jaylar
If you go back to the years 2006 – 2010 saying Hubpages was one of the best publishing sites on the Internet was true. It paid, and paid fairly well. It had so many great items that you’d find them in Stumbles (that is the site Stumbleupon.com which was a very good omni site that was covered on ‘Click’, the BBC technology program.)
In 2010 there was a problem with Hubpages. So-called ‘writers’ learned how to trick. They’d find the ‘trending’ items and pop one into their ‘blue print’.
There would be an article on Monday titled “The Importance of Exercise” which would read something like;
“All over the world people are talking about Exercise. You have probably considered starting an Exercise program. Exercise is nothing to be afraid of. Everyone can do some kind of Exercise….”
The article would go on for 1k words, with lots of images, and say nothing. It would repeat empty phrases over and again with the word ‘Excercise.’
A ‘Google’ or other search for ‘Exercise’ would rank that article first, because it used the word ‘Exercise’ so many times.
On Tuesday the trending word was ‘Vegan’ and the exact same article would be posted with the word ‘Exercise’ replaced by ‘Vegan’.
It would read “All over the world people are talking about Vegan Diet. You have probably considered starting a Vegan Diet. Vegan Diet is nothing to be afraid of. Everyone can have some kind of Vegan Diet…”
and go on for 1k with lots of images but say nothing.
As Google wanted to introduce its own non-paying publishing site called Knol
To get people to write for free, when there were so many paying sites Google decided to destroy paying sites by marking them as ‘Content Farms’.
In some cases, (as I mentioned with Hubpages) the epithet was true. They didn’t properly moderate their site, (and still don’t because it is all A.I.) which allowed empty Content to appear.
<a href="http://www.idealaunch.com/blog/content/content-marketing-round-up-22/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Source</a>
When Google labeled a site a ‘Content Farm’ it began with ‘minus’ points. All articles on that site were dropped to the back of the queue so that the items on Exercise or Vegan Diet would appear last because they were on Hubpages.
No matter what was on Hubpages, it scored low because it was on Hubpages.
At the introduction of Google’s Panda in February 2011, which attacked on line paying publishing sites as ‘Content Farms’ hits dropped. Many good sites closed.
Hubpages continued but pays very little and it’s A.I. slaps down a lot of excellent items for ‘Spammy’ elements.
Further, it demands so much work for such little pay it should have, by all rights closed.
It didn’t, because many people found a special use for it; Storage.
