A hub traffic drop big time since first published date added

1. STAFF

   Paul Edmondsonposted 11 years ago

   Today has been a bit of a wild traffic ride.  This morning there was a sharp decline at 10AM, but the next hour it bounced back.  Now, it's been coming back strong this afternoon.  We are just about to where we were before the new design rolled out. 
   
   We were able to rule out the drop because of an algo update from google, so that's good.  That leaves us with some on page changes or a penalty.  I'm feeling like traffic will be back to last Weds levels tomorrow and hopefully we'll see gains over last Thurs and Fri....Back to work:)

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      TahoeDocposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      Um, what the heck am I doing wrong then? Should our own accounts roughly parallel what you are seeing for traffic, as a whole? If so, I have had no back ups, yet. At least not anything that I'm happy about. Am I alone? If so, I get that we can't focus just on my account. That's fair. But, is anyone else still in the same boat?
      
      It was just SUCH a dramatic and sudden drop, a plummet, not a fluctuation, from which recovery has not occurred.
      
      I'm really still down on both views and dollars.
      
      
      Thanks for the updates- it really is good to have some idea what is going on, even in general and even if it's not reflected in my account.

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         Randy Godwinposted 11 years agoin reply to this

         I've been trying to find out what's wrong for 9 months.  I coulda had a baby by now and still have no answers!  Sorry TD, this seems to be happening to more and more Hubbers these days.  I hope you aren't experiencing the same thing others of us are going through. 
         
         

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            TahoeDocposted 11 years agoin reply to this

            Thanks Randy- I know you have been quite frustrated (with traffic issues) for a while. You have a great niche and provide interesting and useful information (just read your hub on the Carolina Bays- loved it!). There is no reason why good content should suddenly be discarded --after being considered relevant for some time. For logical brains, it is maddening.
            
            Glad you are still here as I do enjoy your hubs and your 'company' here.

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               Randy Godwinposted 11 years agoin reply to this

               Just wanted you to know it could be worse, TD!  Yes, it is frustrating to reach a certain level of traffic and earnings and lose it all overnight because of some stupid algorithm which deletes the good with the bad.
               
               And thanks for reading my hubs and encouraging me to keep writing too.  I now write for myself and to heck with all of the intrigue here.  It isn't worth losing sleep over for me anymore.  Perhaps things will eventually turnaround for you.  It's a tough business now. 
               
               

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         Judi Beeposted 11 years agoin reply to this

         Just to let you know Tahoe Doc - I'm keeping you company in the boat.  I share your frustration!

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            wordscribe43posted 11 years agoin reply to this

            Yeah, I'm in the same boat as well, Judi Bee and TahoeDoc.  You know the one- the sinking, miserable boat.  And I doubt it's just the three of us... 

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   paradigmsearchposted 11 years ago

   I see that the "This Hub was last updated on..." is back in town at the top of our hubs. I'm fine with that.

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3. STAFF

   Paul Edmondsonposted 11 years ago

   @tahoedoc - your account shows really healthy signs.  I took a look at your traffic decline.  Almost all of the traffic loss is represented by a single hub that has a pretty smooth decline proportionally to all the traffic sources.
   
   I looked at the top search terms driving traffic to that Hub.  They were ranking #2 for almost all of them.  Webmd had the #1 spot, but ahead of harvard.edu and other very well known brands.
   
   So why did you your traffic decline.  I'm guessing it's a seasonality issue. 
   http://www.google.com/trends/?q=anesthe … p;date=ytd
   
   *Notice if you switch to the 30 day view that there isn't enough data. Does it seams reasonable that people get less surgery in the summer, therefore search for it less?
   
   The other possible reason is that you had a higher percentage of the the #1 ranking for the high volume terms.  If you look at your webmaster tools account, you can some trend data.  If you add, paul.edmondson at hubpages dot com as a user to your google webmaster tools account, I'll take a look.

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   PaulGoodman67posted 11 years ago

   Thanks for all the updates on what's happening, Paul E!
   
   My traffic is creeping back up.  Still low though, as it has been since it crashed a last couple of months ago.  Then it seemed to sink further recently. 
   
   At least it's been moving in the right direction today... 

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   wordscribe43posted 11 years ago

   I'm telling you, this happens to me every time!  I finally post about my tanked traffic and BAM, it starts coming back.  I'm either surging temporarily or it's going back to where it was a couple of weeks ago.  I'm crossing my fingers for the latter.  Anyway, I'm sooooo relieved. 
   
   Paul G, glad to hear you're heading in the right direction.
   
   Was there another algo tweak or what?

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      PaulGoodman67posted 11 years agoin reply to this

      If I understand correctly, ws43, I think it's now been established that this latest bout of ups and downs is not related to an algo update but to HP experimenting with the page design etc.
      
      My traffic is getting better, but is still currently over 50% down on what it was back in April.

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   TahoeDocposted 11 years ago

   @Paul E. I thought about the seasonal issue. It's hard to say. Sometimes, surgeries do trail off for a while right after school is out, but then there is usually a pick-up as people like to schedule their surgeries and their kids' surgeries after school is out. But, it's really been different everywhere I've worked.
   It just seemed so sudden that I doubted it.
   
   And it coincided with others' drops too.
   I only had a chance to quickly browse my hubs, and it seemed to affect a lot of them, but yes, the anesthesia ones got hit the worst. Again, I did not assess this in any depth.
   
   Today looks a little better, although I'm clearly not back where I was. I'm just watching and waiting.
   
   I will add you, Paul to look at my stats if you would be willing to do so. I hope it helps someone-- me, you, other staff, and other hubbers at some point if there is any clue in there. I really appreciate that so much- THANKS.
   
   Cheryl

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   Michael Willisposted 11 years ago

   Paul E.   I really like the latest hub style I see today. I see the last update moved down to after the article.
   My traffic on the hub I have talked about with this thread has rebounded to where it was before the published date was placed on the hub. Traffic started back as soon as the publish date was removed.
   I don't know if the published date affected the other hubbers hubs, but I can see it effecting mine because of the type of hub.

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   twosevenposted 11 years ago

   I know I'm getting to this thread very late, but I noticed the same thing, and was wondering what had happened!  I had actually written a hub about my most successful hub just before the traffic dropped off significantly (finally up to 50+ views a day down to well under 10 a day), and I was worried I had jinxed it! 
   
   At least I'm very glad to see traffic rising significantly yesterday, and even more so today.  I am glad it wasn't something odd I had inadvertently done!  Thank you to Hub Pages for being on top of this and Paul E for commenting on this thread.

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   TahoeDocposted 11 years ago

   SLOWLY seeing signs of recovery. Not sure if I'll get back where I was, but at least the free-fall has stopped.  Who patched the hole in the sinking boat.
   
   Is everyone else having some recovery? I really hope so!

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      Thomas Swanposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      Yes, a bit of a recovery for me

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      BWD316posted 11 years agoin reply to this

      I'm starting to see some google traffic return as well, hopefully this is a good thing! Losing all the traffic before was discouraging

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    mistyhorizon2003posted 11 years ago

    Mine is still well down and not recovering. I have lost about an average of 500 views a day by my reckoning. Adsense income has dropped from being at payout level once a month, to looking like it will be payout level once every eight months because the only Adsense Ad is now lost at the bottom of the page somewhere. The Hub Ads placement has not made up this loss, and so I am now well down on those earnings too. Looking at my earnings to date for the month so far between HP Ads and Adsense, I reckon my income will be down by about 40-50% this month (if things continue as they are right now until the end of the month.)

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    janderson99posted 11 years ago

    You would expect the layout changes to take weeks rather than days to improve as it takes time for the pages to be re-ranked. The changes were also driven by the aim improving the user experience - again something that will take time to have an effect in terms of bounce rates etc. Reputation, look and feel improvements will take time as well. Here's Hoping.

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    TahoeDocposted 11 years ago

    Spoke too soon. Now lower than any time this year. Sigh
    
    SEO friend said there was another 'tweak' and sent me a link...
    
    http://www.seroundtable.com/google-upda … 15344.html

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    Whitney05posted 11 years ago

    Is the changes to the site what has caused such a drastic decrease in earnings? (obviously via low traffic)
    
    I've not seen my ad earnings and Amazon earnings so low in ages!

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       Michael Willisposted 11 years agoin reply to this

       Since HP removed the first publilshed date, I have went beyond where I was before the update to the site. But, with the increased traffic, earnings are not following with it. Seems our Ads are not great for making money for the site. I am planning on turning off HPAds again. I have always made more money from Adsense than HpAds.

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    PaulGoodman67posted 11 years ago

    It has to be said that looking at traffic graphs for other open platform writing and earning sites such as Squidoo and Infobarrel, they have generally followed similar patterns to HubPages.  Google is continuing to squeeze "content farms", just as they promised.  The issue is not solely a HubPages one.

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       Will Apseposted 11 years agoin reply to this

       It looks like Google is tweaking us down to the level they think that we deserve.
       
       Without much in the way of fine discrimination.

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          PaulGoodman67posted 11 years agoin reply to this

          Yes, it's difficult not to come to that conclusion.  I just hope the site reaches that point soon though, as the long term gradual downwards movement doesn't seem to have bottomed out yet...
          
          I have been updating and deleting/moving hubs to counteract my individual crash, but I don't think much can be done about the gradual month on month drop that is affecting the site as a whole - not by individual hubbers anyway.

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    IzzyMposted 11 years ago

    Not everyone's traffic is going down.
    
    Since about the 17th of June (what happened that day?), I have seen a 50% rise in traffic across all my subdomains, some of them coming to this name too (more like 10% of it).

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       TahoeDocposted 11 years agoin reply to this

       Izzy- First, I'm happy for you- you certainly deserve it and have waited long enough. I hope your traffic flies off the charts!!
       
       Second, that's why I'm a bit confused, too. During other traffic changes and algo updates, mine has gone up and up when others have complained of theirs tanking. Now, mine is ridiculously low while some have thrived (I'm not complaining-happy for them).
       
       If HubPages as a whole is the problem, I don't get that. But, thanks for the info on the other writing platforms as it does shed some light on the issue.
       
       I just don't know. I do know that my traffic is down by half AND my $$ are down WAY more- like down to 1/3 or 1/4 on some days.

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          PaulGoodman67posted 11 years agoin reply to this

          Traffic to all the sites that Google views as "content farms" (HP, Squidoo, Infobarrel, etc) has been in gradual decline since February.  Yes, some individual hubbers go up and some go down, but overall HP traffic is down about 50% over those months.
          
          This overall gradual decline can probably only be fixed by Google or HubPages?
          
          The sudden large drops are a different matter and can (probably?) be counteracted by individual hubbers guessing what Penguin/Panda likes and doesn't like and adjusting your hubs accordingly. 
          
          That's my opinion.

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             TahoeDocposted 11 years agoin reply to this

             Thank you - I appreciate your thoughts and certainly don't know how to check all those stats, so I'm glad you did and shared that with us.

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                PaulGoodman67posted 11 years agoin reply to this

                Quantcast will give you the stats.  I should post up graphs to illustrate and prove my point, but I am far too lazy...

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                   Will Apseposted 11 years agoin reply to this

                   I just had a look at Quantcast and you are right about visitor numbers being well down.
                   
                   If you switch to page-views, though, the last 2 months have been good. Not far off past peaks, in fact.
                   
                   So people must be going on to explore a few more pages than previously for some reason.

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