We've just made a change to the site that will automatically disable ads on certain hubs that have been identified as having content that may not meet with the HubPages Terms of Use or with the Google AdSense Content Policies. The purpose of this is to protect both your and our relationship with advertising partners like Google and Kontera.
If one of your hubs has been identified, a warning will appear on the hub itself. We will gradually be reviewing hubs that have been caught by the filter and doing one of three things:
1) moderating the hubs for policy violations
2) overriding the filter and allowing ads to appear again
3) leaving the ads turned off but allowing the hub to remain published
We recognize that the rules change from time to time and are subject to some speculation and interpretation. This policy change will give us a bit more leeway to allow a small number of "gray area" hubs that are well written and important to remain published even though they may not be totally advertiser friendly.
Hi Paul...
You said: If one of your hubs has been identified, a warning will appear on the hub itself.
Does this mean that we have to go through all our hubs to find out exactly which ones? Is this warning in edit mode or on public view?
Is it possible to create a symbol feature in our account to alert us to disabled ad hub?
Can we edit our hubs and resubmit to make them more compliant?
I hope you dont mind me asking
I was going to ask this too. I do also think it's is a good idea and I think will serve the site well.
I would like to know this also, if you have many hubs it could take a while to randomly find them...can you make it so we can see on the accounts page sometime in the future?
Yes, we should be able to do that for you. We're still fine tuning the filters, but at the moment it appears that this will affect less than 1% of all hubs. So it's probably not something that most Hubbers need to worry too much about.
Let me start off by saying that I do think that the monitoring of hubs is a good thing. If HubPages does not stay in the good graces of Google, then we all lose!
That being said, I have three hubs on corhole (the game) that have had there ads removed. I can only assume that it was because of the multiple meanings of the word cornhole. I do understand that there are a lot of hubs that will have to be moderated and that it will take some time. My question is will there be some kind of notification after these hubs have been moderated? This would be nice to know incase it is not the word cornhole that is causing this problem.
I believe ads should be enabled again on your cornhole hubs. As you'd expect with any automated system there are going to be both some things that are missed and some false positives. That's why we have a secondary layer of human review. But we need automated systems as well, it's simply not practical for us to review 3000 new and edited hubs a day by hand.
Thanks for getting this resolved Paul. I do understand the paramount task in front of the HubPages team to keep us in the good graces of Google. I also believe that the short term discomfort of having ads turned off on a couple of your hubs is enormously outweighed by the fact that this policy change will help secure all of our futures here at HubPages.
Thanks Paul.. it would be nice to have an informed choice. Will you let us know on a sticky thread?
Kind regards, btw
As promised, you can now see which hubs have ads disabled on your my account.
Ha, Paul, I had to get rid of some Amazon items to pass the Google test. I am sure if I actually sold a lot of Amazon stuff, they wouldn't like it. But since I don't I don't care. It is just really amusing to me.
Good innovation Paul. I believe it's good for us all...I recently observed last week that the usual ads that do display on hubbers profile page have stopped displaying, could this be as a result of the automation?
I thought it was with mine alone until I checked other hubbers profile pages even while signed out. Thank you.
Wow,
I'm going to sign out so I can see if Adsense Ads are on my profile. Great observation. Thanks.
This is a fair and common sense way of doing it! Well done! That's why I love Hub Pages so much! Cheers!
Cheeky Girl
This is Bot imbecilism. When I read through the posts here and saw that some Hubs mentioning breast cancer were flagged, my heart sank.
I went to school at Beaver College. The college is now a university by another name, and the only reason it has another name, Arcadia University, is because of the implications of seaching Google using the word "beaver".
This is supposed to be a site for writers, at least it is marketed that way, but it's not.
It's a site driven by revenue (nothing wrong with that; that's how business is done), but HP walks a delicate line when it purports to be a writer's site.
Clearly, there is no freedom of expression here. What is here is the opportunity each Hubber has to make some money, promote an internet presence, and engage in a social network.
In a US court of law, the censorship that exists here on this HP site could be ruled as denying first amendment rights.
But who wants to go head to head with Google when it is the financial entity that makes HP possible? As a result, breast cancer Hubs might be subject to censorship in order to maintain that financial relationship with Google.
It's a complex issue. Wonder how it will play out.
We are not censoring hubs on breast cancer. This is a thread about whether advertisements will be turned on hubs that have adult content. For more information, please feel free to contact us.
I understand what you are saying, somewhat.
"We are not censoring hubs on breast cancer. This is a thread about whether advertisements will be turned on hubs that have adult content."
Since when is a discussion of breast cancer deemed adult content and thus subject to advertising "turning"?
I go back to the Beaver / Arcadia dilemma. Key words, words that are flagged out of context?
Glad that you are there at 7 in the evening my time. Still a business day for you.
Is it? When I read the front page, the emphasis is on writing articles for profit. That's what the site was created for. It mentions the opportunity to interact with other writers, yes - but it's not claiming to be a "site for writers" in the sense of creative writing, debating etc.
If some people are willing to lose their Adsense account in the name of artistic freedom, that's their choice. But on a shared site, they have no right to jeopardize the income of others. If HubPages didn't police things, the whole site might lose access to Adsense, and that would be a disaster for all of us.
There are plenty of other sites where important and contentious issues can be discussed.
This site is fine for writers, and there are several writers who publish their work here for artistic purposes.
The flag only disables adverts, it doesnt disable hubs.
This site is fine for writers, and there are several writers who publish their work here for artistic purposes.
The flag only disables adverts, it doesnt disable hubs.
This means that if you are writing hubs for artistic purposes you will remain unaffected by these changes.
Depends on one's definition of a writer. There are plenty of avatars here who do well financially who can't write. They've got the SEO game nailed down. As for writing for artistic purposes, you have a point. If those Hubbers don't care about a dollar return from AdSense or other affiliates, then they are free to do what they want. Unless they get flagged or banned by HP for other reasons.
What I take exception to is being penalized for words out of context.
but you are not penalized for words out of context, flagged hubs are reviewed.
The only reason hubs are taking so long to have the flags removed right now is because there are no doubt tens of thousands of hubs which need to be manually checked, once the backlog is cleared though I wouldn't be surprised if the flags were removed within 24 hours, which is definitely not a penalty to make a big fuss about.
Three of my Hubs are Adsense disabled. I have read the terms of service of HubPages and Google and I see nothing whatsoever wrong with my Hubs. They are entitled: "Sexual Revolution" "The Homosexual Movement" and "The Homosexual Agenda." There is not profanity or pornographic photos. I wrote to Maddie Ruud a couple weeks back and asked if she would let me know what I could change about them to get back on Adsense, as all three draw a big crowd. She never responded to my email. Thank you.
James A Watkins
I believe those hubs fall into the categories described at the bottom of the FAQ entry.
http://hubpages.com/faq/#adsdisabled
I don't understand. Is this hubpages or google? A word can disable adsense? Google does not look into it or see the words surrounding the word in question? Is google homophobic? Or the word breast when is about cancer. Technology is far more advanced and I think you should notify google. They would have plenty of ads. Maybe the keywords aren't helping them? Sounds like a mistake. I would be surprised that its a google issue. I think its a glitch in the hubpages system. If I'm wrong I feel think its impossible for google to not have ads so its some issue hubpages should help you fix. Or contact google and see if they have an issue and I highly doubt it. What about amazon?
As an Adsense publisher, HubPages has an obligation to comply with Google's TOS. So the action is dictated by Google but the filter is run by HubPages.
Google uses robots to check for offending material. Robots cannot read context, they only search for "rude" words. That means even academic treatises on prohibited subjects aren't allowed.
Thanks! I get it now. I was confused at what someone said but then reread the main post and it makes sense. Not Adsense but regular sense :-)
What a fantastic change! Thanks Paul that should make many quite happy.
That is truly a great change! I have not had any trouble with ads personally but I have seen many forum threads open because of this problem. This is great news for many hubbers!
For some it's going to sting a little at first, but like yucky tasting medicine it's going to do them good in the long run.
Great! We are well looked after in this paddock! Thanks Paul!
Great idea! We should all appreciate how you 'watch our backsides'....obviously it affects you as well. Thanks!
Will this work also for Tamil Singles and Hot Indian Aunties hubs?
An improvement that makes for a better site. Thank you Paul and team.
Wonderful change that! Protection of both HP and our relationship with advertising partners should always come first, so nice to have this being implemented!!
I agree it's a great change, and can see why it's been made. Still, it's frustrating to think all adult content is viewed the same way by google: I mean, there are lots of serious adult issues that need to be addressed and just because my hub on pornography contains the words 'porn' doesn't make it poor content. It has a score of 98 at the moment, has been read by more people than any of my other hubs and I still can't understand why google wouldn't allow ads on it. Not criticizing Hp policy, just google's!
Google's policy is driven by financial interest and the needs and desires of their advertisers. Something can be extremely well researched and written but still not be advertiser safe. The disabling of ads isn't necessarily a comment on quality, and you shouldn't take it as such.
Just saw this. Thank you for replying... I see what you mean.
I had a warning which I believe were due to too many keywords but yieldbuild kept telling me to. I took some away but not sure if it helped enough. Do I keep talking keywords away? Do we have a set amount? They were suggested to me but I took some out anyway just might not be enough. Not sure. It was odd since it was okay for a while.
If your site is an adult discussion about porn then chances are your Hub will be unflagged, remember all hubs are manually reviewed.
Google's policy also allows for grey areas, but There are an increasing number of hubs which fail to comply with Googles terms of service. By removing adverts from the worst, it allows for more hubs which are seriously discussing issues.
Anything that keeps this site in google's good books is good for all of us...
Good idea! I just hope this automatic filter doesn't go crazy on all hubs.
Might this be the reasons ads are missing on the profile pages?
We removed the ad on the profile page for several reasons:
- it generated a very small amount of revenue
- user experience - we wanted to increase the visibility of followers and the new accolades feature
- we don't currently have a comprehensive system in place for policing content violations on the profile page (as compared to hubs at least)
Hmmm…
Guess I better go check my “How to de-flower a sheep.” article.
I have the same questions as Shaz as well. These rules will be a benefit to HP and its hubbers.
One thing I would like to know, are the adverts just hidden from our view so that we don't get any revenue or are they hidden to you too?
That would after all incentivise you to help us figure out what is wrong with our hubs...
Indeed, without direct notification of what is wrong with a hub all we can do is guess, and delete the entire thing
I know that it will hardly affect the great majority of us though, so thanks Paul for answering back
The whole Idea of someone else moderating with a crawler or a filter seems a little risky. Perception is a powerful thing.
However, if I were advertising on your site, and paying a lot to do it, I would expect some control in return.
From what I can glean from this, my guess is that I do not have a hub that would be suspect.
But I think at some point, there is a 'free speech' issue involved. For example, controversial issues. The AdSense network is considered family-safe. Are controversial issues considered family content? I wonder if an advertiser finds the topic of abortion, or converting to Muslim, or Obama fan club, or TEA Bagging, to be distasteful or not family friendly.
SteveoMc, the whole point is that Google's Adsense makes all its decisions based on a crawler. So it makes absolute sense for HP to have a safeguard that works on the same basis.
The raison d'etre of HubPages is to provide a venue where members can earn money through Adsense and other affiliates. Therefore anyone who joins HubPages must be prepared to accept the related rules before they sign up. That means "freedom of speech" discussions are irrelevant.
The filters do not remove any content, they simple prevent advertising from appearing on the content. Prior to this change we had to make a binary decision, either content was within the rules and could remain published or content was outside of the rules and had to be removed. With this change we have the option to leave something published without ads that may be on the borderline -- so arguably this represents an increase in "freedom of speech" on HubPages. Of course the underlying rules have not changed, so don't take this to mean that "anything goes".
I'm worried about one of my hubs. It's about "Tristram Shandy," and I was discussing some of the innuendos. The problem is, I don't know which words trigger this filter. I went through it and tried to take out references to specific body parts, but what about words like "sex" and "prostitute." I feel strange using euphemisms or nicknames for body parts, but I'm afraid it will make HP flag the hub again.
Although the filters are primarily based on analysis of words, the point of the them is to preemptively disable ads on content or subject matter that may not be advertiser friendly or is indicative of a rules violation. So, simply changing words without making any significant change to meaning of the content may circumvent the filter, but it probably does not solve the underlying problem.
As mentioned we'll be reviewing many of the hubs that were identified by the filter, and we can reverse the decision in cases where it was inaccurate. We will be prioritizing hubs with high traffic and by author's with high HubScores for review.
I ran across one of my hubs that this has caught and I believe I have fixed what the problem was. Will the notification at the hub automatically reset itself the way broken links do when you fix them? Or do we need to email HP for a review of the revised hub? Or if it still shows a message that means there is still something wrong?
Expect in the rare circumstance where a moderator has marked something that the filter approved of as bad, whenever you update the hub the filter will be applied again immediately. This means that if the message still appears, then the filter still doesn't like something about your hub.
That is a very important confirmation from you. I can now have the heart to edit mine again and again until I get it because I am assured the filter will immediately disappear when I get it right.
One of my hub has been unpublished, how long will it take for ads to appear again on my profile page?
amazing..
Nice hub, thanks for sharing such useful information.
Thank you for adding this feature. I think it creates the right incentives for changes and the right discouragement of undesirable choices.
I am newer member, so please keep that in mind as I express my opinion.
I agree that concerns about "free speech" are irrelevant here. If this were simply a site designed to advance free speech in all its forms, I would not be here. I am here to improve my writing and marketing skills, and to learn from highly credible experts.
Anything that improves the credibility and reliability of HP as a whole is of great benefit to me. This is especially true for those of us who are new and still learning. As I build my online skills and potential reputation, I want to be associated with a site that is well-moderated in accordance with its goals. I see that consistently here. I respect it.
And, of course, anything that sends away the aunties (whatever they are) is good with me. :-)
I appreciate it very much.Its a very innovation control of making HP a better writing site.What I expect from HP is making it more attractive to original writers.I believe quality always wins over quantity.Best wishes to HP team.
Probably 99 percent of all Hubbers are reading this Topic.
So here’s a reprint of the Google Content Guidelines for anyone who wants to do preemptive fixes:
Sites with Google ads may not include or link to:
Pornography, adult or mature content
Violent content
Content related to racial intolerance or advocacy against any individual, group or organisation
Excessive profanity
Hacking/cracking content
Gambling or casino-related content
Illicit drugs and drug paraphernalia content
Sales of beer or hard alcohol
Sales of tobacco or tobacco-related products
Sales of prescription drugs
Sales of weapons or ammunition (e.g. firearms, firearm components, fighting knives, stun guns)
Sales of products that are replicas or imitations of designer goods
Sales or distribution of coursework or student essays
Content regarding programs which compensate users for clicking ads or offers, performing searches, surfing websites or reading emails
Any other content that is illegal, promotes illegal activity or infringes on the legal rights of others
Seems reasonable to me. Frankly, I am amazed that the list is not a lot longer.
As to false positives, it looks like HP is taking good care of us there.
May we all continue to prosper.
That was a very helpful thing to do. Thanks.
More or less we all know Google's rules, yet my hub was about Hypnosis for Premature E. and it has been unpublished. Anyway it's ok for me, even if it was published since February. I just hope it will be the same for those Aunties' hubs. And maybe for those hubs under 100 words. I think they lower the quality of the website much more than serious hubs addressing sex.
I do like the idea of of HubPages looking out for the best interest of all three parties-Google, HubPages, and us, the writers (our inability to earn money via Google would be awful, for instance as we form a symbiotic circle).
However,out of curiosity, how do we override the filter
I recently noticed a comment related to robot.txt on one of my hubs, that presented after I added a link to a related hub. It says the crawler can't crawl my site. Is this related? Or a separate issue? I have not been able to understand the directions about how to fix it. There are ads on the hub though, so maybe it's another issue.
thank you very much for doing this,great job hubpages team.....
It appears that I have been a victim of the automatic disabling of ads bandit.
It says that my blog has substantial copied content....
Considering the blog is my original blog and of a distinctive writing and spiritual style I find it very hard to believe that someone else has a document or article similar to mine. If they do then they have the infringement not me. Yet I will be the one who will lose my standing with Google! If this new service continues to stop original content from being blogged on Hub because of bad filtering or erroneous and inadequate researching for real copyright infringement then what good will it do to continue to post original content and lose google adsensein the process?
This has nothing to do with the subject of this thread, but I think you'll find that the text in this hub:
http://hubpages.com/hub/Name-For-The-Creator
is almost identical to what appear on this page:
http://snowwowl.com/gwritturtletalkname … eator.html
As the warning on your hub indicates (if you click on it):
The issue of duplicate content on HubPages is completely separate from issues of plagiarism or copyright. All that it means is that we found text very similar to what is contained in this hub elsewhere on the web. Duplicated hubs are not a violation of our rules, and may remain published. However, promotional or affiliate links are strictly prohibited on hubs identified as duplicate.
Please do not contact us to say that this is your original content that is published on another site. However, if you believe that this content should not appear anywhere else on the internet, please contact us. Include the URL or title of this hub in your message.
Sounds like a positive improvement to me. But I am fairly new here and am just learning.
I'm all for this Paul.. very good move. One question, does this mean any hubbber selling sex porn toys through links they put on the hubpage, will be taken down? I don't mind saying, I sure hope so. And Thank you...great news!
Selling adult toys or product is a clear violation of the AdSense Program Policy on Adult Content. If brought to our attention a hub doing so will be unpublished (simply flag it as adult if you see one).
I have flaged it many times.. so has my Ca. friend. We both concur the the hub user has some how disabled your staffs settings and some how it seems to be over riding any attemp to remove it! Want to know who? But I bet the blonde one has already gotton rid of it since I left you this message yesterday. When the hubber was in this forum posting. Thanks for responding Paul.
I appreciate the idea, at least we would be protected against accidentally violating the Adsense TOS and loosing our account. Thanks HP Team!
Nice and quite innovative way to protect the hubbers and give them info at the right time.
WOW! Do not mess with Google!
“Google Dumps Microsoft Windows Company-Wide"
For details go to your preferred news source.
As far as I am concerned; the more safeguards HP has for keeping Google happy, the better.
Another one of my hubs has been unpublished, the one about the Sumo Squat. Which happens to be my best performing hub. My solution, from now on, will be to publish all banned hubs somewhere else. And maybe ask directly to Google if those hubs violate their TOS.
Btw HP is still full of hot desi aunties hubs, with good peace to Google TOS and HP quality.
wow - big thumbs down for poorly designed new feature.
Such notifications should be emailed to an author and/or incorporated into a very visible warning on the my account page.
Why would we be visiting our own hubs to see such a warning?
Whats the present turnaround time for manual review and reinstatement of adsense to filtered hubs?
just found one - on a hub with near 50,000 views , a hub that is well within adsense TOS and gets enough daily traffic that I dont appreciate the loss of potential earnings
oh - to be clear - Anything that protects adsense is good , no complaints there , just cant understand why some sort of notification system isnt in place, we are not supposed to have to babysit our hubs, if your making changes on your end the impetus should be on you to inform us of anything that may be effecting us.
Forum posts dont cut it for official communication, many never visit.
hello paul deeds, how are , hub pages is a great place for writers, and i am a newbie in hubpages, and i like hub pages very much, but tell me something, that the actresses and aunties hubs are allowed or not allowed on hub pages, because there are lot,s of aunty and actresses hubs in the entertainment section, and entertainment means entertainment, , one of my hubs hot girls in sarees is disabled by fiiters and the ads are disabled , why this has happened, and i could i remove the ban on advertising please tell, it will be a great favour for me
Copyright © 2025 The Arena Media Brands, LLC and respective content providers on this website. HubPages® is a registered trademark of The Arena Platform, Inc. Other product and company names shown may be trademarks of their respective owners. The Arena Media Brands, LLC and respective content providers to this website may receive compensation for some links to products and services on this website.
Copyright © 2025 Maven Media Brands, LLC and respective owners.
As a user in the EEA, your approval is needed on a few things. To provide a better website experience, hubpages.com uses cookies (and other similar technologies) and may collect, process, and share personal data. Please choose which areas of our service you consent to our doing so.
For more information on managing or withdrawing consents and how we handle data, visit our Privacy Policy at: https://corp.maven.io/privacy-policy
Show DetailsNecessary | |
---|---|
HubPages Device ID | This is used to identify particular browsers or devices when the access the service, and is used for security reasons. |
Login | This is necessary to sign in to the HubPages Service. |
Google Recaptcha | This is used to prevent bots and spam. (Privacy Policy) |
Akismet | This is used to detect comment spam. (Privacy Policy) |
HubPages Google Analytics | This is used to provide data on traffic to our website, all personally identifyable data is anonymized. (Privacy Policy) |
HubPages Traffic Pixel | This is used to collect data on traffic to articles and other pages on our site. Unless you are signed in to a HubPages account, all personally identifiable information is anonymized. |
Amazon Web Services | This is a cloud services platform that we used to host our service. (Privacy Policy) |
Cloudflare | This is a cloud CDN service that we use to efficiently deliver files required for our service to operate such as javascript, cascading style sheets, images, and videos. (Privacy Policy) |
Google Hosted Libraries | Javascript software libraries such as jQuery are loaded at endpoints on the googleapis.com or gstatic.com domains, for performance and efficiency reasons. (Privacy Policy) |
Features | |
---|---|
Google Custom Search | This is feature allows you to search the site. (Privacy Policy) |
Google Maps | Some articles have Google Maps embedded in them. (Privacy Policy) |
Google Charts | This is used to display charts and graphs on articles and the author center. (Privacy Policy) |
Google AdSense Host API | This service allows you to sign up for or associate a Google AdSense account with HubPages, so that you can earn money from ads on your articles. No data is shared unless you engage with this feature. (Privacy Policy) |
Google YouTube | Some articles have YouTube videos embedded in them. (Privacy Policy) |
Vimeo | Some articles have Vimeo videos embedded in them. (Privacy Policy) |
Paypal | This is used for a registered author who enrolls in the HubPages Earnings program and requests to be paid via PayPal. No data is shared with Paypal unless you engage with this feature. (Privacy Policy) |
Facebook Login | You can use this to streamline signing up for, or signing in to your Hubpages account. No data is shared with Facebook unless you engage with this feature. (Privacy Policy) |
Maven | This supports the Maven widget and search functionality. (Privacy Policy) |
Marketing | |
---|---|
Google AdSense | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Google DoubleClick | Google provides ad serving technology and runs an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Index Exchange | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Sovrn | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Facebook Ads | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Amazon Unified Ad Marketplace | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
AppNexus | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Openx | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Rubicon Project | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
TripleLift | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Say Media | We partner with Say Media to deliver ad campaigns on our sites. (Privacy Policy) |
Remarketing Pixels | We may use remarketing pixels from advertising networks such as Google AdWords, Bing Ads, and Facebook in order to advertise the HubPages Service to people that have visited our sites. |
Conversion Tracking Pixels | We may use conversion tracking pixels from advertising networks such as Google AdWords, Bing Ads, and Facebook in order to identify when an advertisement has successfully resulted in the desired action, such as signing up for the HubPages Service or publishing an article on the HubPages Service. |
Statistics | |
---|---|
Author Google Analytics | This is used to provide traffic data and reports to the authors of articles on the HubPages Service. (Privacy Policy) |
Comscore | ComScore is a media measurement and analytics company providing marketing data and analytics to enterprises, media and advertising agencies, and publishers. Non-consent will result in ComScore only processing obfuscated personal data. (Privacy Policy) |
Amazon Tracking Pixel | Some articles display amazon products as part of the Amazon Affiliate program, this pixel provides traffic statistics for those products (Privacy Policy) |
Clicksco | This is a data management platform studying reader behavior (Privacy Policy) |