Urgent problem : Amazon density warnings

1. 67

   ThomasEposted 12 years ago

   OK.
   
   I edited my 200 product hubs (on this and another account) to fall into line with the new restrictions on number of words per product hub. Took me hours. Did it immediately I knew about hubpages requirements... after all, the site is important to me.
   
   Today I came upon a new warning... that I had too many products in a hub... which I had already edited.
   
   So I've been checking out my hubs.
   
   A lot of them don't comply with the new system... but they also don't show a warning:
   
   e.g. http://hubpages.com/hub/Where-to-buy-a- … iking-Pole
   
   So I am at a loss as to how I can fall in line with the new system, because I have hundreds of product hubs, and no way to know whether I have too many products in any one of them.

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      recommend1posted 12 years agoin reply to this

      Wait for them to flag them all and then change them.  These kind of panic alterations and knee jerk rules do not come out in an organised and reasonable way.  This is how you find yourself changing your hubs to suit one rule - and then finding the next rule needs you to delte some of the work you already did before !  Just wait for them to finish flagging all the different things as they go along - then make your changes.
      
      Also - I hope you are going to copy the deleted parts over to a new hub rather than dump them ????  just reminding . . .

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      1. 67

         ThomasEposted 12 years agoin reply to this

         I have all the hubs backed up already, recommend1. First think I did.
         
         As far as I am aware they are planning to enforce this new rule in less than a months time. It is supposed to be an automated warning, so it seemed reasonable to change them right away... and to warn the site owners their automated system isn't working.

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   2. STAFF

      pauldeedsposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      If the warning does not appear, then we consider your hub to be within the rules.  We built some leeway into the system to avoid having to deal with petty disputes over product and word counts (given that it isn't uncommon for keyword based capsules to be configured to display more products than the keywords actually match).
      
      I still think it's a good idea to go the extra mile and get to a ratio of at least 50-1, but more importantly you should insure that the products you display are directly relevant to the subject of your hub and not simply added as an afterthought.

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2. 73

   sunforgedposted 12 years ago

   whats the issue?
   
   seeing the warning on a hub you already edited just means you didnt edit it within the guidleines.
   
   
   Its not that rough really  (total word count/50= max # of PRODUCTS that hub can host )

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   1. 67

      ThomasEposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      I am not seeing the warning on hubs that don't follow the guidelines.

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   2. 63

      Mishaposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      This.
      
      The hub has 13 amazon products, and about 560 words. Do the maths, if you can.

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3. 73

   sunforgedposted 12 years ago

   shrugs
   
   they said they were sending out an email with a list of hubs to each hubber.
   
   I wont be running about myself until I receive it.

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   1. 67

      ThomasEposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      Why do you think the email will be accurate? At the moment, their code isn't working. Doesn't seem that unreasonable for me to tell them that, does it?

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4. 75

   sofsposted 12 years ago

   I was editing mine and yes it did take a lot of time and many edits before it came within the permissible limits.  I don't have too many product hubs, so I can be done in a couple of days...  then the drudgery of it all...
   But Sunforged I like your reaction... may be I should take a cue from you...

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5. 73

   sunforgedposted 12 years ago

   no, i dont think that is unreasonable. I misunderstood your initial post or only understood half of it.
   
   In most cases emailing the staff about legitimate tech issues is the best way to make sure they are informed quickly.

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6. 88

   Will Apseposted 12 years ago

   Just looking at that hub is an unpleasant experience ThomasE.
   
   Don't you give any thought to aesthetics? Do you really think that kind of hub is good for anyone? Get some photos. Write something worthwhile.
   
   This is the kind of hub that gives hubpages a bad name.

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   1. 67

      ThomasEposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      Thanks for your view, Will Apse.

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7. 73

   sunforgedposted 12 years ago

   This is sort of true ^
   
   There is so much stuff that is way worse that so I cant suggest "that this is the kind of hub that gives hubs a bad name"
   
   
   But the hub design style of 3 columns is hideous and should be blocked by the visual etiquette police.
   
   Dont make 3 columns of clumped info! allow a viewers eyes to read. Why would one put the all the readable text in a 150 pixel column.

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   1. 67

      ThomasEposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      At the end of the day, this was one of the hubs I wrote when I first came to hubpages, before I really knew how to get the best out of the site. I was already starting to edit them all before the google update.
      
      I would say less than 2% of the hubs on this account are in their final form, I intended to change them all.
      
      So I am not very invested in arguing about whether they are great or not... I know they are not great, I already had plans to change them. The only reason I haven't yet is the google update put enough of a spanner in the works so I am waiting to see for a little while.
      
      But it upsets me a lot that people are calling this the worst on offer on hubpages, when in the last month I have flagged hubs that are racist, that encourage people to be anorexic, that offer incorrect medical advice, and that sells acai berry.

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      1. 73

         sunforgedposted 12 years agoin reply to this

         I was referring to a general poor aesthetic habit of designing hubs to be strictly defined within the two user editable "columns" which creates a cramped an unreadable hub. Your hub is just an example of the trend and isnt the cause for the decline of the western empire or anything.
         
         There is a hub on the front page about "pop art and lady gaga" which has the same poorly thought out format.
         
         I personally haven't mentioned your content at all, I have no interest in walking sticks so merely scanned it. You must not have read my comment.

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8. 88

   Will Apseposted 12 years ago

   The sad thing is that a lot of stuff that is thought of as very good on Hubpages would be barely acceptable on other, more professional sites.

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   1. 85

      camloposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      I was Hub Hopping again today. Apart from spamming and spinning, Hub length and layout seem to be the biggest problem.
      
      HubPages really does have to become much stricter and introduce more filtering extremely quickly.

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      1. 88

         IzzyMposted 12 years agoin reply to this

         You know how when you start off to write a hub, and then save it unpublished, you get the warning that publishing the hub in that state would be considered substandard?
         I think a lot of people just write enough to not trip that warning - which is what 150 words or thereabout?
         
         HP say somewhere that hubs should be about 350 words in length (I think). Why not set the filter to trip if it's anything less?
         
         That could go for poems too. Several poems could easily go in the one hub.

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         1. 85

            camloposted 12 years agoin reply to this

            Yes. I absolutely agree, Izzy. Maddie said in a thread yesterday to the effect that developing more filtering devices is being worked on, but I think this problem would be the easiest to fix without having to 'work on it' too much. Where's the problem? I don't understand.

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9. 88

   Will Apseposted 12 years ago

   I think upgrading your Hubs is a great idea, ThomasE.

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   1. 67

      ThomasEposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      Thank you for you opinion.

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10. 95

    wildernessposted 12 years ago

    I found a few that the warning wasn't working as well, and just went ahead and changed them.  Fifty words per product isn't too hard to figure out unless you are borderline.  Then you may have wordcount in the amazon capsules themselves to account for or other places.  I didn't worry about that - just made them all easily compliant with the new rules.
    
    I wonder about the hub in your link, however - did you intend several links to one Amazon product?  That will add to the necessary text length without really adding to the products available to the reader.

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    1. 67

       ThomasEposted 12 years agoin reply to this

       Wilderness, I swept through the hubs the day they were announced, just to make them more compliant. It was a quick change, just removing products, and I was planning to do another sweep today to do the normal changes... checking whether product capsules had changed.
       
       Which was when I discovered this problem.
       
       To be honest, I am not sure that I will keep them anyway. At the moment the conversion rate has fallen from 22% to 2%, which means in the current format with the traffic I have at the moment they are not commercially viable.

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       1. 95

          wildernessposted 12 years agoin reply to this

          Well, my conversion is still around 7% (fairly good for me) but the traffic is so low I'm not earning anything anyway (no clicks).  Given that, I don't see that I'm losing by cutting capsules and it might help.
          
          As I said, I also removed a bunch of capsules from info type hubs and don't expect any loss at all from that as I've never gotten even one direct link purchase from any of them.  They just cluttered the hub for no return.

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          1. 88

             IzzyMposted 12 years agoin reply to this

             My sales hubs that have held up best are the ones that had a text box wrapped around an Amazon capsule, with a few words in the text box describing the product, and no extra Amazon capsules added at the bottom as an afterthought, or to entice the reader.
             Sometimes if you give the reader too great a choice it can put them off.
             So it was no great hassle to go remove all those extra 'choices' I put in the hubs. They probably did more harm than good, but I think we all thought that was how to do it.

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             1. 96

                Jule Romansposted 12 years agoin reply to this

                I like what Izzy said. I don't have that many hubs. I found it very easy to remove all the extraneous product lists.

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             2. 95

                wildernessposted 12 years agoin reply to this

                Interesting - that is exactly the style Paul is suggesting for sales hubs.  One product with some text devoted to it.
                
                Of late that's what I've been writing, but several of my older ones gave a lot (20 or 30) of choices because I thought that was what worked best.  I've still got a few hubs with that many products but they are all 1000+ words, too.  To change them would pretty much mean breaking them into several smaller hubs, which I don't really want to do, so will leave them for now and see what happens.

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                1. 88

                   IzzyMposted 12 years agoin reply to this

                   Well I have practically no hubs devoted to just one product, but if you have several products in the one hub, which is perfectly reasonable if you are targetting a keyword, then write a blurb about each one. I think it would be almost impossible to devote an entire hub to just one product, unless that product was extra special and a one-off.

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                   1. 95

                      wildernessposted 12 years agoin reply to this

                      Yes, that's pretty much what I do - just a few products with a blurb about each.  The exception is when there are many very similar products.
                      
                      If I'm selling cows I may present ads for pink, blue, purple and red cows, but not a blurb on each.  Just a comment that these great cows are available in different colors.  Then another blurb about bulls in the same colors.  That's pretty much where I get those few hubs with 20+ products being pushed.

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11. 96

    Jule Romansposted 12 years ago

    "The sad thing is that a lot of stuff that is thought of as very good on Hubpages would be barely acceptable on other, more professional sites."
    
    
    That's the part that worries me the most.

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