As many Hubbers knew, a Google search algorithm update which rolled out this spring (dubbed the Panda update) hurt just about everyone’s traffic. The problem was that the poor quality of some Hubs on the site hurt everyone’s reputation. About a month ago, Paul posted a blog post and forum post recapping our response to the Google Panda algorithm update (which included raising site standards) and announcing our test of moving Hubber accounts to subdomains (which should allow each author to be judged by Google separately).
To test the success of moving accounts to subdomains, we ported over several accounts over with the expectation of some traffic improvement based on an earlier experiment, but with the understanding that there was some risk involved. We have concluded the test, and after 2 weeks of observing Google’s response, we saw a dramatic recovery among many accounts, validating the decision to move each Hubber’s account under his/her own subdomain. We expect that, with the move, some accounts will recover traffic, while others won’t.
- Selecting your subdomain, and
- Activating the move.
What will your subdomain be? In most cases, it will be your username, or your username without spaces, periods, underscores, or other characters that we’ve allowed for usernames but are not possible in subdomains. For example, the subdomain for the account Paul Edmondson is pauledmondson.hubpages.com. If the subdomain most similar to your username is not available, then we’ll present another option that is also similar, or allow you to suggest a few options based closely on your username.
The Your Subdomain page will be available for about a week or so, after which we will automatically assign you a subdomain based on your username. Please use the Tool before August 10, so you can be sure your subdomain is the one you want.
One bonus benefit of this subdomain shift is that your username gets much more visibility on your Hubs, as it will appear in each Hub URL. This means that in addition to allowing you to build an online reputation that is unique to your Hubs alone (and hopefully get more traffic), your subdomain allows you to turn your profile on HubPages into something that will more adequately showcase your personal brand.
We hope you are happy with the change and see a healthy recovery in your traffic if your account was adversely affected by the Panda update.
HubPages Blog 
I definitely like this! Subdomains sound like a dramatic improvement. I publish HUBs under two different usernames. Putting the username in the HUBs, will make things much easier. HUBPages has very good management and staff. You folks really put your heads together and come up with great ideas, great solutions and you keep moving yourselves and everyone else forward. I can’t believe that you all were around for such a long time and I never knew about you. Anyway thanks to an eMail from my pal Daniel Scocco (“Daily Blog Tips”), I signed up to write HUBs. The rest is history.
Just want to know if related pages on different subdomains (i.e. by different users) will be automatically linked to one another like it is done for hubs.
thank you for the help
So glad to hear it, Treathyl FOX! And I’m so happy you’re pleased with HubPages.
And good question, anish! This will definitely be the case, though the related Hubs that will show up will be featured only if they have a certain HubScore, so low quality articles will not be linked to.
This is unquestionably a masterstroke and the best way of addressing Panda I have seen, by a distance. In the (four or five?) days since I switched to my new subdomain, I have seen very interesting things happening with my traffic, including one Hub in particular which has just exploded to life. Traffic is significantly up, earnings are significantly up and the future is looking good.
Thank you to everyone at Hub Pages for what must have been a lot of hard work, in really gloomy and depressing times.
Thank you, Gordon! Hope your traffic continues to climb. 🙂
Get it while it’s hot! Fresh off the hubpages grill =)
Thanks For your update for this…..really hub pages employee and management are too good…
Thanks for the great and fresh updates about google algorithm
got my new subdomain looking forward to seeing if the traffic picks up
Hubpages has been great so far. I have only been a member for a short time and written a few articles. It’s so great to see Hubpages doing something in response to the Panda update, rather than just sitting back and hoping it gets better.
If we are now required to establish the reputation of our sub-domains then won’t it be better to just switch to blogger where we will get !00% of our revenue? What I mean is that the reason a author will be attracted to hubpages is the reputation of this site which will get his hub a good ranking in search results but as sub-domains are like new websites which need hardwork to get a reputation I believe it will loose its sheen for existing as well as new publishers.
Ok so I just made the move! Was hoping I’d have an option to possibly use my real name though.
Lets hope this increases traffic as I really need it, I’ve never seen my traffic so low.
Best of luck everyone!
Cheers,
Iontach
Great news. Will this change our widget?
It shouldn’t, Robert Dickens. And all links to your old profile and Hub URLs will redirect to the new ones.
Man, now all of my hub urls (and everyone else’s) are ugly. Well, let’s hope they rank better.
Some idiot who doesn’t even write any hubs stole my subdomain. Any way to claim it back. I don’t want a hyphen in there…but that’s what I got stuck with. The other “Chris Crow” doesn’t even write any hubs!
Chris – Those who had a name without spaces got automatically assigned a subdomain with the same. You could try appealing with team@hubpages to see if they’d make an exception in your case. – Jason
I think providing subdomains to every hubber is a great step in terms of highlighting the individual credibility of the authors. This is a very efficient way of maintaining the online presence.
when I got the email, I thought I was being punished, sent to the basement of hubpages for inappropriate pages and not enough entries. My own paranoia.
this I hope is a good thing. I’m too new to really know.
Hi,
WHAT IS A HUB? Does this affect my e-mail address in any way? Frankly I have no desire to have anything except my e-mail address. I really don’t think I want a HUB page (whatever it is), Since when have I been a Hubber????? and what is my present address????
Please elucidate.
Bob
Hi Bob. A Hub is an online article published on HubPages. HubPages has nothing to do with your email address, unless you’ve created a HubPages account and asked to have notifications sent to your email address. Hope that helps!