Where is hubpages support?

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   TessSchlesingerposted 4 years ago

   I have now three times posted in the technical forum. Once I received no response - about the search function not working. The second time Matt eventually came on, and it took awhile to convince him that the search function wasn't working. Eventually I discovered that if one banned third party cookies, then the search function didn't work (always a good idea to stop third party cookies from gaining access to one's laptop).
   
   I have now posted again because, increasingly, anything I post goes to the South African internet first. I can tell because the first dozen hits are always from South Africa, and, also increasingly, the more South African hits there are, the less traffic there is from the first world.
   
   I received responses from hubbers - not from Hubpages technical department. How are hubbers going to know what is going on at the backend? They don't.
   
   While I fully understand the rationale that if one lives in a particular country, then one is inclined to want things from that country - about 95% of people want things from that country. People like me, who move one from country/continent/city at the drop of a hat, write specifically for the first world - the rich world - the place which is the most educated, has the most money, and has the most web users.
   
   South Africa - this is not.
   
   Vast numbers live in tin shanties, the average income is $400 a month, and we are the country with the most rape, the greatest inequality gap, and outside gang warfare and real warfare, are the most violent country in the world.
   
   I can assure you that nobody is interested in whether Trump wins an election, whether two days in Edinburgh is a good investment, or whether the latest Mars probe will prove Robert Heinlein right.
   
   The internet is very much still the way it was in the 90s in many respects. Business use the web to generate leads. In other words, they don't give you prices or the kind of information that allows you to compare products on the web. Instead, they give a phone number and an address - so that are a lead they can sell to.
   
   Buying on the web is a nightmare. I have two banks. Every time I buy with one card, the bank stops me in case it is fraud. It then sends me an urgent text telling me someone is attempting to buy something on the web with my card. I am dreading the fact that sometimes this week I have to buy return tickets to the States.
   
   Paypal?
   
   We can't just have a paypal account in South Africa.
   
   No, we are forced to open a bank account with a South African bank (only one bank), then that bank will draw and pay on our behalf. It used to take 6 or 7 days for our payments to come through. Now it is down to two days. Although I am still waiting for a payment from another site that was supposedly put through last week.
   
   Most writing companies won't deal with South Africa. Medium? Nope. I've lost track. Why? Because the bank regulations are such that most international websites don't make arrangements to pay South Africa.
   
   Amazon wants to send me a cheque (that's British/South African spelling). Um. America stopped sending mail to South Africa because once it got to South Africa, the likelihood was that it would be stolen. So now it's courier only.
   
   I'm going to London in March. Why? To set up various accounts from there. I've managed to change my Kindle settings so that royalties are paid into my British bank account.
   
   So why am I telling you all this?
   
   The point is that the 65 hits I might get from South Africa are pointless - particularly when it is at the expense of first world traffic.
   
   I have no doubt that, somewhere in the recesses of hubpages backend, someone has set my account so that what I write is predominantly exposed to South Africa.
   
   So I have questions.
   
   1. Where is the support@hubpages.com? Is there such a thing? Because this is definitely not something someone on hubpages can answer. This is technical, and I expect technical questions to be answered by hubpage staff.
   
   2. Is there anyway that my settings can be adjusted so that it is not focused on South Africa. I use a VPN which is set either to Chicago or to London. To no avail, it seems.
   
   
   Hopefully I will be back in the EU by late next year.

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   1. STAFF

      Matt Wellsposted 4 years agoin reply to this

      I checked the traffic of your top 5 articles and most of the search traffic is from the United States. The most likely source of the traffic from South Africa is from you visiting your own articles, not internal settings from HubPages. If you have any questions, please email team@hubpages.com.

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         TessSchlesingerposted 4 years agoin reply to this

         Okay. Thank you. I didn't keep a check on that because initially I always see errors after I publish.
         
         thank you.

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      wildernessposted 4 years agoin reply to this

      What kind of setting is possible by HP so that Google, Bing and other search engines will primarily show your material to South Africans, while NOT showing it elsewhere?

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         paradigmsearchposted 4 years agoin reply to this

         I suspect this is Goggle's doing. As an example, two authors perceived to be from different countries/backgrounds/cultures (let's say one from USA and the other from France) write similar articles on the same topic. All else being equal, the USA article will index higher in the US and the French article will index higher in France. What with Google having different search engines and domains for each country, this makes perfect sense.
         
         Does HP somehow make use of this Google methodology? I have no idea.

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            lobobrandonposted 4 years agoin reply to this

            No.
            
            The website needs to use hreflang tags to direct Google and other search engines if they want to target a specific country and HP has not done this.
            
            Right now HP just has the "en" tag and therefore all articles are targetted equally across the globe for everyone who has set Google to search in English. You would have different competition in different countries and this is because there are going to be websites that target only specific countries. The US, for instance, has a lot of websites targetting just the US and therefore your article will rank lower on Google USA when compared to Google UK.
            
            Search engines do set up a website for a single country if the top-level domain belongs to that country. .uk, .fr, .de, .in or whatever else it may be.

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               TessSchlesingerposted 4 years agoin reply to this

               Brandon:
               
               Here's where we find out.
               
               https://backlinko.com/google-ranking-factors#google
               
               So it's not language (English) - it's the country extension that is more of a determination as to Page Rank.
               
               Ah, it's number 10.
               
               QUOTE: 10. Country TLD extension: Having a Country Code Top Level Domain (.cn, .pt, .ca) can help the site rank for that particular country… but it can limit the site’s ability to rank globally.
               
               Have to read through this lot of SEO factors.

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                  Will Apseposted 4 years agoin reply to this

                  Hubpages.com is a .com,  not a .co.uk , .cn, .pt or any other country specific top level domain.

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                     TessSchlesingerposted 4 years agoin reply to this

                     Yes, I understand that. But maybe it has different domains for different writers in different countries. We don't know how they are set up.
                     
                     And I am not imaging what is happening to my traffic.
                     
                     The bottom line here is despite your telling me what can't be happening, you haven't explained to me why I get South African traffic first.

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                     1. 89

                        lobobrandonposted 4 years agoin reply to this

                        Matt explained one very likely scenario.
                        
                        Also, you can see the domain. It's hubpages.com or dengarden.com or whatever else. What do you mean by they have different domains setup?
                        
                        I concur with what Paul said in his last paragraph.

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         2. 60

            TessSchlesingerposted 4 years agoin reply to this

            Exactly.
            
            That is exactly what happens. Local is given preference.
            
            What I don't get is that Hubpages servers are in the USA, so technically the new articles I write shouldn't initially go to South Africans. I seldom used to get traffic from South Africa when I lived in the EU, the UK, and the US.

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   TessSchlesingerposted 4 years ago

   "The US, for instance, has a lot of websites targetting just the US and therefore your article will rank lower on Google USA when compared to Google UK."
   
   ???
   
   So isn't that exactly my point?
   
   That living in South Africa, my articles are more targeted to South Africa and not to the USA. South Africa, by the way has 11 different official languages. English is just one of many.
   
   This is an Afrikaans google saying that google is available in South Africa in English, Sesotho, IsiZulu, IsiXhosa, Setwana, and Northern Sotho.
   "Google.co.za beskikbaar in: English Sesotho IsiZulu IsiXhosa Setswana Northern Sotho"
   
   I'm not concerned with traffic to other English speaking countries - only to the USA.
   
   And I don't agree with you on this, Brandon. The English tag has nothing to do with it. The search is not equal across the globe. Local matters.

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      PaulGoodman67posted 4 years agoin reply to this

      Local matters for Google searching, but not the websites and hosting side of things.
      
      I can assure you that when I am in the UK, it doesn't mean that I get less US views and more UK ones. The proportion of views doesn't significantly change from when I'm in the US.
      
      Matt has given you a feasible  and practical explanation of why you might be getting getting more RSA views through visiting your own hubs. Others have explained the technical side. They are speaking the truth in my opinion. But if you want to disagree, I guess that's fine.

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