Are network sites being unfairly prioritized?

1. 92

   satomkoposted 4 years ago

   I am uncertain if this same situation has happened to other writers, but I am wondering about why it seems hubpages has become a second-class citizen in its own network.  I've written articles here for the last decade and been happy with it for the most part.  In the last year or so, however, there has been a push to move articles onto the network affiliated cites.  Often, I've had articles "snipped," moved, and altered without my asking for it.  When I make my own editorial or aesthetic changes, I am told the articles no longer meet the standard and are sent to hubpages again. 
   
   Why does any of this happen, and why is hubpages treated as "less than" when it comes to article promotion?  Affiliate sites can link to each other but heaven forbid you try to link an affiliate article back to hubpages, even if it is directly related or a work by the same author. 
   
   On a side note, I feel like a lot of the "snips" would be entirely mitigated if authors could use italics or underline in the title capsule.  As this situation is a technological limitation, it's up to someone on top to fix this oversight rather than haranguing authors about being in compliance with network guidelines.

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2. 98

   Shesabutterflyposted 4 years ago

   Hubpages is pretty much dead as far as Google is concerned. There is no money to be made staying on HP's home site. Views are slim to none and it's incredibly difficult for a home site article to show up on Google or any other search engine for that matter. HP has been deemed a content farm and it's known that Google does not like that.
   
   These are the main reasons why the niche sites were created in the first place. To make Hubpages less content farm like and more accepted by the search engines. If you want to make any type of money or see any traffic you need to get your articles moved to the niche sites. You can type in the exact title of an article on the HP home site and you likely will never find it. I search for mine every so often and I stop on page 10. Before HP got dinged after the plethora of Google updates and algorithm changes they would have been much higher.
   
   Unless you have content that is not widely covered on the internet your hubpages home site articles are very unlikely to show up on Google, even if someone searches for your exact title. Google will show unrelated articles before it ever shows an HP home site article.
   
   The reason you cannot link back to HP is because HP is no longer deemed a good site by the search engines. It hurts the niche sites to have articles on them that link back to HP. If you want to link between two articles you need to get them both to the niche sites.
   
   You can opt out of the edit's if you want, but without your articles moving to the niche sites you will not find success here. You can submit articles to certain niche sites every few weeks if you'd like. This might cut down on the number of articles that you have snipped and edited. However, they still might do edits to submitted articles if they think it is necessary or if they find any errors.

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3. 87

   Jodahposted 4 years ago

   Well, I have a total of 135 articles currently spread over about five network sites. However, my best traffic hub was published in 2015 and is still on HubPages. It is consistently my highest traffic article over every 7 day period and has been since it was published.
   It was selected for Delishably at one stage but I didn’t accept an edit they made to it so it went back to HubPages. I could probably apply to have it moved again as a couple of years have passed but why would I take the risk on having its views drop? I only have one article on a niche site that is within 2000 views of the other and it is 18 months older.

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   1. 84

      NateB11posted 4 years agoin reply to this

      Yeah, I was going to make this point. I have articles on the main site that do fine.

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4. 98

   DrMark1961posted 4 years ago

   That is because Hubpages main site is for second class articles. You can read Shesabutterfly´s explanation as to why. If you are okay with your articles staying, tell the editors that you no longer want your articles to be considered for niche sites. They will not snip your articles. They will not check your articles after you edit. Your traffic will not be even less than it is now, but if that is what you want just let them know that.
   As to your last point, it is not up to HP to fix all the errors out there so that articles will meet their network guidelines. That is up to the writer. Again, if you are not interested in doing that just let them know that you no longer want your articles to be considered for a niche site.

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5. 78

   psycheskinnerposted 4 years ago

   Hubpages is a business, so the sites that get more traffic and make more money will be the priority.

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6. 59

   paradigmsearchposted 4 years ago

   Google seems to really be messing around with my article rankings these days (and thus maybe by implication, the niche sites). Traffic on various articles is good one day, miserable the next, good again, miserable, again, good again, and so on. Google is apparently doing their well-known experimenting thing again, trying to find if other articles have better reader reaction stats than mine. Hopefully, Google is doing this with all high ranking articles and not just picking on the HP niche sites.

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   1. 65

      OldRosesposted 4 years agoin reply to this

      I think that it depends on the niche site.  My Dengarden articles have consistently increasing  traffic every day.

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      1. 59

         paradigmsearchposted 4 years agoin reply to this

         Alas; my Dengarden article has been a top performer for years, but for a week or two now traffic has dropped by half. This particular one I believe to be topic over saturation and overwhelming competition, as opposed to the Google experimentation thing. Youtube, name brand website domain names, and on-point keyword website domain names are slaughtering it now. All good things come to an end. I'd be willing to fight back with updates, but that has proven too risky in the past.

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