online.
  
  Thing is we've all known one another for years - we're friends and we all know who's good at what - so when we have a problem we know who to ask.
  
  Lots us are off doing different things - writing and writing online - but we still have our buddies from Squidoo to talk to. People who will look at our new websites and blogs and offer honest feedback and good suggestions.
  
  Our buddy groups are one the reasons that people feel much more confident about going off and starting new sites. Our writing friends provide feedback on their own experiences as they try new things. It's very, very useful for those of us who are dipping our toes in new ways of delivering content and generating income e.g. vlogging.
  
  We really like our various groups of friends - they are one of the really good things which came out of Squidoo. They're very supportive and very constructive and a lot of fun too!
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  Titiaposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Well said and you're so right. I am the living example, because at the moment I get one on one help from a former lensmaster to set up my entire WP based website which had been sitting there empty for two years and I'm more than very grateful.
  
  All I've read in HP forums since I've been here, has not given me the feeling of entering a warm home yet, apart from a few exceptions.
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  LongTimeMotherposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  It is good to surround yourself with a support network. I am grateful for the help I am receiving from a hubber friend. Wherever relationships are formed there will always be 'buddies'. I don't think it is particular to any group or site.
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  Marisa Wrightposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Why do you think I'm still here on these forums, in spite of having written a mere handful of Hubs in the last two years?
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  LongTimeMotherposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  lol. Laughing too hard to come up with an appropriate response, Marisa. Because you love us all, despite our faults??
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  GiftsByDianaposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Yes, I have always enjoyed being able to pop in a forum and ask a question, or cheer someone on, or just talk to someone about a bad day...
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gaymuscleandloveposted 10 years ago
Let's just be honest. All of this drama started happening after the Squids came over and brought all of their lenses. We never had these issues before. No offense but it was a terrible idea to buy them
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  Sam Montanaposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  It could also be that the owners of HubPages are concerned about the recent and current Google Panda "stuff". A lot of websites have been taken down by Google updates in the past year or two.
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  makingamarkposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  The terrible idea was bringing across all the lenses which were not featured on Squidoo at the time of the announcement of the transfer. If they'd just brought across those lenses which were "featured" in the three top tiers PRIOR TO THE DELETION/MOVEMENT OF CONTENT ELSEWHERE - then it's very firm belief that there wouldn't be a problem now. I couldn't believe it when I saw how many lenses were transferred across.
  
  Given the deletion of content it should have been about 100k lenses (out of the 180k that were featured). Instead I think they brought over something in excess of 450k lenses. I've no idea why.
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  endamclarnonposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Mark, I think it is called GREED
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  TIMETRAVELER2posted 10 years agoin reply to this
  I thought that's what they were doing...only transferring the best of the featured articles from Squidoo. This is what we were told...so I am wondering where this information is coming from?
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  justholidaysposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Featured lenses were 175,000 however 450,000 lenses were moved... Do the math. It's simple... Did I mention that at the time of the announcement, most of the first 175,000 lenses were also removed from Squidoo by those who didn't want to be transfered or wanted to save their holiday season? Re-do the math... Easy as a pie
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  makingamarkposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  I don't think it was most of them - however I wouldn't mind betting a good 40-50% disappeared in the time between the 15th August and the 29th August (ie the deadline for deleting accounts)
  
  That's why I was suggesting a figure of c.100k lenses coming across would have been more appropriate.
  
  In terms of the 450k that came across - don't forget the wholesale deletions would also have affected the rest of the lens portfolios of different lensmasters. I heard lots of people saying they were deleting whole swathes of lenses of the type that Squidoo used to promote but that the lensmaster had no real interest in.
  
  So out of that 450k that came across, a massive proportion of that number would have been really *!*!*!* lenses. Plus a proportion which were in WIP - but they don't count since they have never been published and they don't have any status per se (other than 'unpublished' in the original 'in draft' sense).
  
  Once it was known that 450k came across, I was always very clear there were lenses that transferred that needed to be metaphorically SUNK as hubs.
  
  I just don't think HubPages ever grasped that those which needed to be "unfeatured" and/or "unpublished" included a lot which were theoretically 'featured' prior to transfer whereas they had actually just moved up the rankings as other lenses got deleted.
  
  The 'grace period' should only ever applied to those that were 'featured' on Squidoo PRIOR to the announcement of the transfer - because the ranking became completely corrupted as from the time of the announcement - as lenses were deleted forever or because content was transferred to a site that was not HubPages.
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  Susana Sposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  We've had this kind of thing happen quite a few times in the 5 years I've been here. The most similar was when HP initially introduced the cap on amazon capsules just after the first Google Panda. There was uproar.
  
  The outcome will be that some people will stay and adapt to the changes. Some will leave.
  
  It's really nothing new.
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  endamclarnonposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  It is so sad to see such arguments here. The bottom line was that Hubbers and Squids had ZERO input into a commercial decision made by the Hubpages Management Team and the Squidoo Management Team.
  
  Like many buy outs the people involved are not given a say. The buying company take the goods and then tell the people who produced these goods that they need to change many things to make the good that they bought into the goods that they want.
  
  In a normal company at least they show the new employees what they want and why. They don't tell them that they "think that Google thinks they are spam" and then lecture them on what standards they want.
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  misterhollywoodposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  No we had no input for sure. Isn't there a writers Union? Lol. Seriously this is very reminiscent of Eastern Airlines! Remember them?
  
  http://aerospacefan.hubpages.com/hub/Ea … -Good-Idea
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  Jodahposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Yes Mr Hollywood, well said. maybe we do need a writer's Union then they could fight this for all of us and there would be no bickering, fighting and name calling. I wish one of my hubs would attract as many comments as there have been on this forum. I'd be a millionaire.
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  bethperryposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Well Jodah, since you mentioned it... protecting the interests of freelance writers since 1981. http://nwu.org/
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  Jodahposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Thank you for that link Beth. I will seriously consider joining. When they said a national union I thought they would only cover US writers but apparently they are worldwide and I earn under $5000 annually from writing so it only costs $10.00 to join..sounds like good value.
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  misterhollywoodposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Hi Beth and Jodah!
  
  I've been involved with various unions before but never heard of this one. Interesting! Can we get benefits too?! Haha. Seriously this is pretty cool.
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makingamarkposted 10 years ago
More from Google about what's good content and what is spam.........

This is "Create valuable content" in relation to how to make a great site https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6001093 in the Webmaster Module

This is Google on User Generated Spam https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2721437

These are the Webmaster Guidelines about "Best practices to help Google find, crawl, and index your site" https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/35769

One of the really important things to know is "If content on your site violates any guidelines, we'll inform you through Webmaster Tools."

A lot of people are puzzled as to why some of their hubs which should have been unfeatured and unpublished given the fact they haven't caused ANY sort of blip on Webmaster Tools. If you haven't checked Webmaster Tools yet I suggest you do.

I'd advise anybody trying to make a good site - anywhere - to have a jolly good read of Google's advice about what makes for good content and how to avoid spam and looking spammy BEFORE they start to create it
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  GiftsByDianaposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Thanks !
  In between taking care of family; running my gift shop; manning my online stores; trying to keep up with the local social networking and the drama of my life in general (3 surgeries in 2 years and other health junk), I'll give these a read to see what I may be missing - or adding in - that should be fixed.
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LindaSmith1posted 10 years ago
No, I am realistic. I have already seen this song and dance, game playing on Squidoo. Not doing it again. By the way, my average word count per product was 200 or more, not the 50 words allowed by HP!

I just checked a brand new blog I started with hubs moved to there from HP. I have had almost as many views on a brand new hub, within hours of it going live, than I did on the hubs I moved while they were here for a month!!! I have not even promoted that blog yet.
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LongTimeMotherposted 10 years ago
I am noticing something interesting here. I find myself reminded of common reactions to relationship breakdowns. How many women, for instance, when left holding the baby and the bills after their husband lets them down, decide (at least for a while) that "all men are b#st#rds" - and vow never to allow themselves to be vulnerable again?

I distinctly recall taking that stance many years ago. I was incapable of trusting any other man for what felt like a long time, and unable to accept that any woman could be genuinely happy in their own relationship.

Linda (and many others) clearly feel betrayed after their relationship with squidoo. Yet I (and many others) feel quite comfortable in our own relationship with HP.

I certainly understand that ex-squids feel vulnerable, and I also understand why some of you might paint all content sites with a wide brush. Perhaps you're right. Perhaps we'll all be disappointed some day ... or maybe we'll continue waking each morning, happy in a relationship that works for us - and willing to do what we think will make it stronger.

Ex-squids have done a very good job of expressing your frustrations and your fears. We can all see that you've tried (are trying) your hardest.

So what will it take to help you move to the next stage of your recovery? (I mean emotional, not financial if you already have a plan for that.)

Does it help if we assure you that you have been heard. And that your points will remain online for others who follow? Does it help to be reminded that if you leave, you are leaving because you choose to ... not because hubbers all hate you and want you to go? Or do you need encouragement to view yourselves as hubbers and not as outsiders?

I feel sorry for desperate ex-squids, but I also feel sorry for hubbers who seem to be painted as the bad guys just because they are hubbers. Know what I mean?
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  GiftsByDianaposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  I think that is it !
  We felt battered in the last year of Squidoo and that has left many very sensitive to feeling abused all over again by what may seem like those same kinds of actions here.
  You get it - even if HP really IS different, similar actions will likely bring about the same types of feelings.
  I think that if our first year or so would have gone well here and things would have been more gradual, it may not have felt like such a betrayal by yet another company.
  I am NOT saying that it was/is a betrayal here at HP, just that to folks who have been battered about, even though they jumped through every hoop that they told to at another place and it all still went badly - it may trigger those same worries and get their hackles up.
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  Dressage Husbandposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  You have hit the nail on the head!
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  OldRosesposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Brava, LTM. I've been yelling until I am hoarse that Hub Pages is not Squidoo. Ex-squids need to give HP a chance rather than screaming accusations. I have had my own issues with HP but when I look at other sites (or relationships as you said) I realize that HP for all of its faults us the best site for me. So I stay and try to work things out. I wish the ex-squids would do the same.
  
  BTW, they are not the only ones who lost income since the move. Google rolled out both a Panda and a Penguin and lots of lost significant traffic and warnings. My point is that it wasn't HP's fault. I feel that they are being unfairly blamed for Google's actions.
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  OldRosesposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Sorry, typing on a phone is difficult. What I meant to say is that lots of hubbers lost traffic and income thanks to Panda and Penguin.
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  justholidaysposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  And you're not finished since not only HP is still noted as dangerous among some anti-viruses but starting next year, Google's going to rank pages with SSL certificate higher than others: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot. … ignal.html
  
  So HP is not ready to get back into Big G's good graces and it's maybe also time to start thinking about pleasing other search engines.
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  OldRosesposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Just holidays, I have indeed begun looking into pleasing other search engines as noted in my posts in various forums recently.
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  justholidaysposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  I didn't think of you when adding this comment about pleasing other SE, I thought of HP staff
  
  Pleasing Google is one thing, but there's no giant that didn't fell from its pedestal one day or another. We'd all better get ready in case the little push that would make Google fall from theirs happens.
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  Sam Montanaposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  That is an interesting point about HubPages being considered risky by some antivirus software. I use Avast and when I started here, the green Avast symbol was always orange for Hubpages, meaning risky site. Every page on Hugpages I went to, I would rate it with avast as safe. If we all do that, it might help a tiny bit.
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  justholidaysposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Why not ? It is not always because of the writers that a site is considered as spam, it can be because of its owner as well, even though it's not deliberate. HubPages uses ads, their providers might not be as delicate as they're supposed to be and send HP into the black hole of search engines because of this. Changing editing rules won't cancel the penalty in this case.
  
  So rating the site as ok might help, yes.
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Nyima Damchoeposted 10 years ago
From what I can gather, this sort of thing happens every year around this time.
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LindaSmith1posted 10 years ago
justholidays" Dang, that must be due to spammy hubs! And in the meantime, down on the farm, HP is right there to collect 40% of the sales pie!!!!

I wonder how many people missed Number 17 of that precious newsletter yesterday.

The hub scores that we have been told that mean nothing, well you better start worrying about them now!!
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  colorfuloneposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Linda, what is "Number 17" of the newsletter yesterday?
  I do not subscribe to it my email. What am I missing?
  Reading it online here: http://hubpages.com/about/newsletter/2014-12-04
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  Dressage Husbandposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  The 17 relates to the FAQ http://hubpages.com/faq/#Spammy-Elements not the newsletter.
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  colorfuloneposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  OK, I was lost. Thx!
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  LindaSmith1posted 10 years agoin reply to this
  You are welcome!
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  LindaSmith1posted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Yes it was part of newsletter yesterday.
  
  Remember opening the email and then the paragraph was there with some things on it.
  
  This was at the very bottom: For a more detailed explanation, read the whole list in the FAQ. The link was a text link which was: http://hubpages.com/faq/#Spammy-Elements
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  LindaSmith1posted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Here you go, I copied and pasted it:
  http://hubpages.com/faq/#Spammy-Elements
  
  17. How much engagement is needed for a Hub to stay Featured?
  
  Your Hub needs a heartbeat to stay Featured. We consider a heartbeat to be signs of engagement from readers (total Hub views, comments, and search traffic).
  
  The Hub initially gets a free pass for a certain period to get a heartbeat. We've seen Hubs that eventually draw traffic typically start off with a little spike that would easily get them over the traffic thresholds we require. Even Hubs that don't get a lot of traffic for a long time but do eventually get some traffic typically have at least a heartbeat while they are in their "dormant" stage. That's all we require.
  
  The period of time a Hub is given to prove it has a heartbeat depends on our estimate of its quality, which is determined by a combination of HubScore, Hubber Score, and scores acquired through quality ratings (which are also utilized in the calculation of HubScores and Hubber Scores).
  
  Hubs written by Hubbers with very high Hubber Scores will have up to one year for their Hubs to prove themselves. Those with lower Hubber Scores may have as little as one month (we're talking pretty low Hubber Scores in that case).
  
  New Hubbers are given a generous grace period, even if they have relatively low Hubber Scores, as we acknowledge that it can take time for new Hubbers to get their bearings and for their Hubber Scores to normalize.
  
  Hubs with lower Hub Scores may have to prove they can win up to twice as much traffic during their Hubs' grace periods (to prove their worth) compared to Hubs with high Hub Scores.
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  Dressage Husbandposted 10 years agoin reply to this
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  OldRosesposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  I was really scratching my head yesterday reading that bullet points. I have both a low hubber score and low hub scores because I don't feel that the requirements for so-called stellar hubs apply to the type of hub that I write. I refuse to clutter my hubs with a lot repetition to reach a certain word count, nor do I use silly videos, and nonsensical polls and quizzes. And I am scored accordingly which never bothered me because my hubs had nice traffic. But according to this new FAQ, my hubs should be unfeatured because of low scores and abysmal traffic (thanks yo Panda/Penguin). Yet, my hubs remain featured. Not that i'm complaining.
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  MelissaBarrettposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Number 17 has been there for awhile. It's not really a new change. I'm not sure if it was edited, because I don't know it verbatim, but yeah, it's not new and not part of the spam thing.
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  LindaSmith1posted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Number 17 was never there before, especially the long bit about Hub scores!!!!!
  
  It was part of message sent yesterday. The ploy was to keep people focused on the spam crap. I found it because I went snooping to see what else may have been changed without telling us!
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  MelissaBarrettposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Have you actually ever read the FAQ before yesterday? The only addition was the spammy thing. That's why it's the last one listed. The boot camp thing, the unfeatured for engagement, all of that has been there for awhile... that's why they have smaller numbers.
  
  Or do you think they renumbered them as part of a conspiracy to hide what they were doing?
  
  BTW... Here is a forum post from 18 months ago that links to #17... So yeah, it's been there awhile.
  
  http://hubpages.com/forum/topic/113202#post2409048
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  OldRosesposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  "Or do you think they renumbered them as part of a conspiracy to hide what they were doing?"
  
  Too funny!
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  colorfuloneposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  I remember reading #17 before, it was right above Bootcamp, which was my goal post mark till recently. I read it just to be sure that hadn't changed since the last time I read it. The Hubber Hub Score FAQ was there, Linda.
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  OldRosesposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Thanks for the heads up, Melissa. I have to admit that I don't spend a lot of time in the Learning Center. I generally only go there when I have a specific question.
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