Iterating on Expert Reviews

1. STAFF

   Paul Edmondsonposted 6 years ago

   Thank you for all the feedback on Expert Reviews.  Our strategy is to satisfy Google and readers.  Expert reviews are a tactic to help add credibility and improve our E-A-T (Expertise, Authority and Trust).
   
   Based on author feedback, a review with AJ Kohn (SEO we hired), and what we have seen from the reviewers, we are making the following iterations as well as keeping a few bits from the original feature.  Please note, we aren’t done with this feature and plan on making additional changes as we iterate.  Here are some of the highlights and clarifications.
   
   [*]Author communication.  Before a review is added, an email will be sent to the author communicating the review.
   [*]If an author has concerns about the Expert Review, they are invited to discuss it with the Premium Editor.
   [*]We won’t accept a negative review, instead, the premium editor will address concerns, facts, balance the article until it achieves a positive review (we may need to collect multiple reviews until we achieve the goal).  In our tests, we found that articles can be improved based on the reviews, so we are going to achieve a really strong article before a review is posted. 
   [*]The placement at the top of the Expert Review is undergoing design changes to avoid confusion with authorship, but we will still highlight the review.
   [*]We are going to add a link to the best page highlighting the expertise of the Expert Reviewer as part of the review.  We are doing this to help with SEO by associating the page with the entity in non-competitive query classes. 
   [*]We are adding them only to YMYL pages (for now).
   
   Our community was at it's best for this test.  Lots of great feedback and questions—we read it all multiple times.  There are some really great suggestions like adding the author response that we want to see if we need with the changes to the process.  If we do, we will add them later.  We are undecided about changing what it is called.  We really liked the "Expert Response" however, there are some schema issues we are still sorting before deciding. 
   
   A few other things we learned.  This process has the ability to improve our fact-checking, add balance to articles, identify supporting resources and generally help with a stronger article.  Second, the association with experts has the ability to strengthen our brand.  In very limited tests, experts shared their reviews which is incredibly powerful.  This has a profound potential for us as a community.
   
   The goal is E-A-T, but we also want to drive more traffic to authors.  Anecdotally, the feedback has been that this does add trust to the article. In our second test, we will measure if the article ranks for expanded keywords over time and if it impacts traffic positively.  The plan is to add these reviews to about ten articles with these processes over the next few months.

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      Jessie L Watsonposted 6 years agoin reply to this

      I'm thrilled about this, TBH. Thanks for the due diligence.

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      TIMETRAVELER2posted 6 years agoin reply to this

      This sounds like a much better plan.  Hopefully it will work as it is supposed to!

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      Venkatachari Mposted 6 years agoin reply to this

      Really, very interesting update. I welcome this and thank you, Paul, for bringing it up.

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      MariaMontgomeryposted 6 years agoin reply to this

      I, along with several others shown below, want to know what YMYL is. Please educate us.
      
      Thank you.

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         Marisa Wrightposted 6 years agoin reply to this

         Maria, if you switch your view of the forums to Chronological (the button in the top right hand corner), you'll see the posts in their correct order and you'll see that the question has already been answered thoroughly.

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            MariaMontgomeryposted 6 years agoin reply to this

            Thank you.

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            MariaMontgomeryposted 6 years agoin reply to this

            I do not see any place to make that change. The word "chronological" appears nowhere on my screen. I do see the post you? shared that suggests YMYL is about health, finances, etc., but still no explanation of the words for which the acronym "YMYL" stands. Thanks for any help you may be able to provide.

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               Marisa Wrightposted 6 years agoin reply to this

               There's a button in the top right hand corner when you're reading a thread (it disappears if you hit "reply").

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               Venkatachari Mposted 6 years agoin reply to this

               Maria, just above at the top of this page on the righthand corner, below the menubar, there are two buttons. One is "threaded" and the other is "chronological". Those are the ones Marisa refers to.
               
               And, YMYL stands for "Your Money Your Life" articles that deal with very important issues of your life like investments, insurance, health, etc. If anything goes wrong by following the tips provided in those articles, you can sue the author of that content for damages. So, the content provider should be very careful and expert while providing such articles.

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                  MariaMontgomeryposted 6 years agoin reply to this

                  Thank you for the explanation of YMYL. There are no such buttons on my screen below the menu bar. Could it be because I am on a Mac? I have an old PC. I'll try it to see what is shown there. Thanks again.

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                     Glenn Stokposted 6 years agoin reply to this

                     I'm on a Mac and I see it. Look again. It's right above the "Unfollow" button.

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   psycheskinnerposted 6 years ago

   I though YMYL was not allowed on Hubpages?  We have had people in the help forums whose hubs were rejected for this reason.

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      Glenn Stokposted 6 years agoin reply to this

      psycheskinner, YMYL has a very high standard in order to be accepted. If a hub does not represent Expertise, Authority and Trust (E-A-T) then it will be rejected.

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   EricFarmer8xposted 6 years ago

   The changes sound interesting to me. I am curious to see what others think.

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   AliciaCposted 6 years ago

   This sounds much better. Thank you for modifying the plan, Paul.

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   Will Apseposted 6 years ago

   I saw the expert review as being rather a strange and alien add on in the first test. Someone said it was like a teacher handing down a judgement.
   
   I hope you can find a way to make the review or response add value to the page rather being a mere stamp of approval. Maybe an interesting observation or two that gives a slightly different perspective. Or a civil disagreement on where to lay emphasis, whatever...
   
   I like the idea of using the experts to refine the page and oblige it to reflect a balanced perspective.
   
   Of course, what we really need is an example to look at.

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   1. STAFF

      Paul Edmondsonposted 6 years agoin reply to this

      We will post an example when we have it ready.  The editorial part of the process is going, but the actual design in the page is still in progress.

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   Titiaposted 6 years ago

   Maybe a stupid question, but what is YMYL?

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      snakeslaneposted 6 years agoin reply to this

      Let me know when you find out please lol.

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         Jessie L Watsonposted 6 years agoin reply to this

         Your money your life. I think....

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      Jean Bakulaposted 6 years agoin reply to this

      I didn't know what it meant either, lol! They say it's only stupid if you don't know and won't ask (whoever THEY are)!

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      Bedbugabscondposted 6 years agoin reply to this

      If you want to learn more about the principles of YMYL or EAT, then a great place to look is at Google's Guidelines. There are four main guidelines that we all need to be familiar with if we want to understand how to rank well on Google's search engine. They can be found here: https://support.google.com/webmasters/a … 5769?hl=en
      
      If you want to review the guidelines that explain a lot about what YMYL and EAT then see the general guidelines here: https://static.googleusercontent.com/me … elines.pdf
      
      This is a long document, so use the CTRL+F function to look up the words, YMYL, EAT, Your money your life, and expertise authority trust. Or just read the whole thing. I hope this helps. These guidelines have really helped me improve traffic and earnings.

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   EricFarmer8xposted 6 years ago

   It means your money your life. I had to look it up myself. So it is reasonable to be confused.

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      snakeslaneposted 6 years agoin reply to this

      Thanks! I'm still confused.

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         Will Apseposted 6 years agoin reply to this

         Your money or your life (YMYL) topics are things like financial advice that could affect your bank balance or health advice (including dietary, mental health, relationship stuff etc) that could affect your well being.

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         EricFarmer8xposted 6 years agoin reply to this

         On Hubpages, YMYL would mean Hubs that deal with health and spending money. I imagine topics like mortgages, loans, budgeting, etc. I also imagine dieting, medical advice, etc.
         
         Google takes this topic more seriously because of the impact they have on peoples lives. Like Paul was saying they expect more expertise and authority if one is to write on these subjects. You need to know what you are talking about.
         
         The idea of expert reviews was to give our Hubs that authority by the authority of the expert reviewers. It seems now they are making it a process of taking the feedback and then editing the hub in a way that the expert reviewer likes it more. In a perfect scenario that would happen anyways. The idea being if the expert reviewer agrees with the changed Hub this would boost its authority.
         
         I am going to assume their search engine expert knows his stuff and hopefully this new version will help everybody.  It should have our Hubs be ranked higher on search pages if everything goes well. Everybody wants that.

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            snakeslaneposted 6 years agoin reply to this

            Oh thank you, that is so kind of you to go to all that trouble. I'm amazed, and I really appreciate the info!

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               EricFarmer8xposted 6 years agoin reply to this

               I have a lot free time atm so I have been doing some SEO research myself.

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            Venkatachari Mposted 6 years agoin reply to this

            Many many thanks, Eric. I myself had to Google to find out the full form of YMYL. Then, I figured that it would something like this. But, now, I am fully cleared of my confusion regarding the exact context of that YMYL pages. Thanks a lot.

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            Titiaposted 6 years agoin reply to this

            Thanks for the carification and I'm glad I wasn't the only one who didn't know

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   Marisa Wrightposted 6 years ago

   Paul said, "We won’t accept a negative review, instead, the premium editor will address concerns, facts, balance the article until it achieves a positive review."
   
   This goes a LONG way to addressing my concerns, thank you.   However I can still see this being difficult to achieve if the article is communicating something innovative, and the chosen expert is is an old fuddy-duddy.
   
   The question is, if the Hubber can present sufficient evidence to show that other experts support the article, will HubPages be willing to seek out another expert instead?

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      HoneyBBposted 6 years agoin reply to this

      I had the same concerns Marissa. Mainly because many of my articles, I think, address new ways to interpret and solve old problems. Sometimes the old remedies don't work at all and after living through different circumstances and/or analyzing them thoroughly, I come up with processes I either tried and succeeded at or processes that I believe would have a more likelihood of success than the processes that have people going around in circles.

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   Will Apseposted 6 years ago

   People have a very strange conception of what experts (in any academic discipline, at least) are about.
   
   Whatever you think you know is likely to be shallow and outdated when you get a pro involved in the debate.

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      Susana Sposted 6 years agoin reply to this

      One of the big problems as I see it, is that the "experts" are likely to be generalists, because that will be the cheaper option for HubPages. Generalists often don't have indepth OR up to date knowledge as a true topic expert would and are just regurgitating what they learned however many years (or decades) ago at college.
      
      Take for example the article about the ketogenic diet which was on the list of those containing an expert review. The expert reviewer was a generalist dietician or nutritionist, not a ketogenic diet expert - who would be a true expert in the field and be able to offer a truly meaningful review. So it wasn't surprising that the expert review on the article was severely lacking.
      
      What we're going to end up with, if HP are going to be editing content to get it inline with these generalist experts opinions, is a lot of very bland, uninspiring content that can be found anywhere on the web.

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         Marisa Wrightposted 6 years agoin reply to this

         There's another reason to be concerned about the quality of the expert opinions - HubPages is using experts who are willing to give an opinion FREE.  Anyone who is a real expert in their field is unlikely to need the exposure enough to agree to that.

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            Bedbugabscondposted 6 years agoin reply to this

            Actually, I disagree. I know experts who give free reviews to gain authority. Some of these experts do it to improve their online presence, others do it for pride, some do it to try to erase previous negative perceptions. I find professionals to be quite helpful in most cases once you have peaked their curiosity and if they understand the importance of a positive online web presence.
            
            I think this really would be a niche by niche thing. Some niches would have a difficulty of finding an authoritative expert, where other niches might be easier to find.

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    jansharesposted 6 years ago

    Thanks for this detailed response, Paul. It shows that you appreciate our concerns and work very hard to see us as "partners" in making decisions that affect us all.

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    makingamarkposted 6 years ago

    Great to see that all the comments were reviewed and read again. Next time maybe say this is happening...?
    
    Expertise, Authority and Trust relates to the author ONLY i.e. the person who generates the content.
    
    I think you're trying to make EAT about the site - and I can understand why - you hope to generate more traffic as a result.
    
    Hence the notion that negative reviews will not be published and instead the Editor ( not the author) will revise the article until it can achieve a positive review.
    
    However that goes fundamentally to the concept of "authorship" and challenges the concept of the notion of the writer as "independent expert/author" (i.e. the person with Expertise, Authority and Trust)
    
    Your concept of how this works suggest that you are providing a site which has standards and criteria as to what it will accept - which is, if you like another layer of EAT.
    
    HOWEVER your proposals as to how this works suggest to me (maybe others will agree also) that you are messing with copyright and independence and integrity of the author - and that is simply not on.
    
    Put it another way
    * if the article has EAT that's because of because of the Author and the content
    * you can try having external "experts" make comments which lead to a non-expert Editor altering the content to refine your 'added layer' of EAT
    * however if you do that I confidently predict that some expert authors who are trusted by others will wonder why they aren't publishing their content on their own account and remove it and do just that.
    * which is what I call "a waste of your time"!
    
    In other words - you can only refine content if authors agree to that. 
    You can suggest changes but you can't make changes - otherwise you risk losing content and authors.
    
    It's their content and their copyright - and mess with the latter at your peril
    
    Bottom line - you can't refine and add another layer of EAT (associated with the site not the author) if the original content has disappeared from the site!
    
    That's like trying to wrap up thin air with nice paper and a big bow!

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       Venkatachari Mposted 6 years agoin reply to this

       @makingamark sums it up perfectly. No content, no expertise!

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    theraggededgeposted 6 years ago

    Are there any other sites doing this? Not necessarily content sites, but any site?

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       Will Apseposted 6 years agoin reply to this

       The novelty of the feature means it needs some kind of intro or framing as far as I am concerned.
       
       As an alternative: forget the 'expert review' labeling and shift the weight to the author credits.
       
       So, as an example:
       
       A Very Interesting Article
       
       by Jane Doe
       
       with expert contributions from Bill Knowitall (Fellow of Cleverness), Mary Perfect (MSc, Dip Ex) and others
       
       If you get my drift
       
       Use an acknowledgements section to  credit and link to any expert who contributed, with a brief bio. Give an expert who had something useful to say a quote in a little box somewhere

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          psycheskinnerposted 6 years agoin reply to this

          Exactly this.  My mainstream expert personna would be part of this because it is collegiate rather than critical.

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             Will Apseposted 6 years agoin reply to this

             'Collegiate'. That's a good word. And not a bad spirit to work in, either.

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    Jessie L Watsonposted 6 years ago

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krObAMBkjT4
    
    Relevant

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       Jean Bakulaposted 6 years agoin reply to this

       What does it mean for someone like me, who writes metaphysical articles? I believe astrology because I've studied it for over 40 years and have proof that it describes a person to a "T". But not many have studied it as long and hard as I have, and think it's only where the Sun was on your Birthday. It takes me an hour or more to cast a chart, and at least 10-12 to interpret it. I do use a program for the charts now, but often find them wrong and have to redraw them myself to read them, because programs draw so many lines and add so much extra verbiage that has nothing to do with the person.
       
       I also write about Paranormal subjects, being clairvoyant, or clairsentient, I have visions and odd feelings about people that come true. I can do a tarot reading and "feel" what the person is like and even know what their problems are and the best way to solve them. How can somebody be an expert on that?

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          Venkatachari Mposted 6 years agoin reply to this

          True, Jean. There are some subjects which can never be linked with expert opinions. They are just factual as experienced and understood by a person. Very few people believe or try to believe such matters. Even if one believes, he will still be doubtful. And, nobody can establish it with any kind of argument or expert opinion. Astrology and Spirituality topics are such ones. You can't have expert opinions.

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             Jean Bakulaposted 6 years agoin reply to this

             You are right, Mr. Venkatachari,
             Maybe I'll be saved by this reasoning, as spiritual and paranormal articles can't be scientifically proved. I have the proof I need to write and share my experiences, but that's all. I do have evidence people read my work though, and it helps them . That's worth more to me than money or an expert's opinion.
             
             I do write about other topics though. I guess I'll wait and see like everyone else where those are involved. Thank you for replying.

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                Will Apseposted 6 years agoin reply to this

                I can't imagine that HP would decide that your work fell into the YMYL category. I reckon you should be safe.
                
                For my own part, I would be much more willing to write YMYL stuff if I thought that any mistakes I made were going to be picked up by experts in the field.
                
                I don't want to be responsible for someone suffering health or financial issues because I made a silly mistake.

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                   Jean Bakulaposted 6 years agoin reply to this

                   You seem like a sensible and thoughtful person, I can't see you making too many "silly mistakes." Your articles are well researched. Don't be intimidated.

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    Milon Kariulposted 6 years ago

    Life is a easy things,after having been studied, you make it complex.

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    Specialkitty1posted 6 years ago

    I do relate to the feeling.  Yet its the past that represents the way we write.

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    SANJAY LAKHANPALposted 6 years ago

    Will it not be like spamming the comment section?
    There is another problem with the comment section; where we cannot edit the comments of the visitors for poor grammar, spelling, capitalization etc. but retain them for their meaningfulness or other reasons.
    I think it is also a disadvantage created by some auto-correct in the court of Google.

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       psycheskinnerposted 6 years agoin reply to this

       People own the copyright to their comments, if the language is too poor to post--deny the comment.

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