What is going on at Hubpages Have they had a google penalty applied?
I really, really like hubpages and have been using them for several years, but there is something fishy going on over there. I cannot claim to be a “google guru,” who can predict what google do or do not do to their search algorithm, but….. And this is a big but. For the first time in two years, I am seeing a steady drop in traffic to my hubpages.
And it is a steady drop in certain niches only which are all related. In fact, it is so steady I decided to check some of my pages that were performing reasonably well and discovered that they have been removed from the google index completely. And these unfortunately were one of the backbones of the pages I used in making money with hubpages.
I must admit – I have had this happen to webpages in the past, but it was usually some short time after initial publishing, and after the initial surge of traffic when google “discovers” new content. A few weeks spent building links usually fixed the problem, and I found that the longer they were de-indexed, the stronger they were when they came back.
This time it is different. These are well-established, older pages (some as much as two years old) that have well established incoming links and were generating traffic. No more – slowly any pages related to certain high-paying real estate related subjects have all been de-indexed and I suspect that hubpages has had a google penalty applied to these niche subjects.
I think it has something to do with hubpages’ recent aggressive drive to create lots and lots of new content with the 100 hubs in 30 days hubchallenge – which I took part in and initially thought was a good idea. The level of crap being dumped into certain subjects and the sheer amount of new pages in the “tempting” niches has apparently triggered something with big G.
Which – as far as I am concerned, negates some of the advantages that hubpages has over my own sites. In the past I found it financially beneficial to use hubpages for the relative ease with which pages were found and ranked compared to a stand-alone site. Frankly – it was worth giving up 60% of the income for that ease. And – yes, I know hubpages only takes 40% - but they actually take 60%.
Now – I am not so sure if they are an advantageous site to use in certain niches. Any one else experiencing the same issues?



