Question about niche sites

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   TIMETRAVELER2posted 7 years ago

   HubPages is considered a social networking sites, so views that come from it have less value than others.  I am wondering if the same is true of the niche sites.  Are they considered to be social networking sites also?

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      Christy Kirwanposted 7 years agoin reply to this

      Views from social sources don't necessarily have less value, it's just very difficult to get enough views from fellow HubPages authors alone to earn any income. We consider search most important because it's where the most traffic comes from for the majority of authors.

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         TIMETRAVELER2posted 7 years agoin reply to this

         I'm surprised to hear this because several writers here have stated that views from social networking sites don't "count" the same as Google views.  I was just wondering how the niche sites are viewed when it comes to this issue.

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            lobobrandonposted 7 years agoin reply to this

            It's always been said that they count the same. The staff have voiced this before. I know what you mean though, I've tried to convince people a few times on such threads that there's no real difference.

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               TIMETRAVELER2posted 7 years agoin reply to this

               Good to know.  Thanks.

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                  Christy Kirwanposted 7 years agoin reply to this

                  It might be that social view don't count toward an article's traffic for staying featured. An article with social traffic can still become unfeatured for traffic because featured status just refers to an article's ability to be seen by search engines (and if they aren't sending any views anyway, we assume there might be search issues with the article, so we prevent it from being indexed after a long grace period).

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                     TIMETRAVELER2posted 7 years agoin reply to this

                     Ahhh...that's what it is!  Now I remember...but here's the question...again...where do the niche sites fall in that formula?  Are views from them counted towards traffic counts or not?

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                        Christy Kirwanposted 7 years agoin reply to this

                        They are counted towards traffic, but they would not be counted as search traffic unless the reader came from a search engine first.

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                           TIMETRAVELER2posted 7 years agoin reply to this

                           Interesting.  Percentage wise, how many views do you think probably come from the niche sites as opposed to being from Google?  Just curious.  It would seem to me that most would come from Google, but maybe I'm wrong.

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                              Marisa Wrightposted 7 years agoin reply to this

                              I think what you may be getting at is this.
                              
                              HubPages.com has never been a site which the general public know by name.  No one would ever think, "I need to find out more about this subject, I'll go and research it on HubPages".   So the main site has always gotten 90% of its traffic from Google.
                              
                              However, now we have niche sites that specialise in a particular subject, it's quite possible that some readers will be impressed by the advice they get on, say, PetHelpful, and then they'll go straight back to PetHelpful for more advice when they need it, instead of going via Google.    Perhaps the same could be happening on AxleAddict - people are finding it a good resource on those subjects, and keep returning to it.   
                              
                              However, visitors to each niche site are not aware of the existence of the other niche sites, or of the existence of HubPages, so I don't see how there would be much cross-traffic.

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   lobobrandonposted 7 years ago

   I don't think they are considered social networking sites.

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   psycheskinnerposted 7 years ago

   I wouldn't really considered Hubpages a social networking site either.  It is predominantly a search-engine served content site.

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      TIMETRAVELER2posted 7 years agoin reply to this

      What I am getting at is how page views are counted.  Those from social networking sites, count for less.  HP falls into that category.  I am wondering if the niche sites also do.

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   lobobrandonposted 7 years ago

   You are talking about Google Analytics here aren't you? I doubt HP considers itself a social netowork. So if they do differentiate in that way, the original source of the traffic would count. So if someone reached my page via Google and then went to yours it would still count as a visit from the search engine I presume.

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   Will Apseposted 7 years ago

   There is not that much interlinking between niches these days, so there is little traffic between them. Bounce rates are high for all of my pages, and assuming that is normal for other writers, traffic from other articles within niches is negligible, too.
   
   Social traffic comes from sites like Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter which are not article based, just pure user content. HP would never be defined as a social site, though it once seemed to have ambitions in that direction.

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