Should I update a hub that's no longer relevant but still gets views?

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   RonElFranposted 5 years ago

   One of my better performing hubs has been "Review: HubPages vs InfoBarrel, Bubblews, Writedge, Daily Two Cents, Persona Paper". The heart of the hub is specific info about the policies and traffic of each of these sites. But now that info is thoroughly out of date.
   
   Although it's still online, the InfoBarrel admins are not actively managing the site, and in their forum its own writers have pronounced it dead. PersonaPaper is also still online, but pays nothing, has few participants, and isn't doing any site engineering maintenance. All the others are completely dead and no longer online.
   
   My conundrum is this: my hub still gets decent traffic, but the core of the info it offers is no longer relevant (or accurate). Frankly, with all the sites except HubPages moribund or non-existent, I'm not sure how I could update that info except to say "they're dead!" On the other hand, I wouldn't want to remove a hub that still receives a fair amount of daily views.
   
   Any thoughts?

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      TIMETRAVELER2posted 5 years agoin reply to this

      If the info isn't any good,  you shouldn't keep it.  However, you can change the thrust of the article to point out the benefits of HP and show what happened to those other sites as examples.  This way you get to keep the URL and the traffic and still get to produce current info.  You may even want to explain about Maven.

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         RonElFranposted 5 years agoin reply to this

         That makes sense. In essence it becomes a new hub though under the same title.

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            paradigmsearchposted 5 years agoin reply to this

            Make sure to do a very good job and to do all the updating in one shot. Otherwise, the moderators/editors are guaranteed to kill it. Not kidding.
            
            Also be advised that major rewrites highly disconcert Google. Your hub will be  reverted to Google's "test" mode and will have a drop in traffic. Hopefully, the drop will be temporary.
            
            I know, rock and a hard place.

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               RonElFranposted 5 years agoin reply to this

               Very good point. I'm thinking now of not changing what's already in the hub, but adding an update section that details all that has changed since it was originally published. I'll provide a link to that section so readers can jump directly to it.

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                  paradigmsearchposted 5 years agoin reply to this

                  I've done versions of that on my website and Google actually seems to respond well to it. However, I have absolutely no idea how HP will respond.

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                     TIMETRAVELER2posted 5 years agoin reply to this

                     What usually happens is that the article is sent through QAP again and you get an email stating they have reviewed the article and it is up to their standards.  That's all.

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                  TIMETRAVELER2posted 5 years agoin reply to this

                  I think this would be a mistake because it would confuse readers.  If you want to change the hub copy it to a word processing program, do your updates and then insert them in the online version.  This way you don't have to do everything all at one time until the article is ready to be updated.

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                  lobobrandonposted 5 years agoin reply to this

                  This is what I came here to suggest.

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               TIMETRAVELER2posted 5 years agoin reply to this

               This has never happened to me, even when I combine two hubs into one.  In fact, most of the time views go up.

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            TIMETRAVELER2posted 5 years agoin reply to this

            You can also change the title. It's the URL that remains the same, which means it doesn't lose any "juice" like a new article would.  I do this fairly often and it works pretty well.  No sense letting a bunch of hard work go to waste when you can save most of it!

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   Glenn Stokposted 5 years ago

   Ron, I have two like yours and HubPages moved them both to ToughNickel.   
   
   A Review of InfoBarrel: Will It Be Another Failed Content Site?
   
   The Demise of Writing Sites: Bubblews, Persona Paper and Niume
   
   I keep them up to date so nothing becomes obsolete. That is what’s required.
   
   I also made the URL’s very generic to allow for future title updates without anything in the URL becoming obsolete either. Of course if you didn’t do that when you first published, you’re stuck with it now.

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