ArtsAutosBooksBusinessEducationEntertainmentFamilyFashionFoodGamesGenderHealthHolidaysHomeHubPagesPersonal FinancePetsPoliticsReligionSportsTechnologyTravel

How to get your hubpages subdomain out of the Google Panda penalty box

Updated on October 1, 2014

The Google Panda update was the biggest shake up to Google's algorithm since the Florida update of 2003. Hundreds of websites saw their search rankings fall sharply, including Hubpages, which was deemed a "content farm" and hurt particularly hard by Panda.

Hubpages fought back and decided to put all their authors on subdomains - that way, good authors wouldn't be contaminated by the bad authors. And sure enough, some authors (including me) have experienced sustained surges in traffic. But some authors, who can by no means be characterised as "bad", experienced falls. What was going on?

Google is just a bot

The first thing people need to understand is that Google hasn't yet developed Artificial Intelligence. Their machines can't assess a quality piece of prose the way a human can. As far as I know, no one at Google can do telepathy, magic nor has alien powers either.

All the bot can do is look at a domain or sub-domain and compare it's metrics to those of known spam sites.

In a nutshell, Google uses human raters to identify spam sites, and then uses these as a benchmark. If your site has similar characteristics to a spam site, then down you go!

You can be innocent as anything - but if a spammer decides to build their sites using techniques identical to yours, you need to watch out. Part of the reason SEO is ever changing is that the spammers constantly adopt and borrow techniques to disguise the fact that they are spammers, and as Google catches up with them and bans the techniques in their algorithm, innocent people get caught out simply because they haven't moved fast enough to adapt to changing conditions.

"Your honour, I've been using this technique since 1999" doesn't wash in an internet world that moves at warp speed and expects all it's participants to adapt quickly.

The key to staying safe online as a webmaster is making sure that your site or sub-domain does not conform to any pattern that the algo has identified as spammy.


What is a thin affiliate site?

As it happens, we have a leaked document from Google designed to help their quality raters, dating from 2007. Here it is.

Here's what they had to say about thin affiliate sites:

Spammers make money when a transaction is completed after the user has clicked through to the “real” merchant site from the affiliate page.

After you have clicked through you will see you are on a different URL or right-clicking on an image on the original page may reveal the URL of the affiliate. You may also be re-directed through a third party domain. A common type of thin affiliate spam is “hotel” spam, where you land on one page but are taken to a different domain when you attempt to complete the transaction. Amazon and eBay are also highly associated with this type of spam

It is unlikely they have softened this viewpoint as time has passed. On the contrary, their view of what they think of as thin affiliates has probably hardened.

So - they are clearly profiling sites that link out to Amazon and eBay.

Does your subdomain only link out to Amazon and eBay? If so, your profile will look similar to those autoblogs that use wp-robot or other auto-plugins to produce hundreds of amazon pages and nothing else.

I've seen some hubs with about 12-15 products listed per hub. This means a total of 24-30 amazon links per hub (as there is one link on the image and one link on the text). If you have a 100 hubs like this, this means your subdomain links out to Amazon 2400-3000 times.

Do you have anything to offset this? Links to other sites? Links to other affiliates? You need to make sure that your total outgoing links to Amazon/eBay are no more than 80%. So if you have a total 2000 links out to Amazon on your sub-domain, then you need 400 links out to other sites. Even that might be generous given the contempt G has towards affiliate sites.

This means either reducing the number of products that you feature in your hubs, or writing additional hubs that are informational and link to other trusted sites, to dilute the Amazon/eBay effect on your sub-domain. Link out to the main newspapers, link out to sites you own, link out to relevant sources. Linking out is good! It's what the web is based on.

If a good proportion of your subdomain is not amazon/ebay at all, you will definitely not fit the profile of a thin affiliate site, and you won't have been dinged.



Incoming links aka backlinks

If you have thousands of links out to amazon, do you have incoming links to balance this? And no, I don't mean links from other subdomains - they will have the same IP address as your own subdomain, and when it comes to backlinks, Google is looking for IP diversity. I mean links from other IP addresses.

I know that some people have reported that Hubpages is weird about people building backlinks and deliberately unpublishes those who do. However, relying on links from a single IP address (hubpages) is potentially a road to the back end of the SERPs.

So build some links, even some mild bookmarking on some do-follow sites should help produce a profile of diverse IP addresses linking in.

Conclusion

Google relies on profiling and pattern matching to catch out those they think of as undesirable spammers.

The key to survival on the net is to make sure that you don't conform to any pattern that others set, don't follow the crowd.. Zig when eveyone else is zagging and you will have a Merry Christmas!

working

This website uses cookies

As a user in the EEA, your approval is needed on a few things. To provide a better website experience, hubpages.com uses cookies (and other similar technologies) and may collect, process, and share personal data. Please choose which areas of our service you consent to our doing so.

For more information on managing or withdrawing consents and how we handle data, visit our Privacy Policy at: https://corp.maven.io/privacy-policy

Show Details
Necessary
HubPages Device IDThis is used to identify particular browsers or devices when the access the service, and is used for security reasons.
LoginThis is necessary to sign in to the HubPages Service.
Google RecaptchaThis is used to prevent bots and spam. (Privacy Policy)
AkismetThis is used to detect comment spam. (Privacy Policy)
HubPages Google AnalyticsThis is used to provide data on traffic to our website, all personally identifyable data is anonymized. (Privacy Policy)
HubPages Traffic PixelThis is used to collect data on traffic to articles and other pages on our site. Unless you are signed in to a HubPages account, all personally identifiable information is anonymized.
Amazon Web ServicesThis is a cloud services platform that we used to host our service. (Privacy Policy)
CloudflareThis is a cloud CDN service that we use to efficiently deliver files required for our service to operate such as javascript, cascading style sheets, images, and videos. (Privacy Policy)
Google Hosted LibrariesJavascript software libraries such as jQuery are loaded at endpoints on the googleapis.com or gstatic.com domains, for performance and efficiency reasons. (Privacy Policy)
Features
Google Custom SearchThis is feature allows you to search the site. (Privacy Policy)
Google MapsSome articles have Google Maps embedded in them. (Privacy Policy)
Google ChartsThis is used to display charts and graphs on articles and the author center. (Privacy Policy)
Google AdSense Host APIThis service allows you to sign up for or associate a Google AdSense account with HubPages, so that you can earn money from ads on your articles. No data is shared unless you engage with this feature. (Privacy Policy)
Google YouTubeSome articles have YouTube videos embedded in them. (Privacy Policy)
VimeoSome articles have Vimeo videos embedded in them. (Privacy Policy)
PaypalThis is used for a registered author who enrolls in the HubPages Earnings program and requests to be paid via PayPal. No data is shared with Paypal unless you engage with this feature. (Privacy Policy)
Facebook LoginYou can use this to streamline signing up for, or signing in to your Hubpages account. No data is shared with Facebook unless you engage with this feature. (Privacy Policy)
MavenThis supports the Maven widget and search functionality. (Privacy Policy)
Marketing
Google AdSenseThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
Google DoubleClickGoogle provides ad serving technology and runs an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
Index ExchangeThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
SovrnThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
Facebook AdsThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
Amazon Unified Ad MarketplaceThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
AppNexusThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
OpenxThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
Rubicon ProjectThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
TripleLiftThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
Say MediaWe partner with Say Media to deliver ad campaigns on our sites. (Privacy Policy)
Remarketing PixelsWe may use remarketing pixels from advertising networks such as Google AdWords, Bing Ads, and Facebook in order to advertise the HubPages Service to people that have visited our sites.
Conversion Tracking PixelsWe may use conversion tracking pixels from advertising networks such as Google AdWords, Bing Ads, and Facebook in order to identify when an advertisement has successfully resulted in the desired action, such as signing up for the HubPages Service or publishing an article on the HubPages Service.
Statistics
Author Google AnalyticsThis is used to provide traffic data and reports to the authors of articles on the HubPages Service. (Privacy Policy)
ComscoreComScore is a media measurement and analytics company providing marketing data and analytics to enterprises, media and advertising agencies, and publishers. Non-consent will result in ComScore only processing obfuscated personal data. (Privacy Policy)
Amazon Tracking PixelSome articles display amazon products as part of the Amazon Affiliate program, this pixel provides traffic statistics for those products (Privacy Policy)
ClickscoThis is a data management platform studying reader behavior (Privacy Policy)