Anyone else noticing a drop in traffic?

1. 93

   vocalcoachposted 9 years ago

   I've been noticing quite a drop in traffic the past 2 days.  Is it just me?

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      ChitrangadaSharanposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      Same here! Too many blue arrows!

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      MelRootsNWritesposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      Mine dropped at the beginning of last week, which seemed to coincide with whatever Google did to drop the site traffic.  However, since Thursday my numbers have been perking up and today looks good.
      
      I wonder if the NBA and NHL playoffs might be playing into some of the drop in traffic.

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         Solarasposted 9 years agoin reply to this

         Also AMC was playing a Mad Men marathon for 3 days leading up to the finale. That's where all of my extra time and attention went from Friday AM to Sunday evening lol.

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      bravewarriorposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      Yep, I just checked. Stats are stalled again, too.

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         vocalcoachposted 9 years agoin reply to this

         Okay.  Thanks Sha.

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            bravewarriorposted 9 years agoin reply to this

            Read this article. It specifically addresses the drop in traffic on HP and why it's happened.
            
            http://www.cnbc.com/id/102669423

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               Jodahposted 9 years agoin reply to this

               Thanks for sharing this Shauna, that's a very interesting read. Worrying though.

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               Solarasposted 9 years agoin reply to this

               WTF "Where Google used to drive traffic to other sites, it's now keeping people on its own properties, even though the information being displayed comes from other sources. The egg frying instructions, for example, are from foodnetwork.com."
               
               How does this help the author of an article if Google slurps up their info on to their own property. Are they paying foodnetwork for this?

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      eugbugposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      I noticed a drop on Monday which is usually a busy day for traffic (why is this?).
      Has anyone noticed a jump in earnings in the last few dates despite lower views? Maybe this has something to do with the "new ad partners"?

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      Saphyaireposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      I am new here, but I noticed a sudden drop too,  I was thinking to write science article to promote my YouTube channel, but submitting original science journal topic to low traffic site, not a good idea

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      peachpurpleposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      mine dropped a lot. from 150 to 77! What in the world in going on ? ANway, it had picked up today.

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         vocalcoachposted 9 years agoin reply to this

         Yes, my traffic is also on the rise.

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            Jayne Lancerposted 9 years agoin reply to this

            Mine was on the rise on Saturday, but dropped again on Sunday.

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   alikhan3posted 9 years ago

   Yes I have also noticed around 40% drop in traffic these days ....... Its going up and down since the last month.

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   Chriswillman90posted 9 years ago

   Well I now have no traffic at all, which hasn't happened since I joined this site. It really just sucks up any motivation to write here at all.

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      WAHmomposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      I agree; and the hubs' score are no longer ranked from highest to lowest....example: 79, 55, 53, 60, 74, 65...why is this so? It's like a scatterbrain's idea.

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   Neha Sadanaposted 9 years ago

   yes, severe drop in traffic with lots of blue arrows ...

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   Daughter Of Maatposted 9 years ago

   I've noticed about a 50% drop in traffic. I haven't seen my traffic this low since I started here. Did Google change their algorithm again??

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   FatFreddysCatposted 9 years ago

   The past month has been one long, slow, continuous traffic drop. Ugh.

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   DrMark1961posted 9 years ago

   According to this thread- http://hubpages.com/forum/topic/130535 -almost everyone lost 20%. Not sure why yours would be down 50.

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   Jayne Lancerposted 9 years ago

   I've seen a traffic drop of about 40% over the past three weeks. It's a mess. I hadn't even recovered from the Panda update of last September. Worse still, I'm seeing low quality (thin content) hubs that are written in fractured English beating mine in the serps. I'm livid.

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      colorfuloneposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      Those lower quality hubs might be published by newer Hubbers, who get a little hub boost when they are first starting out so they do not get discouraged right off.

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         Jayne Lancerposted 9 years agoin reply to this

         These are established accounts. I've reported them, but HubPages does nothing. I guess it's because they're making money. One hub is not only in fractured English with thin content, it also has pixelated images.

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            colorfuloneposted 9 years agoin reply to this

            Oh dear!

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         WAHmomposted 9 years agoin reply to this

         Really? Hubpages wants to please new hubbers even if means sacrificing quality? Well,yeah....they are not big about writing quality. I see hubs that are poorly written but they are accepted. Sometimes I wonder why the editors don't correct the errors at all! HP has really gone down the drain.

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9. 36

   ChristinSposted 9 years ago

   Are any of you looking at your Google Analytics as well or are you only going by the stats here?  the stats here are regularly glitchy and incorrect, particularly over the weekend.  My stats here are very low, but my analytics showed higher traffic.  Of course, it's been dropping a bit too - but it's not as dire as the stats here make it look.

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      jansharesposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      True. The sharp decline started last night and I immediately checked GA. My stats were off by more than half. They seem to be stabilizing now and on the increase.

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      Jayne Lancerposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      HP stats are so off, I hardly take any notice of them nowadays, apart from checking for copied content, unfeatured hubs etc.

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10. 67

    steve8millerposted 9 years ago

    Yep I noticed.

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    Jodahposted 9 years ago

    Yes, down down down..all blue arrows.

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    Rafiq23posted 9 years ago

    Yea. Mine has fallen drastically.

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    Cardiaposted 9 years ago

    I've also noticed a drop as well in my views. Not sure of the percentage, but definitely a lot of those little blue arrows! Hopefully it's just a bad patch.

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    PaulGoodman67posted 9 years ago

    My traffic is bouncing back up today...

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       Susana Sposted 9 years agoin reply to this

       Same here. I'm back to normal.

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          PaulGoodman67posted 9 years agoin reply to this

          Last week my have been some sort of trial precluding a proper algo update.  Or maybe Paul E's stern email to Google worked... 

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             colorfuloneposted 9 years agoin reply to this

             I was wondering the same thing.
             Whatever it is I am seeing some improvement.

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    Kierstin Gunsbergposted 9 years ago

    Not drastically. For the most part traffic is status quo for me, though it's certainly not rising. This time of year I feel like my hubs that are directly related to travel or summer holidays do the very best.

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    janderson99posted 9 years ago

    Looks like the 20% universal drop in Traffic Quota for HP is now locked in.
    
    

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       Writer Foxposted 9 years agoin reply to this

       What happened has nothing to do with a 'quota.'  What happened is that Google has further refined its algorithm and has, once again, targeted low-quality pages on HP.  As many of us have stated over and over again on this forum, there are still too many low-quality Hubs on the site.  More of those low-quality pages took a hit from Google this time around. http://searchengineland.com/the-quality … -up-221118

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          janderson99posted 9 years agoin reply to this

          An old debate but
          "once again, [Google] targeted low-quality pages on HP" does not marry with Paul E's findings that the 22% drop applied universally to pages of all qualities, shapes and sizes (the Good, Bad and Ugly - all dropped). "This Update isn't About Quality at the Page Level ........This means Google applied a site-wide ranking factor that ignores quality and subdomains" See: http://pauledmondson.hubpages.com/hub/M … gle-Update
          
          Google applied a penalty to HP (rich snippets abuse, thin pages, manual penalties, etc), which effectively amounts to a Quota or share adjustment. Why else is the traffic so consistent over many months despite all the changes that were made?
          
          I call it a Quota, it looks like a Quota, the traffic behaves like there is a Quota - call it what you will.
          
          I believe that Google has a quota for all sites which is manipulated after Panda and core algo changes to share the traffic the way it wants (a universal ranking penalty adjustment). Radical perchange, but it explains what is happening

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             Writer Foxposted 9 years agoin reply to this

             In that article, Paul E. was just looking at traffic numbers for May 3.  When you look at the average traffic from April 19 – April 30 and compare it to the average May 6 – May 18, HP traffic went down by about 11.7%.  Not every Hub lost traffic and some Hubs gained traffic.  My most-trafficked Hubs did not lose their ranking positions on Google.
             
             Paul E. also stated that the change Google made in ranking "ignores quality" on HP.  That's not what Google stated in the link I posted.  But HP's definition of a quality Hub has never matched Google's definition. This is why you find Hubs with high traffic sent from Google but with very low Hub Scores. 
             
             And this was not a Google-applied "penalty to HP."  This algorithm adjustment was for the purpose of ranking webpages on search results pages.  Hubs that lost rankings on Google's SERPs were evaluated as lesser quality answers for a given search query.
             
             It's no surprise that the HubPro-edited Hubs lost traffic because the editors do not consider the effects of their edits on SEO and they are tampering with things they do not understand. The edited Hubs I've looked at have had many new photos added without proper Alt tags, which is a violation of Google's Webmaster Guidelines. The Editor's Choice designation never had any correlation with Google search rankings and the Google algorithm never selected those as the best Hubs on this site. 
             
             Google does not seek to "share traffic" but, rather, to deliver the best answer for a given search query.

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                janderson99posted 9 years agoin reply to this

                Beg to differ. Cheers!

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          Jodahposted 9 years agoin reply to this

          If they targetted low quality pages, Writer Fox, why did all my hubs with scores in the 90s get hit (I had six two weeks ago now none) and all my lower hubs stay virtually the same? Ok, I have just read your second post..that explains it somewhat. Google and HP's version of quality is different.

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             PaulGoodman67posted 9 years agoin reply to this

             Nobody really quite knows what Google's definition of quality is, they deliberately use slightly vague language and never give any practical examples - supposedly because they don't want to help people game the system.

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                Writer Foxposted 9 years agoin reply to this

                http://static.googleusercontent.com/ext … elines.pdf
                
                http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot. … ality.html

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                   PaulGoodman67posted 9 years agoin reply to this

                   I don't think either of those articles from 2011 and 2012 conflict with the thrust of what I said.
                   
                   If you think that statements of intent, such as: "Does the article describe both sides of a story?", or "Would you expect to see this article in a printed magazine, encyclopedia or book?" are exact, and not open to multiple interpretations, then that is your prerogative. 

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                      PaulGoodman67posted 9 years agoin reply to this

                      Is the Google algo, a mathematical equation, capable of assessing a hub according to those two questions?  I would say no. 
                      
                      It would be virtually impossible to get two humans to agree, so a freaking computer algorithm, which doesn't understand concepts of value, morality, etc. has no chance 
                      
                      Google often puts out "statements of intent", but in some ways, one could view them as propaganda tools, as they often bear scant resemblance to the reality on the ground.

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17. 53

    paradigm searchposted 9 years ago

    Monday traffic less than Sunday traffic. That never happens. Until now.
    
    edit: actually I'll have to take that half back. Only happened with US traffic. Global was indeed a tad more.

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    Fiction Tellerposted 9 years ago

    http://searchengineland.com/the-quality … -up-221118

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       paradigm searchposted 9 years agoin reply to this

       Well, that is that!
       
       My main website has gained traffic. My main HP subdomain has lost traffic. I'm going to chew on that for awhile...

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    paradigm searchposted 9 years ago

    Excerpted from Google Support, "Engaging: Bring color and life to your site by adding images of your products, your team, or yourself. Make sure visitors are not distracted by spelling, stylistic, and factual errors. An excessive amount of ads can also be distracting for visitors. Engage visitors by interacting with them through regular updates, comment boxes, or social media widgets."
    
    Maybe now is the time to get rid of those Sponsored Links? That's 5 ads right there. And if you follow any of those links, you are met with a solid wall of ads. Google has really got to hate that... And besides, we don't get paid for those anyway.

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       Barbara Kayposted 9 years agoin reply to this

       paradigm, I've thought that for a long time. Our hubs look spammy with all those.

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          Solarasposted 9 years agoin reply to this

          They look even more spammy on mobile devices.
          
          I have had to move images to less than optimal places in the article and delete polls just to keep the reader from running into bock after block of ad, image, poll with no  relevant text in between. The mobile screen ads are often huge and junky looking; in some instances it looks like the article ended abruptly.

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       janderson99posted 9 years agoin reply to this

       Hey Paradigm the related search ads are kapput! - Someone heard you. Great news after 2 years of pleading!

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    sunilkunnoth2012posted 9 years ago

    For me traffic and earnings showing a very negative trend. I am more upset on the sharp fall in earnings. Last month i couln't earn even 10 $. Things are in a bad shape here and clueless how to address these negative trend.

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    Valerie P Davisposted 9 years ago

    Pinterest started selling pin placements last week--simultaneously my Pinterest traffic dropped to about a third. It's going to be even harder now to get traffic without paying for it.

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    Zhivko Stanevposted 9 years ago

    Blue arrows here... No idea what could have caused it though.

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    Lee Hansenposted 9 years ago

    And then there's this to consider ... it could get better. Or worse. http://searchengineland.com/google-we-a … ter-221331

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