I published a hub a about three weeks ago, titled: "Defining My Purpose on HubPages: Aftermath of My Wars on HubPages Forums". I've written and published one more hub after that (it's still undergoing the site's quality assessment process) and I'm planning to write more hubs.
I almost forgot about that 2nd hub that I wrote. Today I googled this phrase "purpose of hubpages", and my hub showed up at the second slot (from the top) on the very first page of the Google's search results related to that phrase.
Google had yielded 'About 7,54,000 results' in total, in '0.36 seconds'.
I use HubPages as a hobby. But it was definitely a pleasure to witness, in person, that the system that I take as a hobby, ultimately works and generates results.