Impressions, Views and CPM Down After Latest TAG/HP Announcement

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   Kenna McHughposted 6 weeks ago

   My views, impressions and CPM took a nose dive today. My stats were doing well, slowly increasing, with some articles trending. However, my stats across the board dived after the latest TAG/HP announcement of moving the rest of the network sites to TAG. I am so bummed. Is anyone else experiencing the same thing?

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      bravewarriorposted 6 weeks agoin reply to this

      I'm to the point where I don't care anymore, Kenna.

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         Georgie Loweryposted 6 weeks agoin reply to this

         I second this. I only log on about once every couple of months. I’m down almost 95% of the income I used to see. I don’t even update my Hubs anymore because their editors just go in and change it anyway.

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            Kenna McHughposted 6 weeks agoin reply to this

            That makes sense, Georgie.

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            jansharesposted 6 weeks agoin reply to this

            I second that, Georgie. Kenna, it’s become beyond defeating.

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               Kenna McHughposted 6 weeks agoin reply to this

               Yes. It's a sad week.

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      Patty Inglish, MSposted 6 weeks agoin reply to this

      So far, I see no change, but I'm waiting. I'm getting traffic from docs.google.com and that's concerning.

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         theraggededgeposted 6 weeks agoin reply to this

         Maybe someone is downloading your articles? Unsettling.

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            Shesabutterflyposted 6 weeks agoin reply to this

            I'd be concerned about that too. During Covid my top article was getting views from classroom.google. I'm always leery about school views after I found my article was plagiarized twice for someone's college senior thesis.
            
            If you're using articles for learning they should be bookmarked to review again. Not downloaded for referencing or flat out plagiarizing.

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            Patty Inglish, MSposted 6 weeks agoin reply to this

            Maybe so. I don't like it.

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               psycheskinnerposted 6 weeks agoin reply to this

               My suspicious mind would wonder if it is a staff writer making a clone of successful hubs.

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                  Patty Inglish, MSposted 6 weeks agoin reply to this

                  I found it was a few junior high schools where students copied it for their World of Work portfolios, so I'm fine with that.

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   3. STAFF

      Matt Wellsposted 6 weeks agoin reply to this

      The announcement would have nothing to do with this. Just the usual fluctuation in traffic and CPM.

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         psycheskinnerposted 6 weeks agoin reply to this

         "fluctuations" wouldn't have an overall trend. It may have nothing to do with the announcement, but our traffic is fluctuating down the drain.

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         satomkoposted 5 weeks agoin reply to this

         That is too difficult to believe.  I've written for hubpages for 15 years and never had such a sudden drop as I just experienced.  To suggest that the movement to my hubs to discover.hubpages and a 15 point drop in my hubscore are unrelated "fluctuations" is an extraordinary claim that requires extraordinary evidence.

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            Cloverleafposted 5 weeks agoin reply to this

            I agree; it’s a blatant lie. Matt is suggesting that moving from niche sites to the content farm that is Discover has nothing to do with a 90% drop in traffic and revenue? I call total BS. There is possibly even a lawsuit here.
            
            Moving our content to Discover without offering a real choice—especially when it results in earnings dropping by as much as 90%—could be argued as a breach of implied obligations. The implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing, which applies to all contracts in the U.S., requires that contractual discretion be exercised fairly. If we were led to believe niche sites were long-term and beneficial, and now that’s changed without adequate explanation or recourse, there could be legal grounds to challenge this decision.
            
            Who’s with me on that?

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               Shesabutterflyposted 5 weeks agoin reply to this

               My cpm has never been this low, even when I first started out at the end of 2011. This is not the usual fluctuations. There absolutely is something else going on.
               
               I know nothing about contracts, but I feel like they have protected themselves with their arbitrary TOS. When they changed our percentage of earnings to whatever they deem; I think we lost our leg to stand on.
               
               The platform changing is expected. We were never guaranteed stability. The TOS also reflects that. "11. MODIFYING AND TERMINATING OUR PLATFORM
               We reserve the right to modify our Platform or to suspend or stop providing all or portions of our Platform at any time. You also have the right to stop using our Platform at any time. We are not responsible for any loss or harm related to your inability to access or use our Platform at any time."
               
               Unless you are suggesting they are doing something unethical or deceitful. Which I don't think any of us can prove. Rock bottom impressions and CPM's would be circumstantial at best. We have no idea how any of that information is calculated.
               
               I agree something is going on behind the scenes. I don't think however, there is anything we can actually do about it. TAG purposely wrote their TOS in a way that they can make changes how and whenever they want, essentially to best help themselves.

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                  Cloverleafposted 5 weeks agoin reply to this

                  They knew the move to Discover would hurt our earnings—yet they still publicly framed it as a strategic improvement meant to benefit us. That’s not just poor decision-making. When a company makes claims it knows (or should know) aren’t true, it can cross the line into misrepresentation or even negligence—and those are things courts take seriously.
                  
                  How do we know they knew? Because the drop in earnings was immediate and widespread. The data spoke for itself. If it had been a mistake made in good faith, they would’ve responded—corrected course, re-evaluated, or at least acknowledged the harm. Instead, they stayed silent and moved forward, fully aware that writers were losing income. That kind of inaction speaks volumes—and it points to intent, or at the very least, willful disregard for the impact on contributors.

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                     Shesabutterflyposted 5 weeks agoin reply to this

                     I'm not saying they didn't know. I'm questioning whether knowledge of that fact alone is enough. Perhaps it is simply because they phrased it as a benefit to us (knowing it wouldn't be). They have continuously made decisions over the years we knew were not beneficial. Is this move egregious enough to give us a cause of action?
                     
                     TAG's TOS is intentionally vague and arbitrary. Does that help them, if they are making sketchy decisions or does that give us a leg to stand on because of their lack of transparency?
                     
                     I do not agree with a lot of what has happened here in the last few years, however I don't know if there is anything a handful of us can really do about it.
                     
                     This is not the first time lawsuits have been brought up by authors. This time maybe there is more validity to it.

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                        bravewarriorposted 5 weeks agoin reply to this

                        But who has the money to hire a lawyer and file a suit? Our meager earnings here aren't even enough to keep the water running let alone hire a legal team to fight for our rights.

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                           Shesabutterflyposted 5 weeks agoin reply to this

                           No one person would have to pay. If there is any legal standing here, it would likely become a class action lawsuit which would be paid for through any settlement made in the plaintiff's favor.
                           
                           Whether or not we'd have enough people or even financial gain from this latest content move is a different issue. Hard to prove what each of us has lost, when we all do not make the same, nor are we guaranteed to.

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                              bravewarriorposted 5 weeks agoin reply to this

                              Your last paragraph says it all, Cholee!

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               Patty Inglish, MSposted 5 weeks agoin reply to this

               Hi Cloverleaf. TAG is in NYC, so you might ask that Attorney General's office their opinion on this. If HP still has a California office, that related AG office might give you an opinion. At least an answer might be had-if, not, then it may be a hopeless case anyway.

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            3. STAFF

               Matt Wellsposted 5 weeks agoin reply to this

               I said the announcement had nothing to do with the traffic drop, which it didn't. Sure, losing backlinks after an article moves to Discover (not the announcement) may cause a decrease in traffic. As Discover gets stronger, traffic should increase. We feel that moving away from the Network Site model and focusing on Discover and HubPages is the best way forward.
               
               Sorry for the confusion. The original post was asking about the announcement before any articles had been moved. Since then, obviously, lots of articles have been moved to Discover.

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                  Cloverleafposted 5 weeks agoin reply to this

                  Matt, backlinks are not the reason why traffic and earnings dropped immediately and dramatically. The drop happened because Google deranked the content that moved to Discover. It views these articles as less valuable now that they’re no longer part of their niche-specific context, which results in lower rankings and visibility.
                  
                  Discover’s high DA is irrelevant. What matters is relevance to the audience. Discover, even with a high DA, doesn’t align with the targeted niches those articles once belonged to. The immediate and dramatic earnings drop came because Google reassessed the value of these articles after the move, and as a result, they were ranked lower.
                  
                  HubPages (TAG) should have known this would happen. When we wrote for niche sites, one of the rules was that we weren’t allowed to link to Discover because Google saw it as a less relevant platform for niche-specific content. If Google views Discover this way, it’s clear why the content would be deranked after the move.

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            theraggededgeposted 5 weeks agoin reply to this

            Exactly. Feels like gaslighting.

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      Patty Inglish, MSposted 6 weeks agoin reply to this

      My views declined catastrophically on 3/28/25.

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         Kenna McHughposted 6 weeks agoin reply to this

         Yup! Still going down ...

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            Gregory DeVictorposted 6 weeks agoin reply to this

            Metaphorically, we've been going through the "long version'" of April 14-15, 1912.
            
            For us, we've several different icebergs along the journey, including Google.

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            Patty Inglish, MSposted 5 weeks agoin reply to this

            WOW, my stats are all increasing somewhat now. Unexpected 4/3/25.

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               Patty Inglish, MSposted 5 weeks agoin reply to this

               Stats still increasing as of 4/5; slowly.

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      satomkoposted 5 weeks agoin reply to this

      The same thing has happened to me.

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         AnupamaRposted 5 weeks agoin reply to this

         Yes, same here. Been here for only around a year, so the views etc have never been great for me.  Really sad at how things have suddenly changed here. However, a friend sent me this: https://aioseo.com/trends/hubpages-seo- … isibility.

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            theraggededgeposted 5 weeks agoin reply to this

            I'm pretty sure they haven't got their facts right. For example, it's obvious to all of us that forum posts on both 'sides' have dwindled.

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               Patty Inglish, MSposted 5 weeks agoin reply to this

               I think you're right!

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               Kenna McHughposted 5 weeks agoin reply to this

               It's more like decimated.

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                  theraggededgeposted 5 weeks agoin reply to this

                  But 'dwindled' is such a cute word

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               bravewarriorposted 5 weeks agoin reply to this

               Not only that, Bev, but aren't forum posts only open and visible to HP members? How do the forums translate to organic search results, as mentioned in the article?

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                  theraggededgeposted 5 weeks agoin reply to this

                  No, they are visible to anyone and will show up in Google search. Just put the title of this thread into Google. You'll even see an AI summary of the contents.

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   Shesabutterflyposted 6 weeks ago

   I have a slight uptick in cpm for the 23rd/24th. Traffic seems steady albeit lower than years past. Which I still don't understand considering all 3 articles still rank very high and one holds the top spot (for some keywords/phrases) still after all these years.
   
   This announcement is crushing, even though I expected it. I was hoping to make it through my peak season for my Owlcation articles which is early May. I will just make payout with my Feb/Mar earnings thankfully.
   
   I'm going to delete everything once it's moved to Discover. I put my request in yesterday so hopefully before April 1st they will get to it. Wait for payment and close my account. It will only be a matter of time before we can't access anything.
   
   I've slowly been building my own site and maybe with more articles and time I can regain those ranks with my new site. At the very least least I'll have older dates for anyone thinking of stealing my content.

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      Kenna McHughposted 6 weeks agoin reply to this

      Cholee, the uptick was my highest-ranking article. It's a seasonal trend that will probably uptick again before summer. I've owned a site for some time and will probably do the same, gradually move my articles over.

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   daydreamsposted 6 weeks ago

   My views went down but I think that's because it is Monday and I get more on weekends.
   
   General trend is downwards so I think this is a sinking ship...

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      Kenna McHughposted 6 weeks agoin reply to this

      Yes. The trend is downwards, but it looked promising for about three weeks.

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   PaulGoodman67posted 6 weeks ago

   No real changes that I'm seeing. One of my ten accounts has a "surger" article, so it's doing better than usual, but otherwise, I just see the normal pitiful views and earnings that I've come to expect in recent times.

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      Kenna McHughposted 6 weeks agoin reply to this

      I had an article surge over the last two weeks. That's probably what caused my uptick.

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         PaulGoodman67posted 6 weeks agoin reply to this

         If I see an individual article surging by lot, I usually discount it from any general assessment. While the money's always nice, it's almost always a brief thing.
         
         Even if the surge traffic is from Google, it doesn't usually mean anything of significance.
         
         However, if the traffic moves are widespread and sustained, I do see that as significant.
         
         None of it really matters much now, though, as HP is done. I come here mainly to check for official announcements. I still earn something, and as long as that's happening, I will come here.

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5. 68

   PaulGoodman67posted 5 weeks ago

   My traffic is following the normal seasonal trend, increasing slightly after the Jan/Feb low point.
   
   I've not seen any negative effects so far from my articles being moved to Discover.

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      bravewarriorposted 5 weeks agoin reply to this

      I haven't either, other than a slight uptick in views.

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   Abby Slutskyposted 5 weeks ago

   As soon as I moved everything to discoverhub so that Arena had to share my revenue, they pushed by score from the 90s to the sixties. I certainly won't be writing anything new. This was once a great community.

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      Kenna McHughposted 5 weeks agoin reply to this

      Abby, my stats dropped, too. Yes. I will never forget when it was a community.

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   eugbugposted 5 weeks ago

   CPM has gone down to nearly a dollar at this stage.

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      Kenna McHughposted 5 weeks agoin reply to this

      Yes. Eugene, it's terrible—big SNAFU on TAG/HP.

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      chef-de-jourposted 5 weeks agoin reply to this

      CPM - that's so poor! The outlook is grim I must admit.  After all the hard work writing the damn articles over the years and now this...I can't see any realistic future on Discover. Payout could take months, years? and I'm not prepared to wait that long so I'll probably delete all sooner rather than later, give Discover a half chance for a few weeks perhaps...if I can stand the torture!

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         PaulGoodman67posted 5 weeks agoin reply to this

         If that's your plan, chef, I wouldn't dilly-dally; I think Discover may not have long to go.
         
         Once the latest transfer has been completed and the dust has settled, it would seem to be the logical next step, given that TAG have made clear that they no longer believe in the user-generated, income-sharing model.
         
         I'm not planning on deleting my material in the near future. My stuff's backed up, though.

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      PaulGoodman67posted 5 weeks agoin reply to this

      Yeah, my CPMs have been drastically lower for the last two or three days. Squidoo was a sudden closure (I was still doing well there), but HP feels like death by a thousand cuts.

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         Titiaposted 5 weeks agoin reply to this

         I feel the same way. I never earned a lot of money, but I reached payout every month/two months. Just enough to save some money in my $$ Paypal to use for yearly internet/website contributions. That way I didn't have to convert from euros to dollars every time I had to pay something in dollars. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted.

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   eugbugposted 5 weeks ago

   CPM now less than one dollar. I made 57 c yesterday.

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      bravewarriorposted 5 weeks agoin reply to this

      You're rich, Eugene! I only made two cents yesterday.

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         bravewarriorposted 5 weeks agoin reply to this

         And the spam is back in the forums. I had nine notifications waiting for me in my inbox after I replied to Eugene!
         
         I thought this had been taken care of!!!!???

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            Kenna McHughposted 5 weeks agoin reply to this

            We're screwed.

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               bravewarriorposted 5 weeks agoin reply to this

               Yep!

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   PaulGoodman67posted 5 weeks ago

   Overall traffic at hubpages.com went up dramatically, starting last summer. The article is correct.

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      Kenna McHughposted 5 weeks agoin reply to this

      Paul, how is that correct?

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         PaulGoodman67posted 5 weeks agoin reply to this

         I can't say that I ever really cared much about overall traffic to discover.hubpages.com or hubpages.com. Up until very recently, I didn't really have much material on Discover or Hubpages. Most of my stuff was in the niches.
         
         However, there are plenty of independent sites that give accurate information on how much traffic is going to specific sites. Guessing is a poor way to gauge overall traffic.
         
         Increased content might be one reason why traffic has increased.

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    Shesabutterflyposted 5 weeks ago

    Now that the search engines have recrawled the sites and updated the url's, I've lost my snippets and my top articles have blue arrows. In the middle of their peak season too, absolutely crushing.
    
    I know Matt keeps saying HP/Discover is here to stay, but considering we are losing rank, views, and money; TAG cannot possibly be making any money either. If Discover truly had a good authority rating, why are the migrated articles falling off the front page?

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       theraggededgeposted 5 weeks agoin reply to this

       If HubPages has no new content, no traffic to existing content, and no writers then it definitely is not 'here to stay'.

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       Patty Inglish, MSposted 5 weeks agoin reply to this

       As of 4/5/25
       The Arena Group Holdings, Inc. (AREN)
       NYSEAMERICAN: AREN · Real-Time Price · USD 1.900
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       At close:
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       After-hours:
       Apr 4, 2025, 5:52 PM EST
       The Arena Group Holdings has a market cap or net worth of $90.18 million as of April 4, 2025. Its market cap has increased by 182.71% in one year.
       - stockanalyst.com

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          Shesabutterflyposted 5 weeks agoin reply to this

          I know even less about the stock market than contracts. However, just because TAG is making money, doesn't mean it's coming from Discover. They have at least a dozen "brands"/websites.
          
          Perhaps they make enough from those to cover the deficit from Discover. Which is not even listed on their brand page. Nor are the successful niche sites they are taking. If they haven't listed HP, who knows how many more sites they own, that they do not advertise about.

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             Patty Inglish, MSposted 5 weeks agoin reply to this

             Yes, I don't think an article-feeder site would be listed, if that's what Discover is becoming - fodder to be rewritten for standalones that were HP niches. And TAG did lose some money by the end of 4/4/25. I don't think Discover plays much of a part either way.

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                Shesabutterflyposted 5 weeks agoin reply to this

                Discover not making them money was my point. They are not going to fund a site that's costing them.

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                   Patty Inglish, MSposted 5 weeks agoin reply to this

                   Agreed.

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             Kenna McHughposted 5 weeks agoin reply to this

             I have a feeling that TAG plans to sell HP. They take all the highest-producing articles and leave the rest to sell.

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    PaulGoodman67posted 5 weeks ago

    CPMs definitely down for the past week or more. I didn’t like judging it with just a couple of cases but this seems like a pattern.

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