Have Hubpages closed the door to search engines on certain search term

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   Neil Ashworthposted 13 years ago

   I'd be interested to know what others think about this one:
   
   I published a new hub this week - 100% original, high quality and with zero external links on the page - however, it has failed to get indexed in search from what I can see. My articles usually get indexed pretty quickly, almost immediately due to sharing on social sites and use of RSS feed etc..
   
   However, this one didn't... ;-)
   
   All I can suggest is that it is because it is written about network marketing - I won't post the link here but any of you who are interested in reading or reviewing it (or trying to find it in search) can find it on my profile page easily enough.
   
   I may be wrong in jumping to this conclusion but it seems that even though I have followed HP guidelines and written an article that has been approved something odd has happened to sink my ship even before it has set sail...
   
   Can/Have hubpages decided to close the door to the search engines for specific terms in order to remove any/all association with what (for some reason) they classify as dubious content??
   
   Look forward to your insights ;-)

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      paradigmsearchposted 13 years agoin reply to this

      Yahoo indexed it, so it is not HP's doing.

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         Neil Ashworthposted 13 years agoin reply to this

         Aaah... so it's Google I must battle with ;-)

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2. 83

   Peggy Wposted 13 years ago

   I've always been told that it takes a while for a new hub to be noticed and therefore rise to the top.  Perhaps you have been lucky.  My other thought is that this is probably a widely written about subject so it may take a while to be noticed?  I seriously doubt that HubPages has played a part in this.

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      Neil Ashworthposted 13 years agoin reply to this

      I'm not talking about it being noticed or indeed rising to the top of search - this will take months for this keyword as it is highly competitive - but the hubs I write (I've been writing on here for around 2 years) are usually indexed within 24 hours - some within 5 minutes - this one has been online almost a week and is nowhere to be seen.
      
      When you build your own blog you have the option to close the search engines to certain pages - this is easily done in order to hide pages/content/visitors etc - and can actually benefit your overall site some believe.
      
      I have traffic to the article from several sources BUT not Google... tells a story perhaps??

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         Peggy Wposted 13 years agoin reply to this

         Neil...you are obviously much more experienced in this respect than I am.  I did not even know one could "close search engines to certain pages" etc.  So good luck with your query and hope you find out what is happening and that it is to your satisfaction.

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3. 39

   joseph merlinposted 13 years ago

   I am new member I think some expert Hubber will sure answer you about this problem.
   
   And I think personally it is taking time to indexed now Hub by Google in two or three days.

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4. 76

   wildernessposted 13 years ago

   I doubt that HP has closed any doors to the spiders.
   
   Like you, I usually see hubs indexed in a day or two, but I have also had perfectly good hubs take as long as six weeks to index, and 1 week isn't all that uncommon in my experience.
   
   In another thread, several hubbers report that Webmaster Tools is showing widely varying traffic from the crawlers in individual subdomain.  My own went from around 300 per day to 20 and is now rising again; this will certainly affect time to index.
   
   Patience; if you build it they will come!
   
   
   Side issue; I didn't read it, but if your hub is about MLM (for which I have seen "network marketing" used) it will probably be checked thoroughly by HP.  As a whole the subject is mostly taboo here, although a very well written hub without links or promotions might go through.

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      Neil Ashworthposted 13 years agoin reply to this

      The hub has been passed and you are correct, network marketing is now taboo (or at least promotional material in that niche is).. this article is not promotional at all - in fact all the articles I have published in this niche (around 40) are non-promotional/informative so it is a little frustrating to have to go through this with each new hub in this niche.. I guess that's a fair price if the sub-domain is ranked well - which it is on most occasions.

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   AEvansposted 13 years ago

   It takes time for your hubs to be indexed and if the market has been flooded by the same information, having your work found on google could be a bear. As far as HP blocking search engines. I don't think so, wouldn't be great for business.

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   TerryGlposted 13 years ago

   The only way Hubpages could close the door to your hub is through robots.txt.
   
   Here is the robots.txt http://hubpages.com/robots.txt and there is no category blocking going on.
   
   I agree with wilderness, it will be YOUR subdomain that's the issue. You need to work on your subdomain as a whole to bring it back again.

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      ThomasEposted 13 years agoin reply to this

      That's not quite correct. Every subdomain has its own robots.txt,
      
      http://neilashworth.hubpages.com/robots.txt
      
      which could be used to block individual pages (but isn't in this case)
      and hubpages could also use a noindex in an individual pages source code, but that isn't happening either.
      
      My conclusion is that hubpages is not blocking crawlers to this particular page.

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         Neil Ashworthposted 13 years agoin reply to this

         Thomas,
         
         Thank you for your comments - how have you come to your conclusion that this isn't the case out of interest?

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            ThomasEposted 13 years agoin reply to this

            Because, as I said, I checked the most easy white hat ways for hubpages to block google crawlers from your particular page.
            
            They didn't.
            
            Of course, there are other ways that they could block your page, but these are all considered black hat, so Hubpages would be unlikely to use them.
            
            My conclusion is hubpages hasn't done anything to block your hub.

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               ThomasEposted 13 years agoin reply to this

               Just to add, the idea that google necessarily has any problem with the page or with your subdomain is not likely to be true, either.
               
               Google has just ran the panda algorithm. In my experience, pages that are added just before the algorithm is run often have delayed 'uptake' in terms of being added to the index.

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                  Neil Ashworthposted 13 years agoin reply to this

                  Very interesting and useful information. Thank you

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      Neil Ashworthposted 13 years agoin reply to this

      Terry,
      
      My subdomain ranks very well - top 3 positions on Google for most of the keywords I have targeted in this niche until now - which is not why I questioned it but it would suggest there isn't a sub-domain issue here. Perhaps I'll just have to wait a few weeks as some of you have suggested before this begins to show in search..

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         TerryGlposted 13 years agoin reply to this

         The last time Googlebot visit your subdomain was "This is Google's cache of hxxp://neilashworth.hubpages.com/. It is a snapshot of the page as it appeared on 24 Aug 2011 02:37:32 GMT.
         
         Today is 3 October so the bot has not visited your domain for quite some weeks.
         
         Now like I said, it is your sub-domain that needs to get the attention of the Googlebot. You cannot get a page indexed unless Googlebot comes and has a look at it.
         
         Your subdomain does not rank very well. Sure you have a few keywords but there different articles. Think of your sub-domain as a whole. It is your subdomains authority that you need to build for quick indexing.

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   Neil Ashworthposted 13 years ago

   Thanks Terry - I'll take your advice. Appreciated ;-)

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   Neil Ashworthposted 13 years ago

   Very interesting that since I posted this question 5 of my articles have now been unpublished by hubpages:
   
   100% unique content
   High quality
   Non promotional
   No external links
   
   Looks like the flagging police are out in force again.. nothing better to do I guess.

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