Old 2012 Olympics hub blowing up;new 2016 Olympics hub not so much

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   SmartAndFunposted 20 months ago

   Ok, what do y'all think of this one?
   
   Back in 2012, I wrote an article about the 2012 USA Olympic women's gymnastics team. It did well as I recall (although I'm not sure how to check the numbers that far back), so I thought I'd write a similar one for 2016. The new one was published about a month ago on July 11.
   
   The old one is on the HubPages domain: "USA 2012 Women's Olympic Gymnastics Team: Meet the Athletes."
   
   The new one was chosen for HowTheyPlay: "USA 2016 Women's Olympic Gymnastics Team: Meet the Athletes."
   
   The old one currently has a 24-hour view stat of 1016, while the new one is at only 116. I even put a sidebar at the top of the old one, linking to new one.
   
   The titles of the articles are the same, other than the year. Do you think Google is somehow thinking the new one is a duplicate of the old one, and is not ranking it? It just seems very strange. I know people are wanting to learn about the current team athletes rather than the 2012 athletes, so why is barely anyone landing on the new one? Especially since niche site articles are supposedly doing better than those on the HP domain.
   
   Anyone have any ideas? Of course I knew writing the article on a newsworthy topic would be a gamble, but it is still very disappointing that the current article is tanking while the one with outdated information has taken off.

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      Sherry Hewinsposted 20 months agoin reply to this

      There must be other articles on the subject that are ranking higher than it is in the searches. Perhaps the old article ranks better for its keywords than the new one does.

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   SmartAndFunposted 20 months ago

   Women's gymnastics is on again this evening, I believe. The 2016 article should be getting views, don't you think? Yet the 2012 article still is getting more views. The 2012 article was getting thousands of views this time four years ago. The 2016 article is currently at 37 for 24 hours.
   
   It seems like the niche site placement alone would help the 2016 one do better...

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   FatFreddysCatposted 20 months ago

   I've witnessed this same phenomenon - I call it "The Law of Diminishing Returns."
   
   In 2014 I wrote a Hub about the then-upcoming "Sharknado 2" and other crazy shark movies that would be airing on SyFy that summer. It took off WAY better than I expected, in fact it still pulls down a few dozen views a month to this day! It currently ranks as my 2nd or 3rd most-viewed Hub.
   
   ... naturally, since the 2014 edition was such a hit, I figured I'd catch lightning in a bottle again in 2015 when SyFy was getting ready to unleash "Sharknado 3" and their next round of summertime creature features, so I wrote a similar rundown... and it never caught fire the way its predecessor did. It performed OK but even after more than a year, it's got less than 1/3 the views of its forefather.
   
   I guess people must Google search "2014 Shark Movies" more often than "2015 Shark Movies." Who knew? (shrugs)
   
   ...then this year I wrote a stand-alone hub on "Sharknado: The 4th Awakens" that never even got out of the starting gate. I ended up unpublishing it after the movie aired because its traffic was comatose from Day One.
   
   I guess the Sharknado bubble has burst. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted.

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   ProBeatStudioposted 20 months ago

   Mature Content, and probably has established a variety of link backs in the meantime, so when the trend spikes, its taking a boost, shows as always its good to write quality content, you never know when it will be useful or interesting to someone again..

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   DrMark1961posted 20 months ago

   I think that ProBeat is correct in that you have lots of links back to your older hub. It ony showed up on page 4 of my Google search, and there are lots of better known sites on top of it. But, as I have seen with many of my articles, if people are linking back to your hub then the Google ranking does not matter as much.
   The newer hub? Maybe not many links. Who knows in 4 years or so?

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      SmartAndFunposted 20 months agoin reply to this

      Y'all are probably correct, but it still seems weird to me that four years ago my article was an instant hit, even as a brand new article with no links or age.
      
      This year's article is a dud. Oh well. I enjoyed writing it.
      
      Thanks to everyone who replied.

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