Views dropping to zero

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   Shesabutterflyposted 10 days ago

   I know views have been dismal after the mass move to Discover; however, my top articles were still seeing enough views to stick around, and I was averaging over 150 views total per day even after the move. It has been almost two weeks with views closer to zero than fifty. My top articles are not seasonal, and as far as I can tell they have recovered some of the lost ranking. Any ideas what would cause individual articles to lose steady views? May 22/23 my total views halved and have not recovered. Instead, I'm continuing to see a decline. At this rate I'll be seeing 0 across the board by next week.
   
   I need less than $5 to reach payout, which only adds to my frustration. Why does it feel like there is foul play here?

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      Kenna McHughposted 10 days agoin reply to this

      Cholee, I hear you. It is frustrating. I think the reason it seems "foul play" is because HP/TAG does not communicate with the writers. It's a vacuum. The result is frustrated writers. It's sad and unproductive.
      It's like a once thriving restaurant, losing customers due to poor management. The management is not even showing up to explain why they are neglecting their customers and staff. Staff discuss and form a quasi-mutiny, while management claims that all the writers do is complain, so let's not listen to them.

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         Shesabutterflyposted 10 days agoin reply to this

         Communication wouldn't affect views. HP has not communicated properly for years; however, it is very recently that things feel wrong view wise. Unless HP is going to say stats are inaccurate and not a true representation of article views, I do not think communication is the issue.
         
         I know some are quick to blame Google and their algorithm, but if my ranks are better compared to the initial move to Discover as I believe, I can't really blame them. I do not for a second believe dozens of people stopped searching for those keywords. That leaves...I do not know, but it doesn't feel good or a genuine die off.
         
         I've had top articles drop off into oblivion. Those articles were a gradual decline coupled with a decrease in rank over time. Not hitting rock bottom overnight.
         
         Whatever is happening right now is different from past experiences and cannot be explained away with lack of communication on management's part.

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            PaulGoodman67posted 9 days agoin reply to this

            "Why does it feel like there is foul play here?"
            
            I don't know what you mean by foul play. Search engine views are dictated by how much traffic is sent to HP articles by the search engines.
            
            Unlike the CPMs and payment system, which are controlled and secret, the HP viewing stats are essentially in the public domain.
            
            Our traffic will continue to decline because HP is no longer investing time and energy in editing or upgrading.
            
            I wouldn't expect the decline to necessarily follow a linear pattern, however. Big falls in views are just as likely as small falls over the course of time.

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               Shesabutterflyposted 9 days agoin reply to this

               I know how views are dictated. If views are falling that would mean I've lost out on keywords, dropped rank in the SERPS again, or people have simply stopped searching for my keywords after all these years. Those big falls as you say, have to come from somewhere. They do not happen for no reason; something has to cause it. I want to know why it is happening.
               
               There has been a lack of editing & upgrading for years, I do not believe that causes a whole site to go down in a matter of weeks. Discover is still garnering over a million views per SEMrush. Seems unlikely I'd lose so many views in a matter of days. Power of Google I suppose.
               
               Assuming my articles rank on the top 3 pages of Google for higher volume keywords, that would mean dozens of people simply stopped searching for those keywords. Seems very unlikely that I would go from over 60-80+ views a day to under 5. May was already shaping up to be a not great month compared to the beginning of 2025, however I wasn't expecting everything to bottom out in a matter of two days and continue to decline to zero.
               
               I wouldn't say our viewing stats are in the public domain. We know nothing about how they are configured except that they are on a rolling 24-hour clock. My profile view stats have never aligned with stats in the author view under referrers nor in Google analytics (back when we could access them). They also did not align with what I was seeing on SEMrush today.
               
               I may publicly be able to see my views, but I have no idea how HP calculates it beyond this is how many people came to my articles in the last rolling 24hrs. We simply assume they use the same tracking algorithm as Google and post every visit. Perhaps they do and SEMrush was wrong.

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                  PaulGoodman67posted 9 days agoin reply to this

                  In my memory, it was only relatively recently that HP threw in the towel, got rid of all the editors, and published the “thank you for your work over the years” announcement to the remaining hubbers.
                  
                  But it doesn’t matter. 
                  
                  Most of the Titanic is submerged now. Almost certainly better to look for a life raft at this point rather than attempting to analyze the iceberg.

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                     Shesabutterflyposted 9 days agoin reply to this

                     I am trying my hand with my own site, although I know there is not much money to be had writing online with the advancement of AI. I'm really only doing it to ensure my content stays mine. It would have been nice to receive my final payment instead of surrendering it to HP/TAG considering how close I am.
                     
                     I'd be happy to even make 0.3 cents a day total at this point. Everything here is so dismal.

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            Kenna McHughposted 9 days agoin reply to this

            I hear you. However, they are silent. When Paul owned it, he would give updates. That is no longer happening.

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   theraggededgeposted 9 days ago

   If I can get the answer I'm looking for at the top of the search results (and I hardly ever use Google), then so can everyone else. No one is going to read a thousand word article if they can make do with an AI-generated paragraph.
   
   Incidentally, my views dropped off a cliff a couple of years ago but recently they have held level at 20% of the daily total in 2019.

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      Kenna McHughposted 9 days agoin reply to this

      AI spins and spins. It's not a reliable source.

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         DrMark1961posted 9 days agoin reply to this

         That is true but it is only what many people want to look at. They are no longer willing to read a 1000 to 1500 page article, which HP was recommending we write for many years.

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            PaulGoodman67posted 9 days agoin reply to this

            The human attention span continues to shrink. I remember when the internet took off, there were those who complained that students were reading 1,000 words on a topic rather than a full book. Now, even 1,000 words seems like a lot.
            
            That said, a lot of simple, straightforward queries can be satisfactorily answered by AI in my experience.
            
            My problem with AI is that it draws on work by writers like ourselves, and we're not compensated in any way. I'm not so much worried by the quality of its answers, which are constantly improving.

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            Kenna McHughposted 9 days agoin reply to this

            Dr. Mark, you're correct. 1000 to 1500 words are no longer read, but some clients still request them. I've been keeping mine to about 500 to 700 words.

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      Shesabutterflyposted 9 days agoin reply to this

      I ditched Google over a year ago and couldn't be happier. I don't have it on my laptop, however I know that is still the main search engine for traffic which is why I tend to revert to it when talking about views.
      
      I agree AI results are taking some traffic, however it didn't pop up overnight and cause such a steep drop like I'm seeing for some articles.
      
      I have to go back to 2017 for the same time frame, to see views remotely close (yet still higher) to what I'm seeing now.
      
      I know I'm pretty incompetent when it comes to the inner workings of websites and tracking, which is why I rely on other sites to do the work for me.
      
      Considering people pay SEMrush hundreds of dollars to tell them about SEO and tracking, I'd assume it's accurate. Just as I did back in the day when we could monitor Google Analytics.
      
      I'm a novice in the tech world, but I can read and analyze some data given to me. I would expect small differences, given HP's rolling clock, but not the major differences I saw for some pages. Coincidentally enough some pages rendered the same data. Why would SEM stats be so far off from HP's in some cases?
      
      I was hoping the SEM data would give me some clarity, instead I'm left with more questions.
      
      Maybe it's my time to see a huge regression and I'm just bitter because I was planning to be gone by now and instead I'm stuck holding out for a payment that now may never come.

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      PaulGoodman67posted 9 days agoin reply to this

      Yes, it depends on the nature of the query, of course, but the AI para is sufficient in many cases.
      
      My average article now earns around 0.3 cents a day.

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      DrMark1961posted 9 days agoin reply to this

      That is exactly what is happening to my articles that are not on HP so it is not just about lack of communication from HP. My granddaughter and kids her age just look the top, read the AI paragraph, and never bother to read an article that goes into more detail.

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   Chidimma Eunice Eneyeposted 6 days ago

   Is it possible for HP to pay writers their current earnings? At this rate, it'll take me several years to make payout. My earnings are averaging 60 cents per month, and my balance is 39 dollars. Only one of my articles has steady views, so basically, it's the only article earning me money. What will happen when the views die off completely? Will my money be stuck here forever?
   
   I need advice on what to do to get my money. Do I write some more, hoping and praying to the internet gods that the new articles draw enough views to help me make payout?

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      Kenna McHughposted 6 days agoin reply to this

      Yes. It will take forever. Yes. You can pray to the Internet Gods. Me? I would write more articles and edit my remaining articles. It's still no guarantee, but it's better than hoping TAG does something useful.

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      Shesabutterflyposted 6 days agoin reply to this

      They will never payout before the $50 threshold. We're stuck waiting however long it takes and hopefully before HP is gone for good.
      
      I for one will never write another article here. My articles on the first few pages of Google seemingly lost all their traffic. No new articles I create will ever garner enough traffic working their way up the SERPS.

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         PaulGoodman67posted 6 days agoin reply to this

         Yeah, I stopped writing new material here around a couple of years ago, even before all the editors went, and we were left with Discover.
         
         I do plan to do a little editing, though.
         
         The overall trend is relentlessly downwards. The best that editing can achieve is to slow the rot slightly, there's no fix that we can do.
         
         When I used to publish articles, it was always with the intention that they might do well in, say, 12 months (time to climb the SERPs). But I lost all faith in the future of this site some time back.
         
         Realistically, everything will be doing worse in 12 months, the site might not even exist by then.

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            Shesabutterflyposted 6 days agoin reply to this

            Agreed. It has been a long time since I believed HP had our best interest. I probably should have left in December and left the rare and tiny holiday Amazon earnings behind.
            
            I know many people advocate for updating and that Google wants fresh dates, however updating has NEVER resulted in more views for me. Every time I edit or back in the day they did a hubpro edit my articles dropped off into oblivion.
            
            I actually edited my top article on May 31st (roughly a week after the traffic more than halved) only because I saw some mistakes I wanted to correct and now it's essentially unranked for most keywords and recieved 0 views yesterday. Guess that explains how that particular article lost all its traffic. Anyway, my point is, in my experience editing does not help increase views.
            
            My articles are left to the will of Google and HP deciding they actually do care about us again to make positive real changes to the site.
            
            I'm focusing on my own website which is not doing much better, but at least it's all mine.

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