There has been a great deal of attention to changes to Google’s search algorithm and I know that many of you have been wondering about changes in Google traffic to your Hubs. As a community of writers that owns their own content, we know how invested each of you are in your corner of HubPages, especially when you’ve gone the extra mile to publish great Hubs.
So far we haven’t seen this change consistently drive traffic to better-quality Hubs. On one hand, some of our best content has seen a drop in traffic; simultaneously, we have seen traffic rise on Hubs that are just as great. We are taking this seriously — behind the scenes, we have been crunching data and focusing on making sure that we are doing everything right from our side. We have an editorial policy and internal system that rewards original useful content, and this aligns with what Google wants, too.
We have several internal quality metrics that make up HubScore and we have deeply analyzed things like content length, view duration, Hub Hopper ratings, and HubScore. These elements have been compared to changes in Google referrals, and again, based on the way we rate content quality, the fluctuation so far looks random at this stage of the update.
We believe that a change of this size will take a settling-in period. We have reached out to Google and will continue to study the update. As part of our process, we strive to have the highest quality site, and to create the most rewarding place for people to publish online. We are all on the side of good content and we have no doubt that your great Hubs will rise again in traffic.
We will continue to keep you posted.
HubPages Blog 
Thank you for the update. I’m not going to worry my head about traffic just a few days after the change – like all updates Google can never be sure if it will work the way they want without real time experimentation, so I’m sure there are many kinks they are still ironing out.
My traffic was down last week but it’s slowly climbing back up again.
I just hope that more members read this post – many are wildly speculating without any knowledge.
I appreciate the update Paul, as I am sure many others will too when they find it.
Yes, thank you for taking the time to keep us updated on what HubPages is doing behind the scenes.
I’m happy to hear you have contacted Google. That shows HubPages cares about quality and is willing to make changes as needed. Of course we all know this already.
It is very difficult to know what, if anything, needs to be done. Rash changes are not indicated, but it is also hard to do nothing.
I’m sure most of us understand this. It isn’t easy, is it?
Thanks, Paul. Seems to me, based on my experience, that algorithms can only go so far in determining internet publication quality and what significant numbers of people are interested in watching, whether it be original writing, photographs or aggregations of already published information on a particular topic. There is no substitute for excellent editing, but I suppose algorithms are the only way to deal with the incredible volumes of material with which HubPages and Google Search must deal. It will be interesting to see how this works out. I’m betting that HubPages will ultimately come out on top because of the integrity of its people and quality goals..
The primary goal is to make sure we really understand the changes.
Thanks for the update. I am not seeing any improvement in the traffic from google.com source (instead seen more than 50% drop in traffic) after google algorithm launched in US first.
Yes the primary goal is to understand what google expect from us and we need to do something before the algorithm is expanded to all other places.
Please feel free to peruse my open letter and the comments to see that we are right behind you http://hubpages.com/hub/A-Letter-In-Support-of-Hubpages
I am confident in Hubpages team working through this and finding the best solution. 🙂
I look forward to learning more as Google settles into its new algorithm.
Thanks Paul
I am no expert in search engine algorithms, but this whole thing seems more political than content-quality driven. I know my good content from my bad content – and my good content has been extremely hard hit – as I am sure you know.
If there is anything I personally can do – all you have to do is ask – I am sure a lot of other people feel the same way and if there is something as a community we can do – I am sure a lot of us will get behind whatever needs doing.
Thanks for the continued updates from HubPages. I suppose the randomness of Google’s update and its effect on content will take some time to sort itself out.
Just showing a little support for my HubPages crew. Here’s hoping the guys at Google get their stuff figured out.
‘Tis but a small bump in the road 😉
There are excellent articles on HubPages, and lots of trash which needs weeding out. I’ve just flagged another hub with terrible English, probably spun PLR, with duplicates all over the web.
I fully support the staff in doing all they can but as long as there are so many bad hubs I fear we may all suffer.
Thank you for the update HubPages. We do appreciate the effort you guys are making to keep on top of this Google issue.
It also rests our minds that the issue is being addressed, and gives us the confidence that we’ll be OK.
It wont stop me from writing and i’m sure many agree.
This will pass.
I am confident that the cream will rise to the top again. You can only do what you can do. We have great content writers. It’s a shame that some quality hubs are dropping. It’s also happening on Squidoo, with many quality lenses dropping in favor of worse lenses on more popular and trending topics. I haven’t had too much time to go searching Google for my own pages yet to see what’s happened to them. It will be interesting to watch all this play out.
Hi Paul,
Thanks for the update on the new algorithm and the anticipated effects on Hubpages. I just signed up on your site today but have been lurking about for guite a while. I believe that all the integrity and quality content here will survive the test of time relative to Google because it provides exactly what they are looking for, good original content.
Thanks
akoebel
Thank you for the updates. So far there was no significant change on my hubs and I hope this Google update will not mess things up too much. After all I believe we all invested a bunch of time into creating quality hubs and it would be sad to find out it was wasted. But I am optimistic.
I have a lot of hubs. Good quality hubs. I owned many page 1 spots. Now they’re page 5-6. G slapped hubs (at least they were kind enough to not de-index them).
I can say I don’t blame them. There are so many spammers posting 300 words of spun content and a backlink. Most of these don’t rank, but they’re indexed; which is all they want – an indexed backlink. G doesn’t like this. So we all suffer.
Could there be a red flag system for gibberish names and 1-5 hubs? Captcha isn’t enough as there are services to bust this.
At ay rate, G just wants extra proof that your page/hub is page 1 worthy by getting more backlinks from worthy pages. That’s the only thing that’s going to save hubs; good content or not.
But, I don’t think I have the confidence in hubs getting de-slapped by G. Look what happened to Squidoo. They are effectively dead.
It was fun while it lasted…some good money was made…
Best…