Hmmm- Summaries are good!

1. 65

   PaulaHenry1posted 12 years ago

   I dont no if its a fluke, but I put summaries on a handful of Hubs this morning, checked again a minute ago and I have visitors!!! Definite increase in views. So my conclusion, summaries are good!

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      Ms Deeposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      Hey, wow! So good to get this news of the good effect you've seen in using summaries

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      AEvansposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      It works! Yes it does and congrats on your traffic!

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      Bendo13posted 12 years agoin reply to this

      Hopefully it's more than 1 view per hub?
      
      If not then you are that one view, since once you save your edits it counts you as a view when the hub loads.
      
      If it's quite a few more views for each hub then you've definitely made a good change!

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         Cardisaposted 12 years agoin reply to this

         Ms Dee is right. The hubs I have summaries on are the ones at the top of my list. They do much better. I think the summaries should be keyword rich too.

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   Uninvited Writerposted 12 years ago

   I have noticed that all my hubs in the top 50% were ones with summaries, those without invariably have lower hub scores and visits.

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      earnestshubposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      Thanks for that information UW, I will make a few adjustments to some of my old ones that are getting some traffic again in the last week, when my stats got better along with many other hubbers.

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3. 61

   Lisa HWposted 12 years ago

   Good to know it seems to help.  When the automatic summaries got wiped out awhile back, I went and wrote, I think, about 40 (if that) of my own.  It took - like - a whole morning or something like that.  I have at least another couple of hundred to write.    Let's see...  One a day a 200-plus days....   Or, let's see...  50 summaries on 4/5 days...     I think I may just have to continue procrastinating on one course of action or another for another several months. 

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   TahoeDocposted 12 years ago

   I did that yesterday too after not being around here for a while. I saw a spike in visitors but when I went to the traffic sources tab, alas, they were hubpages views (most likely a lot of my own). I hope that's not true for you, but wanted to pass that along, just in case.
   
   Good luck and maybe I'll even publish something new soon.

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5. 92

   habeeposted 12 years ago

   How long are you guys making your summaries?

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      wildernessposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      If too long, google won't show it all.  I try to keep it about the size of the little box HP gives us to write in without scrolling down.

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         habeeposted 12 years agoin reply to this

         Okay. Thanks!

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         paradigmsearchposted 12 years agoin reply to this

         Same here. HP says it should only be 2 or 3 sentences.

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      Howard S.posted 12 years agoin reply to this

      A usually reliable source said 250 characters is the max Google will "see." Another said 248 or 252--I forget. Anyway, I make sure that if I'm a couple of characters over 250, that the sentence still makes sense.
      
      It is my understanding that the old auto-generated first paragraphs were "grandfathered" in. They remain until you edit the hub, at which time they disappear. I can't verify that right now on Google, but I know they remain within HubPages for Hot/Best/Latest(More...).
      
      When HubPages stopped auto-generating summaries, I only had a few without custom summaries anyway. My most recent job was to write teasers for web articles, so I'm used to this and know the benefit of it.
      
      Strangely, though, I have not seen any traffic benefit with summaries (or subdomains, though my wife has). In the 30 days prior to last week (zero activity on my part for almost 3 months), my 53 hubs together averaged exactly 8 views per day. That's pathetic!

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         Howard S.posted 12 years agoin reply to this

         Where did I get 250 characters from?! What I meant was 50 characters max for a summary--called a teaser in the publishing industry. If you think it is impossible to summarize your hub in 50 words--and it often is--then think about teasing or tempting someone to click on your hub. I hope I didn't mislead anyone.

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            Howard S.posted 12 years agoin reply to this

            Characters and words are different (Duh!). The limit is 250 characters, which works out to roughly 50 words.

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   kmackey32posted 12 years ago

   Can the summary be the same as the title?

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      wildernessposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      It could, but why?  The summary is your chance to explain what the title means, and to convince the potential reader that it is interesting and they should check it out (and observe your many wonderful ads!).  Merely repeating the title won't do either.

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         kmackey32posted 12 years agoin reply to this

         Oh ok....hmmmm

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7. 63

   Richieb799posted 12 years ago

   I've been adding a few summaries today but I'm not going to rush to do all of them, I'm taking my time lol

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      Bendo13posted 12 years agoin reply to this

      Yeah same here... If I check my overall traffic I just edit the ones with A's that I can see right at the bottom.  I don't want to spend all day doing it.
      
      Sucks when they made the change a while ago that it wiped everything out.

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8. 0

   mtsi1098posted 12 years ago

   wouldn't it be great if when we change our summaries, hubpages goes and updates our hubs (with the new summary) where ever it is linked in the hubpages domain ?
   
   Just dreaming...

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9. 77

   MissEposted 12 years ago

   Hmmmm... I guess I need to figure out how to add summaries then.  In general everything has been going up lately.  If adding the summaries halps even more, I'm all for it!

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10. 77

    MissEposted 12 years ago

    whoops...helps.

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11. 88

    Robinposted 12 years ago

    We recently wrote a Learning Center entry on summaries here:  http://hubpages.com/learningcenter/How- … ub-Summary
    
    Cheers! 

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       Howard S.posted 12 years agoin reply to this

       Yes, and it's a good one. But I think you can be more specific on the length. "Three or four short sentences" gives too much latitude when characters are what counts--250, if I'm not mistaken.

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    Wesman Todd Shawposted 12 years ago

    The summaries are only really good if they are better than the first paragraph of the first text capsule - as that is what Google shows under the link without you adding a custom summary.

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13. 61

    Lisa HWposted 12 years ago

    I started working on some summaries last and earlier today, using a pretty willy-nilly approach with regard to which score-range/traffic range Hubs I did.  I kind of forget a lot of the ones I've added on my 90's, 80's, and 70's Hubs.
    
    Two of the 60's Hubs stand out, though.  They're two creative writing piece (written for entertainment value only, and that I've left up only because of that.  I've been fine with the fact that their scores are only in the 60's.  I like the stories and figured they're a break from "the usual" among my stuff).
    
    Anyway, I added summaries.  I don't know if this is a coincidence or not, but they both went to over 75 scores and have a few views on them within hours of adding the summaries.  Some of the ones I did that were in the other score ranges may have seen improvement.  There's too many and I haven't had the time to really sort that out.  The two creative writing pieces were the ones that had the noticeably dramatic change (in score anyway).  It's only been seen last night that I've been doing some more summaries than I had before.  I imagine I'll get better reading after more time (and summaries) have gone on.

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