Update on the Site Move
And while we are at it, please unf-ck the CPM.
Traffic Dives as Subs Sunk
Lets hope this is temporary?
I think you could be right. The interesting thing is that I had a lot of hubs already on the main domain, and they also seem to be doing worse as well.
What you say about the strength of the topic and the density of similar hubs makes a lot of sense. I have worried more about internal competition in the last 3 years than I have external competition. I don't see Google showing 10 results first from the same domain. This may create a polarizing effect on content that is very similar. One may win a top spot, and all the others will need to go further down the search list to allow for more results from different domains. Having the second best hub on a given topic may yield you nothing but internal traffic from the best hub.
If it's any help to you, I barely have any Amazon products on any of my hubs. Those hubs weren't doing well anyway.
Google traffic:
I've ALWAYS thought that was much the best solution for those of us who are niche specialists
Closely followed by the thought I could create my own website for my niche specialism!
I wonder whether HP should flip the page and be more proactive and make more positive suggestions, even via emails. The Negative stuff appears to dominate. Pinterest regularly makes positive suggestions; perhaps HP could do similar promotions regarding 'vacant niches' and trending topics. There was a HP Holiday Hubbing weekly email sent out a while ago, but it was very general! The suggestions could be much more specific (using GSC) => Pinterest example:
I can understand your perspective - I had it at the back of my mind when moving content and developing my new websites. It's still there and I check constantly - but all I'm seeing is masses of traffic from Google and a steady upward trend on the visitors and traffic. (and the websites are nowhere near finished!)
I think the new sites are working fine. I find that having the content on a website means that I can split the hub into pages (big mega-niche topic sits over topics (ie ex hubs) which then gets a number of sub-topic pages)
It's then much easier to get a decent balance between text and links and images and videos. Plus I can spread the Amazon Books around more and link these much more clearly to relevant text. Plus of course it's very much easier to draft the meta description and the keywords for a very specific topic.
You can take a look for yourself if you like. Just google my user name, and my blog of the same name should come top in Google - then look in the right hand column and you'll find the two new websites - either side of the "popular posts last month" module.
The only thing I'm worried about now are those pages which are pointing back at the HubPages hubs which have yet to be moved - and I think that means these very good hubs will be moving very shortly.No - On Squidoo and HubPages the great majority of referrals come direct from Google. That's why I've always been really bemused by the notion that my hubs have to be unfeatured because Google would find them spammy
I think instead of employing MTurk people and/or anybody else HubPages could just try a simple text of the percentage of traffic that arrives via Google search queries. If Google is listing and sending traffic then in my book that means they don't have a problem with your site because otherwise they would bury it in the index!
PS - it's 8.3 million pageviews now!
This chart is organic traffic to my articles. The blue line is search engine traffic after the redirection, whilst the orange line is that same traffic source in the equivalent time period before the redirection occurred.
Overall, it represents a 25% loss of organic traffic, and a continuous downward trend that suggests worse is yet to come. Thanks HubPages.But that won't stop me from a worthy meme or two.
HP Traffic drops to lowest level in 12 months - sad!
Wow, sadness confirmed.
Time for a vacation from HP. I hope we all will rebound in 2016. 
Uh Oh,
When I search for "egg recipes hubpages", it shows a result from food.squidoo.com.
And redirects to this hub: http://hubpages.com/food/how-to-cook-eg … e-avocados
Under the result, it says written on April, 2015. So how is that possible?
This particular issue has been going on for years. I've ranted about it a few times in the past.
And I've got the same problem with my main website versus G+. The G+ entry shows on page one, while my actual website post shows up on page 3, etc. Highly frustrating to say the least.
I think Google just likes to mess with us.
The progressive drop in traffic, rather than a sudden plunge, is worrying as it may signal a "real" and permanent ranking decline, rather than a temporary shift. Time will tell. Many of my pages have been re-indexed and re-cached 3-4 times since Nov 1. - Most now show cache date 21 or 22 Nov.
@ Paul - No sign of a similar traffic plunge for Answers, though some decline in last week.
Have you has feed back for your query with Google?
I'm really worried about the changes, not just the most recent but various changes to the pages in the last year which have lead to a decline in traffic like I haven't had in over 4 years previously where my traffic has been steady. This is what I feel Hubpages could do to increase page views despite what Google may be doing:
1- Add prominent share buttons, including overlayed share buttons on the mobile site.
2 - Make the Copyright notice default to display (It has switched off on all my older Hubs and I have to edit each one to change it back to display the copyright notice which I never knew had disappeared). Or make the text on Hubpages unable to be copy/pasted (I lose views due to copied content regularly, spend about an hour each week reporting copied content and philishing sites).
3 - Indicate the photos in the Hub are 'Tap to share' - Or how will anyone but us know!
4- Other Hubs shown in the right margin of a Hub, as well as the Hubs displayed on my profile should have the red/black text reversed as it is misleading- The red seems more obvious to click on other than the Hub title in black text which doesn't look like an obvious link with the red above it. The red heading only takes you to the menu for the category and not to the actual Hub you want to read. It could be like a redirect from a readers point of view, and a loss of actual Hub visits. eg reverse the red/black colours here so readers are directed to the Hub and not a menu:
Wasn't it January 2015, paradigm, when things started to go downhill? We were told to update hubs, remove unrelated ads and links, yada, yada, yada. I never recovered from that until two weeks ago when traffic was off the hook. That was fun while it lasted.
I want to be optimistic, too, but this is different from what I recall at holiday time. It seems worse. I'm hoping for the best. I did see a bump today which is usually the case for Sundays. Earnings for Thursday and Friday are unspeakable but I know that has a lot to do with the holiday. I'll be glad when the negative effects of this site transition are over.
