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Author Score

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GreatTattoosNowposted 9 years ago
Hi All-

I recently noticed that my author score seems to be dropping every few days. I had typically been at 97 to 98 and it is now dropping down to 92 to 93 range. My traffic is still up and higher then ever before. I have more hubs now and am writing about three to four per week. However, it seems like recently every time I write a hub my author score goes down.

Can someone help me understand what components go into the author score. I know for the hubscore it is traffic, comments, links and some secret stuff I dont know. However, I am unclear how the author score is derieved. I htought it had been the number of hubs and your the of your published hubpages in some combination of each other.

Could it be that the individual pages or hubscore of my pages is too low overall and that is why I have a lower hubscore?

Just wondering not overly concerned and for sure going to keep publishing but would like to know what goes into this score and if there are anyways of raising it.

I contemplated that the score might be based o unique content. However, all of my hubs are 100% unique in terms of content it is all stuff I have written. Maybe it is becuase my hubs are "Too Commercial" since i do have three or four out going links to affilaite programs. Maybe if I make them less visible the score would go up.

Any ideas?

Thanks
GreatTattoosNow
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relacheposted 9 years ago
Here's where to read what HubPages has to say about author scores

http://hubpages.com/faq/#authorstatus
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GreatTattoosNowposted 9 years ago
Hey Relache-

Thanks for replying. I appreciate it. I have read through that and still not making sense as to why my score would be dropping. Maybe I need to beef up the content in my hubs and make them "more useful" although I ge a ton of comments on most of my hubs. Any rate thanks for the lead!
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pauldeedsposted 9 years ago
The biggest thing that is affecting your author score is that lack of diversity in your links and the use of affiliate links in your hubs. You're not in violation of any rules or anything, but we prefer to reward author's that 1) aren't extensively monetizing outside of the HubPages ecosystem, and 2) don't appear to have as their agenda to promote a handful of other sites (even if those sites are worthwhile). We constantly tweak the HubScore algorithm in order to most reward the behaviors we want to encourage.
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kpfingazposted 9 years ago
Yeah I been noticing that too..my score dropped 5 points in one day but Paul just answered the question I been asking myself so...
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GreatTattoosNowposted 9 years ago
Hi Paul Deeds-

Thanks for the point of clarification. I guess you have been tweaking the author score as you state because my score seems to be dropping. I don't feel that the advertising is excessive in my hugs really just 3 links to related sites of interest (yes affiliate) but still related to the hubs. I agree with the diversity point and so I have started writing a few hubs just for the heck of it and hopefully that will help my score.

The problem with only using advertising from within hubpages is google adsense, eBay and Amazon don't pay all that well and really have nothing on the top I like tow rite about Tattoos. If a Clickbank capsule were added that would be really helpful to me and something of interest.

While I can say I fully understand hubpages philosophy and see why you have it I can't say that I totally agree with it. Often it is presented as everyone at hubpages is trying for quality content. I think for the most part that is true and I can see it. In fact that is why I publish here as opposed to Squidoo.

However, I tend to disagree with the philosophy of lowering an author score for someone who makes use of advertising outside of the hubpages capsules. As the real reason this is being done is not to change the quality of the content but to keep more of the revenue coming back to hubpages. Which in fact I support as everyone who spends time on a project should be compensated and I know you and everyone at hubpages spends a ton of time on the project. That is the reason that I started using affiliate links in my hubs because they pay way waaaay better then google adsense. I can now get $15 to $25 dollar per sale instead of .10 cents per click. So really either way if this is about quality content or about revenue for everyone adding a clickbank component or capsule would be beneifical to everyone. I am more then willing to split the profits with Hubpages.

Anyway it has been a long day at work. I am tired and not sure that all makes since and in the end I am going to keep publishing here anyway. I will diversify my hubs a little bit and maybe only publish one affialite link per hub and hopefully my score will go up some. In the end I haven't found the drop in score has hurt my traffic all that much anyway which is good.
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pauldeedsposted 9 years ago
I'll admit that I haven't done an in depth investigation of clickbank, but my initial impression from looking at a lot of the offers people have posted on HubPages is that many of the products are somewhat dubious. There is a reason they can pay you $25 for a sale on a $60 product -- they are passing that cost onto the purchaser. Caveat emptor I suppose, but I wouldn't want people to get a bad impression of HubPages as a result of feeling taken advantage of by a clickbank seller.

That said, I'll try and do some more investigation. We're aware that our shopping capsules are kind of weak, and we hope to do something to improve them soon.
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GreatTattoosNowposted 9 years ago
Paul you make a good point in some ways about Clickbank. First of all they are all digital products ebooks, or software. Since the products are all digital they can afford to offer higher commissions. I would have to unfortunately admit that there is some junk there. Yet there are a lo of really great programs also like SEO Elite one of the best SEO software on the market. Also, they do offer a 100% refund and people that are unsatisfied can always get a refund easily.

Can you tell me is there a limit or point where Hubpage staff considers to many affiliate links or too many hubs on the same topic. I am really enjoying writing about tattoos and it is driving traffic like crazy. I can pick another topic and do something else I suppose but was enjoying tattoo pages. I can simply add more topics and find another affiliate link or something that might work better with eBay also but is there a point that is considered too many affiliate links? Just trying to understand how it all works. For example I don't think I would currently be marked down for adding two or three Amazon modules or eBay modules but two or three clickbank links drops my author score. So without revealing any secret ingredient in the Magic Sauce that makes hubpages run can you tell me how many links in general are acceptable for a hubpage?
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pauldeedsposted 9 years ago
There is no particular limit -- the more affiliate and self promotional links you have per hub and as a percentage of all links across all your hubs, the more it will affect your HubScore. A good rule of thumb might be to include one link to a good site that you are not affiliated with for each affiliate link you put into your hub.
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