Happy Thursday, Hubbers! Today I’d like to announce some updates to the HubScore algorithm. As you may already know, HubScore is the score that is assigned to an individual Hub. It is displayed privately in My Account > Statistics and is not visible to other Hubbers or search visitors. Up until fairly recently, HubScore was intended to measure both a Hub’s quality and activity— things like the amount of traffic it receives, comments, shares, and Hub Feedback. These days, we want HubScore to be mostly a reflection of the quality of a Hub and not the amount of traffic it receives. Sometimes those two things are correlated, but many times they are not.
Before I get into the changes, I want to highlight the fact that HubScores and the factors used to compute them are updated regularly to improve their accuracy and usefulness. Please expect fluctuations— both HubScore and Hubber Score are dynamic and will change often, particularly as we collect more information about your Hubs. Apart from fluctuations, there may also be anomalies from time to time. Anomalies are more common with HubScore than with Hubber Score. This is because we have more data at the account level, so Hubber Scores tend to be more reliable and stable overall.
Please keep in mind that HubScore was never intended to be be looked at in a vacuum or as a grade for a particular Hub. In fact, it’s much more useful to look at the range of scores across all of your Hubs so that you can prioritize the ones that need improvement (when reviewing your lowest-scoring Hubs, for instance, consider whether they are making readers happy; is there something you can change to do a better job at answering their queries?) To further illustrate this point, please take a look at the distribution of HubScores across all published Hubs on HubPages:
As you can see, a score of 70 is above average and considered pretty good! OK, so what are these changes to HubScore? The table below shows the factors that made up HubScore before the update, the factors that will be deemphasized as part of the update (i.e., traffic), and factors that will be emphasized as part of the update.
If you notice your HubScores adjust in the next few days, it is probably a result of this update. And since HubScores are used in calculating Hubber Scores, the latter might change as well. We just want to give you a heads-up so that you don’t worry if/when you notice your scores change
That’s it for now!
HubPages Blog 
Thank you for this welcomed change. Since writers have little control over the traffic we receive on the site, other than through our quality of writing, this is a good move.
Does this mean the hub score will be more stable and stop jumping up and down like a yo-yo?
My concern with the changes is the actual effect that reader interaction will have on the hub. Most organic readers don’t vote or leave comments, so I don;t think it’s fair to use those parameters.
I don’t think the overall Hubber score should be used when evaluating individual hubs. It may lock a writer inside certain parameters with difficulty to advance.
Yes, that is a good move indeed 😉
@cardisa those are just a couple of the factors we use to compute reader satisfaction. We use the data available, and if we don’t have it for a particular Hub, then that Hub’s HubScore is mostly a reflection of the QAP component of quality. In other words, if a Hub does not have meaningful data on reader interaction, we will not try to penalize its HubScore.
@Sue Adams it should be a little more stable for some Hubs, I hope. HubScores have always been (and will continue to be) less stable than Hubber Scores because we have less data at the Hub level than we do at the account level.
nice info for me 🙂
Is quality of writing–spelling, punctuation, syntax, etc. ever taken into consideration? I see many hubs that could greatly benefit from a 5-minute editorial review, yet the author’s Hub score is greater than or equal to mine. I provide excellent content, but my topics are not the type that will generate a great deal of interest to the masses (I write about food–history, culture, recipes, etc.).
Hi Linda,
I write on many of the same subjects myself. 🙂
Yes, writing is indeed taken into account, though one or two typos will not make or break your HubScore. But in general, yes, spelling and grammar usage are both important contributors to HubScore.