Famous article unpublished

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   Mr Ratayposted 2 years ago

   Hello,
   
   I have an article, just one article, in my account. However, that article has been the #1 article in Google SERPs since it was originally published on Squidoo. It has nearly 2 million views and was earning me about $80 average per month. I just logged in and see that it has been unpublished.
   
   There's no alert, and no publish button if I go to edit the article. It's not under the account that I'm using to post this question, as i wasn't able to post in the forum with that account.
   
   Can somebody suggest what in the world is going on here?
   
   Thanks in advance.

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   1. STAFF

      Matt Wellsposted 2 years agoin reply to this

      Your account has been reactivated and I have published your article. We apologize for the error.

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         Miebakagh57posted 2 years agoin reply to this

         Good God?!

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         Miebakagh57posted 2 years agoin reply to this

         Congratulations Ratay! Your account is now reactivate, and an apology made to you. Accept that io good faith.

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         BEAGOLDBUYERdotposted 2 years agoin reply to this

         Matt,
         
         Is there any way you can follow up with me through email? I'd like to ask a couple questions about this.

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   Brenda Arledgeposted 2 years ago

   No idea, but I'd be sending an email to the team at Hubpages to ask them.

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   Mr Ratayposted 2 years ago

   Thanks. I did that but just figured maybe this has happened to somebody before.

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      Miebakagh57posted 2 years agoin reply to this

      Resend the email to team@hubpages.

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   Mr Ratayposted 2 years ago

   Thanks. I logged into my email to try that, and they had already replied.
   
   "Your account has been permanently banned from HubPages for existing solely to promote a third party site or service. We wish you luck in your online marketing ventures."
   
   This must have happened within the last 10 days or so.
   
   The only place where I even mentioned my business, which I have now closed, was in the bio. I received no notice. No alert.  No consideration at all, or even, if you wish to rephrase it, a chance to fix whatever they didn't like.
   
   This article had been active since, maybe 2009. Was the top article on Google for gold jewelry markings. I think it was about 1000 views per day.
   
   Even more funny is that I had requested HP change the name on my account (which it brought over from Squidoo, but abridged because Squidoo allowed longer account names) so that I could write other articles of a different genre. They said no. I asked if they could transfer the story to another account, they said no. So now, because I didn't publish other articles under that account, "it exists solely to advertise a service."
   
   Wow. I just came back to Hubpages the other day and decided to start writing under this new account more often, articles that won't fit in my niche website. This site is a farce, and whatever people are running it are making poor decisons.
   
   I never would have guessed that article, of all articles, would be removed. Stupefying.

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      Miebakagh57posted 2 years agoin reply to this

      Hey there, since your account is closed, there's nothing you can do.                                                        As far as I know, hubpages has not institute an appeal route for account closure. Wish you the best elsewhere.

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      Solarasposted 2 years agoin reply to this

      Republish it without any mention of your or any business in the new account.

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      Kyler J Falkposted 2 years agoin reply to this

      There are grounds for litigation there if the article was truly earning you that much per month and if they are unwilling to even speak to you about recourse. It'd be fairly easy to represent yourself, as well, so long as you have physical copies of your pay statements and statistics for the article. Eighty dollars per month wrongfully disappearing would be worth some time in front of a court mediator for me, assuming HubPages would be more cooperative in front of a judicial panel scrutinizing them.
      
      I'd also write an article on the incident, and put the evidence within that article so that HubPages will, hopefully, be less inclined to do this to others, or at least more inclined to seek recourse lest they continue to lose quality authors. Then finally rewrite the article excluding your business title.
      
      P.S. This pandemic has made litigation extremely simple due to most civil cases being expedited and held over Zoom. You have nothing to lose in using litigation as a last resort.

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      theraggededgeposted 2 years agoin reply to this

      Thing is, HP can't change your account name. Neither can they transfer the article. I don't think they are allowed to do so.
      
      But you could do those things yourself. You could use a new account with your preferred name and publish your new articles. And you could have unpublished the gold article, deleted that account, and publish it on the new account. I did with several of my Squidoo articles.

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   Kenna McHughposted 2 years ago

   Don't give up. This doesn't sound right. I am sure there is recourse. Email them at the team email address and get it sorted out.

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   Miebakagh57posted 2 years ago

   I don't ever think the old article can be publish in the new account without much modification.

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   PaulGoodman67posted 2 years ago

   It's odd that a short, poetry article earns so much money. That's not usual.

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      Miebakagh57posted 2 years agoin reply to this

      Just noted the poem. It's wonderful.

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      theraggededgeposted 2 years agoin reply to this

      Different account and article.

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      Kyler J Falkposted 2 years agoin reply to this

      *facepalm*
      
      "It's not under the account that I'm using to post this question, as I wasn't able to post in the forum with that account."

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   Mr Ratayposted 2 years ago

   I appreciate the suggestions but... A 10 year old article, with loads of important incoming links, and social media mentions,  can be replicated. However, it  will never regain 1st place in Google serps just by being replicated. That age, and those links and mentions, make all the difference to google. If you search  gold jewelry markings, you'll find loads of copycat articles that always trailed mine, that's because they didn't have the age or link profile, though they may have copied the content.
   
   Online articles often warn about the risks f using somebody else's format (HB) instead of your own blog, over which you have control. But I kind of always thought this kind of thing would happen if you abused the rules or whatever. I never thought they'd take out a very popular article, that has been earning them revenue monthly, probably well above the vast majority of articles on their site, just for nonsensical reasons, and without warning.
   
   Even if the person who did it was a rogue operator, the point is, it can still be done. If I had 10 articles that produced $1000 per month for me, what would stop them? Nothing.
   
   I appreciate you all, but this was cooler when it was Squidoo. It had a great big community, and although there were issues then too, something seemed less corporate and more community-minded. In this case, it may well have been some person in a third world country cancelling my article without any thought of whether it was logical or not.
   
   I don't really have more time to invest in HB at this point. Monthly money is what it is, but it's better than me adding another 5o articles and then being banned or whatever other unfortunate (for me) decision made by some nameless person somewhere on the other side of my account.

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      Kyler J Falkposted 2 years agoin reply to this

      To be fair, Matt fixed the issue.

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         Mr Ratayposted 2 years agoin reply to this

         I didn't understand this post. What was fixed?

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            Kyler J Falkposted 2 years agoin reply to this

            Everything should be reactivated and republished, according to Matt.

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               BEAGOLDBUYERdotposted 2 years agoin reply to this

               Kyler, I haven't used the forum before, since a decade ago, so maybe everybody else knows the answer to this. But how do you know Matt and what he did? And how come I haven't received an email to explain anything about why there was no warning, about why it was reinstated, and about whether it's actually the same url as before?

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                  Kyler J Falkposted 2 years agoin reply to this

                  Matt's reply to you is within this forum post. I'll copy and paste it for you here:
                  
                  Matt Wells: Your account has been reactivated and I have published your article. We apologize for the error.
                  
                  The URL should be the same as before.
                  
                  By all appearances, the issue has been resolved. If the article was deindexed in the time it took to resolve the issue, you have my sympathy.

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      Jodahposted 2 years agoin reply to this

      HubPages never was Squiddoo. They just purchased it and let everyone transfer their work here. But, HubPages also use to be more community-minded and less corporate before being taken over by Maven.

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   charleskikasposted 2 years ago

   Can you post the article here. I'm curious and would like to read the famous article....

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      Mr Ratayposted 2 years agoin reply to this

      I can't. I said in the first post: I logged in and saw it had been unpublished. Didn't understand why. Tried to edit a word or so and then republish, but there was no button to publish. So I tried to post in the forum but it wouldn't give me access. So I wrote support and then logged in this account to post and ask what was going on.
      
      Meanwhile, support wrote back the reply I showed.

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    Mr Ratayposted 2 years ago

    Also, fwiw, here's a screenshot from the account...
    

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