Non-Performing Hubs?

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   David 470posted 11 years ago

   Could non-performing hubs that are not getting views (and have never got many) be affecting how well my other hubs perform? Should I delete them and unpublish them? My traffic is not in a good position right now at all and I am trying to figure out what needs to be done. Last year around this time I was doing much better.
   
   If deleting/unpublishing hubs helps others hubs or future hubs I write, then I will do it.

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      paradigmsearchposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      According to HP, and apparently Google, the answer to your question is yes. You could, however, just unpublish and de-index. Then you can take your time as to what you wish to do with those particular hubs. As an example or two: I've transferred some hubs elsewhere; I've combined smaller hubs into one larger hub, etc.

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      relacheposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      Theoretically this is the exact scenario that the new "idle" feature should address.

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         Dale Hydeposted 11 years agoin reply to this

         That was my thoughts as well. I think I am done "tweaking" to please, lol.  I will see how my material is going say ten years from now with no more changes.  Maybe by then all of the tweaking requirements will have become null.

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         David 470posted 11 years agoin reply to this

         I do not have many idle hubs, but honestly, I still think there are some hubs of  mine that need deleted/unpublished. These are hubs that basically gathered some views, but the number is not even close to significant. Some of them are from 2010 I believe.

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            aa liteposted 11 years agoin reply to this

            If Google identifies enough of your material as "low quality" it can decide that your whole subdomain is "bad", so a hub that would be on the first page of SERPs for a keyword, will be on page 2, or 3. 
            
            This is what the idle hub policy is supposed to help with, but you say you don't have idled hubs.  The optimistic conclusion is that your hubs are not 'low quality' and your traffic drop is not caused by them.  The pessimistic conclusion is that the HP algo is not good at predicting what the Panda algo thinks is low quality.  From what I've seen with my sites, HP 'idle hub algo' is not just about traffic, and it definitely isn't about the hubscore, but nobody knows whether it can replicate the way Google identifies 'low quality".
            
            My personal feeling is that successful hubbers' traffic drops are not caused by 'low quality' hubs on their accounts.  The declining traffic, which seems to affect the whole site is probably down to all the really bad stuff, in other subdomains.  When using hub hopper, there is a lot of obviously really bad stuff published, yet good hubbers are tweaking and scrutinising their hubs, trying to guess what detai could have offended Panda.  I reckon the falling traffic is down to the subdomains not working anymore in terms of isolating the good stuff from the bad. 
            
            Personally I would just give the idle hub feature a chance to work.  It takes some time for Google to notice the no-index tags, and there has been no announcement about a Panda refresh, so I don't think it is surprising that we haven't seen any changes yet.  I would do nothing at least until Panda is next run, perhaps even longer if you can bear to wait.  If there is no improvement, then you could try deleting under performing hubs, that hadn't been idled,  I guess there is no harm in trying.

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            1. 82

               David 470posted 11 years agoin reply to this

               A few of my hubs are idle, but not many -- only the ones that have never really seen views and generally have a low hubscore.
               
               I don't understand, though, why are the subdomains not working? Hubs should be looked at individually by Google. If Google penalizes one hub, it should not affect several other hubs. This does not seem right....
               
               When the subdomains first came out they seemed to be great (at least for me and some others) but now things seem different.

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                  aa liteposted 11 years agoin reply to this

                  But Panda is not about individual hubs, it is precisely about judging the site as a whole.  If a site is thought to provide a "poor user experience", it gets a penalty.  As I understand it, if say a hub would be normally be result 3 for a particular keyword, if the site has a Panda penalty, it will be demoted to position 13 (I'm just making these numbers up). 
                  
                  Even if an individual hub is excellent, if a lot of the other hubs on that subdomain are bad, the excellent hub will not do as well as it should. 
                  
                  I wasn't on HubPages when subdomains were first rolled out, but I understand a lot of people saw a big traffic gain, but that didn't last.  Nobody knows, perhaps Google changed the way it considered subdomain.  The problem (but also the advantage) with HubPages is that all the hubs are interlinked, through the directories and also through the links at the bottom of the page to other hubs.  If this produces a lot of links between good hubs and spam, that might make the subdomains work less well than they should.  I don't know why subdomains seemed to work well once and now they don't, but Google changes its algorithms all the time, so change is expected.  The permanent solution is to remove all the 'bad stuff'.  The problem is figuring out what the "bad stuff" is, some of it is immediately obvious, of course, but  some of it might be hard to understand.

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                     Dame Scribeposted 11 years agoin reply to this

                     I'm also curious if anybody from HP who gets flagged as a 'spammer' and we all being associated with HP, get spanked too   just a thought.

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      galleryofgraceposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      It's my understanding from other forums that Z'd hubs are already de-indexed so I don't see how they could affect  any other hubs.

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      1. 59

         paradigmsearchposted 11 years agoin reply to this

         According to Paul E., it can take awhile before G discovers the noindex tag and follows its instructions. So, if you are in agreement with the Z, I'd recommend going to WMT and doining the URL removal yourself.

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