I couldn't help myself. I had to read this. I love his quote in Tribes, especially the last sentence, "I'm betting some of you, the best of you, will follow me.' " I hope he doesn't bet too much on that one. The revenue chart is enlightening for sure. I always wondered how many people were not earning a penny there and it turns out a whole lot of them, which I had surmised anyway.

Interesting analysis, very thorough. The impact to date seems to be all in HP's favor.

I think after reading your history of Squidoo, it should make all of us here on HubPages feel that much more fortunate that we are here and not there. I do realize some members have written for both sites, and have some allegiance to one or the other. Squidoo may have had its good points when it started out, but clearly from reading your article, something went off the rails.

I read the words "opinion content" and "reviews" in some of the links I clicked which I'm assuming the site was primarily that type of writing? We get enough of those spammy types of articles here on HP mostly because of blast advertising that says HP is a good place to advertise a business. How that computes is beyond me. I don't get that.

I don't care to see articles advertising a business, but I don't mind reading articles that "review" a business. I do think that content is king and that if a site is to be successful, it should limit those types of articles to so much of a percentage per day/week/month so the site is not flooded with them to the detriment of all other content.

I used to do hub hopping but stopped because of the many business adverts articles. I've been reading some pretty fine writing from some Squidoo writers and I hope to see more. But I hope those who write business adverts realize that there is no money to be made here with that type of writing. HP is not a consumer's first "go to" place to look for someone to do their taxes or a contractor to put in a new bathroom for them. I don't even want to address money making schemes.

Writer Fox, this was a well disseminated article that explained the Squidoo concept, the move and what the members of the site had to endure.

I can assure all Squidoo members that HubPages is not only a step up, but several levels up. If you have experienced any of the Quality Control measures or what needs to be done to be featured on this site, you now know that HubPages prides their content and wants you to do your best work. Following the rules with an open mind is key.

Welcome to all Squidoo writers. Unlike with Squidoo's management, I know you won't be disappointed by writing on this site.

Thank you Writer Fox for writing this article.

@ Linda - I'm with you on that. I think Seth has lost most of his appeal, certainly among former Squidoo writers. About the payments: I have a difficult time understanding why so many non-paid writers kept writing content for that site, hoping their efforts would pay off. I think they should have purchased lottery tickets instead.

@Eric - Time will tell. If all the imported content is like the examples written by Bonnie Diczhazy, it may well be the worst decision HP has ever made!

WF: I saw same thing. I am seeing a lot of that, but a lot of it from lensmasters could be that they haven't fixed everything yet. Some have 400, 600 lenses to do. The bad thing is that new hubbers will see pages like hers, and say Ok, this is how you do it, which is what happened, in part on Squidoo. I was terrible for making sales and while at Zujava, I was told, take your work to Squidoo and look at their lenses for examples. I learned how to do shower curtain lenses at Squidoo.

Hi Rachael: I very much appreciate your extensive comments here. While it is true that HP can still be used as a link drop site, an article must have valuable information for a visitor or it won't pass QAP. That's a huge difference from what was accepted on the Squidoo site.

I completely agree that HP is a much better site and the quality of content, though there is still room for improvement, is over-all much better than the content being imported from Squidoo. And the proof is in the traffic statistics. If the featured content on Squidoo at the time of the sale were high quality, that content would have received much higher traffic numbers.

One big difference in the HP editorial control is that every article is reviewed by human eyes, not just algorithms. That in itself goes a long way toward vetting the weeds from the flowers.

Thank you so much for your input!

WF: So a human does see every hub, but are they HP editors or Mechanical Turkers, and Hopper users.

Hi Linda: In researching the old posts on the Squidoo blog for this article, the links to the example of the bad shower curtain article no longer worked, so I don't know what it looked like or just how bad it was. However, the link to the "toilet seat" article still works; in fact, it is now on HP. (Groan!)

@Linda: They are MTurks, HP employees if need be, and Hoppers certainly. Lots of eyeballs!

I trust MT Turks as much as I do those who cannot write a clear sentence. I wonder how many use the Hub Hopper because they think if they do, the will get higher scores from it? I guess what it all boils down to reporting hubs that are not what HP has said it wants.

1. This is a detailed lesson to the HP's staff and and the whole HP community.

2. The HP's quality assessment system should be reviewed regularly to ensure quality.

3. We don't need another SG:)

Hi Barack:

HP is a different site because of the way revenue is shared with writers, the communication between staff and writers and the QAP process. That said, to take on 175,000 pages of Squidoo content before it has passed the QAP process, and leave it online for four months might just crash the good traffic numbers here. Time will tell. Thanks for your comment!

This is a very interesting article, and highlights the ability of the few to make money at the expense of the many. As a former Squidoo writer, I hope that moving all of the active content to HubPages does not have any negative impact, but rather increases traffic to the site from quality the quality articles posted there. I look forward to the QAP process review, and want my articles to meet and exceed the content quality requirements.

Hi Anthony, You've got the right attitude to be successful here. One thing about HubPages is that you will be paid fairly for your work and you are not in competition with anyone else to receive payments.

Like you, I hope this platform continues to have increased traffic, but only more quality content will cause that to happen.

Best of luck and thank you so much for taking the time to comment.

This is eye-opening. The system of the favored few, dishonoring commitments, lack of firm quality control and gamesmanship, leadership ego ego ego, and the lack of a sound business plan. And people wonder why a business fails? I have heard rumblings about what happened but never understood what it all entailed. Thank you for breaking it down. I would love to understand why writers stayed there when there were other options clearly available? I also fear what all those articles will do to HP. Voted up and more and sharing.

Thank you, Flourish. I know many writers don't understand what happened on Squidoo. I've read some good articles which have been transferred in – one of them by Anthony Altorenna, who commented above. But, I just saw another one with the same keyword stuffing I posted in the screenshot here. That Hub made it past QAP! I just reported it, but you wonder who was asleep at the switch when that came through?

It is scary that so much unvetted stuff is going to be published here for four months.

And, I know why the gamers stayed there; but, no, I don't understand why other people did with such an unfair payment system.

Thanks so much for sharing. I appreciate you!

I didn't know all of these facts even though I had an account over there. I had written only one lens and so wasn't too committed. If I had known all of this, I would have moved that one a long time ago.

Writer Fox, this was absolutely excellent. I tried Squidoo, just to have an alternative, but there were so many ups and downs. Thankfully, I only contributed a handful of articles.

One reason some people may have stayed is that the Squidoo writer community was very friendly and helpful. Also, some writers made a lot of money in affiliate sales there. Those that didn't seemed to just like the community.

I'm sad for the people that put a lot of effort into that site. At least they had the option of having their work transferred to a better platform.

@Barbara I don't think many HubPages writers understand what really happened there. I so glad you were never heavily invested there.

@Ologsinguito I agree that it is good for those writers that they had a place for their content to go. Their situation could have been a lot worse.

Since the information on affiliate sales was never made public, we can only guess about how significant that income was. Whatever it was, it wasn't enough to keep Squidoo afloat.

I hope for the best outcome for everyone; but, right now, I'm a little skeptical about importing content to HubPages which was failing on Google and bringing Squidoo to a financial disaster. And, I don't want the gamers from that site to bring those tactics here, either.

You really outdid yourself on this Writerfox; a lot went into this and had helped my understanding on it all. Glad now I never went there although I did consider it many times. So far HP is the place to be; even with some bad, it is the best there is.

Hi Writer Fox,

As always a professional detailed account of Squidoo and their issues. Your research appears on target in reporting to us and it is clearer and more understandable.

I have met some ex-Squidoo writers and read their hubs and I was very impressed with them.

I hope everything works out for all of us who love to write on HubPages and they will like their new home.

Have a great Sunday,

Bobbi Purvis

Excellent article. You know my feelings. Just for a little background I tried Squidoo a couple of times. The second time I had a bad feeling about the vibe there. The manipulation, the tiers, the opaqueness of payment, favoritism, game-playing - and all that stuff. As for the migrated content - we are all watching Quantcast.

A very well written, elaborate and informative article. Lack of Business ethics - I think that is the one that comes uppermost in the history of failure of Squidoo.

When I read this, I could not help comparing the way the site Helium went down. There too, the cause was almost same: Lack of business ethics.

C.V.Rajan

Wow...just...wow. I joined Squidoo in February and truly had no idea what was going on there. I got my first and last/only payment from Squidoo in July to the tune of about 3 bucks and change. Though I was aware that we were paid on a tier basis, I was completely clueless as to how that worked or that people were selling likes. That's pretty horrific.

Another thing that I WAS aware of - no page on Squidoo was eligible for payment until it was a month old. But pages were often featured on Lens of the Day during that time, meaning that that huge influx of hits didn't do the writer a drop of good, other than happy-feely stuff. I was very proud of my two purple stars (and I still think the articles that got them were and are darn good) but seeing a purple star on those two articles you linked to was disheartening.

One thing I DID love about Squidoo, and which kept me there (besides hoping to be paid for my writing eventually) was the community of writers there.

I also appreciated my Rocket Squid experience which certainly did encourage me to write some articles I might not have, but it makes me sad that in many cases, some of the tips they were giving turn out to be bad advice.

I will say that I was not pleased with the way we were constantly encouraged to add more and more Amazon links to our pages, especially in light of what I've now learned about Google algorithms since coming here. I'm now happily stripping unnecessary products from my articles and leaving in only the ones that are actually relevant.

As for QAP, I'm perfectly happy with that. As a writer, I want to put out the best quality content that I can. I don't see QAP as a problem. Thus far all my edited content has gone through without a hitch, and if anything doesn't then I'll realize the article needs some work.

Reading this article made me realize exactly how fortunate I am to have been forced into making the move to HP.

Very interesting and thorough; I never knew much about Squidoo before. I wonder at anyone's ability to keep writing there, while not getting paid.

Look at the furor over Bubblews and their seemingly random payment practices. It seems as though the Squidoo arrangement ("liking, commenting, paying some and not others) was a large part of the B business model. I was struck by their similarities. Clearly B could see that you could fail to pay people, and they would continue to provide your site with content and pageviews.

@Jackie I'm glad you had better judgment than to write on that site. HP is doing well so far, and I only hope it continues to do so. Much, however, is beyond our control and is up to ownership and the designated managers. Just keep writing the good articles you write because they will always have a place somewhere online without any changes.

Hi Bobbi: Thanks for the complements. The good writers from Squidoo will do well here, so long as HP quickly removes the spammy articles and their writers which have also transferred in from that site.

I think many of the ex-Squidoo writers will be surprised that they can earn real $$ here without playing games and deliberately denigrating other writers.

@C.V. Rajan I don't know much about the Helium site except that it will be offline as of December 15. Just another UGC that bit the dust. Just like any other business, a revenue-sharing website won't last long without treating its product-suppliers ethically. Good riddance, I say.

@Lionrhod: I'm so glad you found your way here. You will be paid all income from the day your Hubs appear online and you won't be in competition with anyone to receive the payment you have rightfully earned.

If QAP isn't a problem for you, you are already doing very well and can make a good payout every month if Google and/or social media likes your content as well.

Like you, I can't imagine why Bonnie Diczhazy gave herself that award for the two articles I referenced. (There were MANY, MANY more of hers which were similar which I didn't reference!) I'd be embarrassed for anyone to see something like that with my name attached, let along with a self-given award! By the way, right after I published this Hub, she followed me with her HP ID (linked to in this Hub). I hope she sees your comments here. And, if she cares to respond, I'll approve her comment unedited.

@ Solaras: I've never published on Bubblews. The payment structure on that site seems to be simple and clearly defined, but that means nothing if the site owners don't honor their own word. It's a Biblical commandment to pay workers their wages: "You shall give him his wage on his day and not let the sun set over it, for he is poor, and sets his heart on it, so that he should not cry out to God against you, and it become sin upon you."

They invite their own end.

@Mark Ewbie: I hear you, Mark. The transferred article I referenced above was removed from HP after I reported it. I'm still stupefied that it passed QAP. Those guys have about five seconds to evaluate an article for their 5¢ and all that keyword stuffing was at the very bottom of the article (exactly like the screenshot I posted in this article). It was totally missed by QAP and by the automatic filters. Scary!

You'll find that the manipulators are already well-involved on HP and they are the ones who are most vocal. I think they will quickly find their page-views will be diminished as well as their earnings. Their game-playing won't work here for long because they have to earn their own way and there are no payment tiers on HP.

In the meantime, like you, I'm seriously concerned about the state of HP with tens of thousands of pages of unvetted content uploaded overnight. Most of the Squidoo content has already transitioned, increasing HP's featured content by 52%. However, views have only increased by 30%, and many of those views can be attributed to the 25,815 new Hubbers from Squidoo.

Hope your other website is doing well.

WF: SSShhh!!! You aren't doing the "Happy Dance" which will get you banned from Squidoo Forums along with stupid email. LOL!

What I have noticed is that there are hubs, with the related hubs at the bottom, which we have no control over are showing How to write on Squidoo, How to put images on Squidoo, this Squidoo and that Squidoo. If that is not bad enough, the links are live and they take you to Hub Pages. If you go to the search engines, Squidoo has done nothing about getting themeselves, links etc out of search engines and I doubt if they will.

My other stuff doesn't do much but I didn't put so much effort in. Need to spread my wings a bit.

I had made that correlation between new content and views - it is starting not to stack up on Quantcast. Interesting week ahead.

As for the manipulators - oh yes I can see that. Anyhow it is a really good article WF.

Hi Linda. I've noticed that, too. All of those articles should be removed because they are totally irrelevant now.

Thanks again, Mark, for your comments and complements about this article.

My aunt published a few articles on the Squidoo site years ago, and was the leading author in eight topics with every article in the top 100 for their topics. She quickly learned about the payment system being controlled by other writers, especially those advertising their methodology and prowess on private Facebook groups – always at a price – and sabotaging the writers of articles which challenged theirs for the top payment rankings.

She once emailed me about her experiences on Squidoo: "The nachash are in that garden." The word 'nachash' is difficult to translate from modern Hebrew, but it is basically a reference to serpent vipers in the Garden of Eden and to witches.

Personally, I think you should syndicate your cartoons There's big money to be made in that and you don't have to worry about Google or decisions made by website owners!

Very informative, Writer Fox. Thank you for giving us the inside scoop and a better understanding of the Squidoo/HubPages merger. You've accomplished an amazing amount of research on all angles. I will definitely have to come back and read more deeply into the shop talk I really don't understand (lol), not because of your presentation, which is stellar. I'm just a bit out of the loop when it comes to all things internet and business/online-writing related. Voted up, useful, and interesting.

Hi Jan. I hope all is well with you. The demise of Squidoo didn't get much attention in the press, mostly due to the fact that Seth Godin is in the 'nobody-cares-department' these days.

As an online content writer and/or a website owner, there is much you can learn in studying the Squidoo story. Of course, one thing many of us writing on HubPages are concerned about is what this surge of unscreened content will do to this site.

Thanks for your comment and votes.

It's interesting to know and to understand what was done wrong at Squidoo that near to their failure. I have read a number of articles about this, and your hub is one of the best, with a very thorough and complete analysis.

Amazing research. I saw their thin “lenses”, full of Amazon products and personal links. They are very easily recognized and not fixed to HP standards (Hopefully they will be forced to do that). Unfortunately these ex-Squid writers have already started making cliques as former Angels, Giants, Tier1 dominants etc. If HP management doesn't act soon the platform will face the exact same problems as Squidoo did…

@Glenn: Hi Glenn, I appreciate your review and kind words.

@Othellos: Those types of Amazon-laden articles contributed to the crash of Squidoo. Like you, I hope they are quickly removed from HubPages.

As to the cliques, that kind of behavior has never existed before on HubPages and it is sad to see it imported from Squidoo. But, it is a result of the greed and backstabbing that the Squidoo payment system fostered. Those people don't seem to get the message that the payment structure on HP is quite different and that they are not in competition with other writers. Old habits die hard and, for some of those people, rudeness, sarcasm and ridicule have become a way of life. It's easy for others to see what they are, what they do, and that they are only supported by each other.

An interesting read. I joined up at Squidoo around the time it was first being Panda whacked as I had seen a few people being directed to my website via the platform and when I did some Google research found a lot of the "How to make money at Squidoo" articles mentioned. I slowly started writing over there but was never really in it for the money which was a good thing as the format of the tiers did seem unfair to me, especially when some dross would show up in the top tiers. I did however like the community feel of getting a like and as I never engaged in the behaviours mentioned, I did feel they were deserved. That said I think HP is a better outlet for my content and I am averaging higher earnings already. I just hope I don't get black listed as a Squidoo-er by long term HP authors and would much rather they give constructive feedback on my hubs if they could be improved.

This is very informative. I didn't know a lot about Squidoo. I was a member for two years and only wrote about a dozen articles there. I spent more time here at HP, because I preferred it. I think the stand-out info for me in this piece is the examination of the tier system they had.

I'd been trying to avoid this subject, I admit. But your article here is very enlightening.

Hi Stereomike: I'm glad you didn't like the "dross" on Squidoo, either. I'm glad you're making money on HP and that's usually a sign that you are writing quality articles here.

I don't think you have to worry about getting "black listed." Here you are known by the quality of your contributions and the company you keep.

If you want critiques on your articles, there is a place on the forum to ask for that advice and many people will help you there. Welcome to HubPages!

Hi Nate. I think most people writing on Squidoo just gave up trying to be paid by the tier system, and most people don't want any part of the sociopathic behavior that some people displayed to remain in the top tier. The good and the bad, articles and people, transitioned here.

As Mark Ewbie commented on another Hub, it's the people who wrote 600 articles containing nothing but product links that is of concern to most people at HubPages because those articles are now online here, in full view of search engines. And, this is a concern about what Google might do to rankings as a whole.

http://hubpages.com/literature/The-Poisonous-Ones-...

Thank you for your comments and I'm glad you found this Hub enlightening.

An interesting take on what happened. You history ads interesting content to other articles that talk mostly about the final crash.

Thanks for the well-researched and ambitious effort.

Thanks David. There was a lot which led up to that final crash, both on the part of management and of abusers on the site. Ultimately, the fault for a business failure lies in the management. (How can an article receiving only 20 views a month be considered one of the best out of 400,000??)

The Squidoo site is now the best example of how NOT to run a UGC site.

I've been with both Hubpages and Squidoo (as Everyday Miracles and EverydayMiracles) from the beginning of my adventures writing online. I started out here and decided not to put all my eggs in one basket, so expanded to Squidoo. For a long time I found it virtually impossible to earn money here on Hubpages, but I did relatively well on Squidoo -- or at least I thought so at the time, since the few pennies I made a month on Hubpages were a pittance and I'd never reach payout at that rate.

That was six years ago.

When I first joined Squidoo, I did it because I wanted somewhere to write intellectual articles. You may note that if you look at my Everyday Miracles account here on Hubpages, the content is primarily related to religious issues. At the time I was a new Christian looking for a forum and didn't understand the nature of internet traffic. Clearly I wasn't doing myself any favors with my content.

The historical articles that I wrote on Squidoo did quite well, and of the five or so that I initially published, I believe three earned Purple Stars (an award given for superior articles). That was something to be proud of, but I didn't start to earn honestly until I began writing about The Sims (3), and then about The Hunger Games.

Both were new at the time, and I was one of the first writers to touch these subjects.

Not long after the Hunger Games movie was released (the first movie), my traffic started to drop as more and more writers joined the fray. My opinion is that my articles were superior and more informative. While the content on THG Fan here on Hubpages is far superior to the content I wrote at the time on Squidoo, they do reflect my ability to thoughtfully analyze the narrative.

"Gift guides" and "party guides" drowned my Purple Star lenses, probably because of the type of "gaming" your hub here refers to. The lenses in question were lacking in content while mine were rich.

Then my Purple Star lenses got unpublished for being "low quality." Rich lenses, full of content analyzing characters and discussing the story of The Hunger Games were unpublished and I was only told that they were "low quality." Most of them had limited promotional content, and the image use was (to my knowledge) entirely legal.

Needless to say, I was devastated, and I never returned to Squidoo again. I work my tail off here on Hubpages when I'm actively writing, to provide informative, well researched articles on a number of subjects. I have multiple niche accounts for the topics on which I cover thoroughly (pregnancy, holidays and celebrations [plus gift guides, I'll admit!], The Hunger Games [and Divergent, and Battle Royale], and The Sims 4). I've won several hubs of the day (I believe my last count was six) and I'm earning enough to make me confident but not happy with the amount that I bring in.

But I'll stick to Hubpages because thus far I feel that the decisions that have been made for this site have been in its best interest. I don't always understand or agree with the staff's decisions, but for the most part, those decisions work out in the favor of the writers here, and that's the way that it should be.

Sorry for being so long-winded. I've wanted to vent about this for a while and you gave me a platform.

Seth Godin: The Man Behind the Shower Curtain

Good read. I don't know what your biggest anti-fan found so bad about it, but be sure to thank her for giving you free advertising on the forum. I wouldn't have seen it if it weren't for her.

One thing I disagree with is what you said at the beginning "For the month of June, that 50% payment equaled just $18,640 – hardly enough to pay the salaries of Squidoo's 15 managers and employees." They might only have been making peanuts with Adsense, but the name of the game at Squidoo was always Amazon affiliate commissions. With that, they were making much more than $18,000 or so.

In fact, Amazon is so much more lucrative than Adsense it's a waste to do most of your affiliate marketing on a revenue sharing site, rather than on your own site where you won't have to split the commissions (or scramble to edit your articles to comply with ever-changing rules.)

Thank you for shedding light on this situation. I was a member of Squidoo for a couple years, but didn't understand all of the mechanics going on in the background. I became disgusted by the "calls for content" asking for short product reviews so I just quite writing in January. I also noticed some favoritism with certain "high ranked" members going on over at Squidoo, which was a bit frustrating.

After I found out about the Hub Pages transition, I have been working on my hubs and making them better by Hub Pages standards. I am actually excited to be writing again!

Thanks for putting information out there on a situation I didn't know much about or understand.

Hi, this is a really detailed account of what happened, it seems to me that it had been hanging by a thread for quite some time. I hope that some of the bad content, as you said, doesn't get passed over to here. I have noticed how people are saying that the original hubbers are losing lots of views a day, I hope its just a glitch as we go through the change here, and not a long term problem.

I'd like to make a small correction - external traffic was certainly a factor in lensrank, even if it wasn't the only one. My highest-ranking lens was hovering around top 10 for a long time, all thanks to massive Google traffic. It didn't get a lot of likes or blessings.

Back in the day, I often posted on SquidU arguing that the effect of likes on lensrank should be lessened or removed entirely. I think the common argument was that it was to help well-written lenses with little external traffic to rise in rank and show off the quality of the site. We all know how well that worked...

@Rebecca

Hi Rebecca,

I appreciate your lengthy comment about your experiences on both Squidoo and HubPages and I thank you for taking the time to post here.

When you mention that your award-winning articles got unpublished for "low quality", that echoes many, many other writers' experiences on Squidoo as well. I am familiar with many of your articles on HubPages and the ones I have read are quite good and get tons of traffic from Google. If these are indicative of your "purple star" articles, I can't imagine why Squidoo unpublished them. It seems that there was no one 'behind the curtain' of that algorithm and one of the main complaints from writers was that it was nigh on to impossible to get an email response from someone.

It's also difficult to imagine why some of the poor content on Squidoo was deemed worthy enough to remain published!

Meanwhile, back at HubPages, traffic is falling fast and Paul Edmondson has stated that the traffic drop is mainly affecting the newly transferred articles from Squidoo. As things progress, feel free to come back here and vent away.

@ Calculus: Hi Calculus, yes she's making quite a mark for herself here!

I did mention Amazon and other affiliate sales in one of the comments above. The reason I couldn't put this in the text is, of course, there are no public statistics on Squidoo's income for these sales and this article was sold to iEntry for its newsletters. Also, many writers used their own affiliate IDs rather than give Squidoo a cut of the commissions. Whatever the income was from affiliate revenue, it wasn't enough to save the site financially, especially with diminishing Google interest in the content there.

Definitely publishing on your own websites is more lucrative and you can achieve much better results on search when you control the quality of the content on your site.

(Loved your 'man behind the shower curtain' imagery!)

Hi Kristalulabelle,

So many writers never understood much about the commission cuts on the site. That's because Squidoo didn't exactly go out of its way to let people know that most of the ad income was going to just a few writers.

I don't know what the management of that site was thinking by encouraging articles of a hundred words. Thin content like that doesn't have a chance of ranking on search engines.

The topics in your articles, Kristen, look like a good fit for the HubPages site, and don't appear to be in the group of shallow sales pitch hype which was indicative of much of the Squidoo content. Plus, you won't be competing with anyone to receive the income your articles produce.

I'm glad you enjoy writing here and I sincerely hope your enthusiasm continues.

Hi Nell. Unfortunately, the 'bad content' you refer to DID get transferred here and it is adversely affecting the site. Today's Quantcast statistics show that traffic to HubPages has not been this low since March. It's not a traffic glitch, I'm afraid. It's a major reversal.

And, yes, it is going to affect the site as a whole and that is why so many are now reporting that their traffic has taken a major hit.

Putting all of that unvetted content on this site was a high-risk gamble, and one that few would have taken. Management bet the house and now HP has a cracked foundation.

@Carny – Thank you for pointing out that some of those top payout tier articles deserved their positions and congratulations that you wrote a great article which merited the top 10 spot it held.

However, much of the email I have received since I posted this contains examples and names of the top gamers on the site. One Canadian woman had about 34 articles and 30 of them were in that top payment tier. I looked at a few of those articles, now published on HubPages, and all they consist of is links for Amazon products. Those types of articles could not possibly have been the best on Squidoo.

Too bad Squidoo didn't accept your advice. Some decision makers are too arrogant to admit mistakes and reverse decisions. That attitude has brought down larger companies than Squidoo.

The Squidoo gang are now trying to control free speech in the forums by shouting down and ganging up on those whose message is uncomfortable. Most (not all) of the imports - especially from those who shout the loudest - is of poor quality. Exactly what Panda will target.

As for the endless petty attacks from the small-minded - they show themselves up for what they are. Yesterdays spammers hoping to make a new game on HubPages. They have no chance. Paul is not Seth.

8 years of amazing income for very little work, lots of fun and made some new friends.

2,000 lenses, 32 accounts

I made over 80,000 dollars off Squidoo

I call that an outstanding success

Thanks for the hub.

WF, Thanks for a really informative article. I knew very little about Squidoo before it was merged with HP, so I appreciate the way you have clearly set out the steps that led to the downfall of that site.

I had hoped that HP was strong enough to weather any bad karma brought on by the 301 directs and poorly written lenses, but I'm beginning to doubt this. The downward plunge in views from google.com this last week are making me nervous. (Although strangely the traffic I get from all the other google sites has held up well.)

@Mark Ewbie: You've got them pegged right. The sociopathic gamers of Squidoo were identified by others as well. I don't think Paul E. was truly aware of what went on in Squidland.

Unfortunately for the writers who were making money on HubPages, Quantcast traffic figures through September 26 now show HubPages has lost all traffic gains since March, 2014. Traffic has dropped 40.39% since September 21st. The future does not bode well and all the tricks in the book won't turn this around now. It's pitiful that this has happened to a site which was doing well.

I agree with you about "the ones who shout the loudest." It's ironic that the people – who squeal like stuck pigs at the thought of having their writing screened by HubPages' Quality Assessment Process like every existing article on the site – are the writers whose content is the most severely in need of assessing.

It is hysterical, though, how they doth protest too much as their traffic is tanking.

Although I have not done as well as many do here, in the past six months my earnings tripled, I was making sales, and traffic was up.

Since the Squidoo fiasco started, everything has gone down the sewer. IMO every lens transferred should have not been automatically accepted. Every lens should have had to go through the QAP process, just like our new hubs do, before they were ever featured.

Yeah Jeffry, you were such a success that exactly a year ago (September 26, 2013) you posted that you got your Squidoo account locked. Whatever for, Jeffry, old sport? Oh, and then you said you had made $70,000. So, did you get severance pay, then?

@Jyoti: You're welcome and I appreciate your comment.

@Beth: I share your sentiments. This article was about the demise of Squidoo but it's turning into the downfall of HubPages. I'm glad to know that some of your traffic has been maintained. My traffic has been up the past several days due to a seasonal article and my other Hubs have retained all traffic. I do not, however, believe this will last with what is happening to HubPages.

I'm glad you found this article. Many writers on HubPages are unaware of why Squidoo failed and what effect all of that new content may have on HubPages.

@Linda: I totally agree with you, Linda. The Quality Assessment on HubPages is by no means perfect, but it has been the screening process used for more than two years to determine which articles will be featured for search engines to index.

Since that screening process was waived for 175,000 articles recently imported to HubPages from a failed UGC site, a recipe for disaster was created. The site is now experiencing the painful results of that decision as Google has applied its own quality assessment of HubPages' present content.

And to add to it, we are seeing why can't we have this feature, that feature because Squidoo has it. I hope HP wakes up, takes a stand, and decides to keep HP as HP not as new Squidoo site under the name of HP.

Wow, that is an interesting article. I had no idea so much information was available to us. You've touched on a lot of points that puzzled me from time to time. I appreciate your analysis. Thank you for doing this research and laying out your understanding of the Squidoo story.

Thanks for this informative and well researched article Writer Fox. I had never even heard of Squidoo before it was revealed that it was being taken over by Hub Pages, so all this is new to me. Whether Hub Pages will benefit or regret the decision I suppose only time will tell. That said, I do welcome all the new members here and wish them well. Most I have spoken to sound like decent people and genuinely want to fit in here.

Just for info - I got banned from the HP forums. A new world is opening up on HP - just like the old dissent not allowed on Squidoo forums.

I am not sure that there is not a bias here, but I will wait to see how I am affected by the move. I find there is certainly some truth in what you say, but I am not sure they were smart enough to be doing it with intent. The payout system there definitely did favor the elite though.

If you lied Seth could sue you for libel I bet he does not! Much better bet than his!

Hi Kathryn (Ecogranny),

I notice that you are new here as a transferred writer from the Squidoo platform. So many people there never really understood the high percentage of revenue which was paid to a small number of people. This is what caused the cut-throat behavior by some authors on that site, greedily wanting a share of income which was in fact earned by the articles written by other people.

But, it was the management which created the payment structure and the methods which encouraged its manipulation. The other decisions managers made when the traffic began to fall actually increased the declining page views sent from search engines.

I'm glad you appreciate this article and thank you for commenting.

Hi Jodah. I know that many authors on HubPages were not familiar with the events which led to the downfall of Squidoo.com. It's a real eye-opener to learn how that site was manipulated by writers and maladministered by employees and directors.

So far, HubPages has not benefited at all from the huge upload of Squidoo content. In fact, traffic has decreased since the 175,000 pages were published here. Not to mention the fact that the website servers seem to be overloaded and the site has had technical problems for the past three days. Even so, HubPages doesn't seem to regret its decision not to enforce the Quality Assessment Process on the Squidoo content, a process which began in earnest two years ago. It was low-quality content on HubPages which devastated traffic numbers in 2011 when Google Panda first hit and now that process seems to be repeating itself. In the information I documented above, you can see what Google algorithms did to the Squidoo site's traffic as it targeted low-quality content and webspam. Now that same, unedited content is on HubPages.

The new members who have quality content are, of course, welcomed to publish on HubPages and some of them have articles which they have edited and have sent through QAP.

Thanks for your comment, Jodah, and I hope the payouts continue for your work here.

@ TheHoleStory: I couldn't publish your comment here because of the link you gave at the end, but here it is without the link:

"This is indeed a very well thought out and researched hub on the rise and fall of an Internet writing site. Hopefully even with the new influx of all of those wonderful Squidoo refugees our beloved Hub Pages won't fall victim to this same demise."

@ Stickman Hey Mark Ewbie: That's unbelievable! What on earth for? I can't find anything you said which warranted that. Maybe it was a mistake, because that has happened before (to LongTimeMother, among others).

It's gotta be your artwork. Maybe Paul E. didn't like the purple mixer drawing you made to illustrate his comment. I really liked that one!

Well, at least you have the topic for your next Hub and I bet you'll have mega comments (and views) on it. Finally, I have something to look forward to here! I say we all go on forum hiatus in solidarity until your ban is lifted. How long are you in for?

@DressageHusband: Hi Stephen. Hey, there's no bias here; these are all facts with the dates and references.

I'm not sure what you mean about who was smart enough to do what with intent. I presume you mean the gamers. Well, here's an ad from a gamer:

http://s1.hubimg.com/u/11846766_f520.jpg

That guy set up a network of ten Squidoo angel giants to go around 'blessing' articles to help them move into the top payment tier. He charged $5 for his service and sold this gig 331 times on Fiverr. He made $1,665 on just this offer alone, and that's a fact that is substantiated on the Fiverr site. I'd say that was with full intent.

And, everything written here about Seth Godin is factual, too. I'm sure he's laughing all the way to the bank with whatever money he pocketed to take the failed website off his hands.

Well if there is a God Seth will suffer one day soon!

Only two days so not too long. I shouldn't have spent so much time on it! Lost it - not for the first time. I am reading some stuff about Seth Godin, his charity and MLM. Interesting. Oh and drawing a picture of him...

There certainly is a God and His day of reckoning, Yom Kippur, begins Friday night.

@Mark - did they remove your offending comment? I never saw anything either that should offend someone enough to result in your being banned.

@Mark Well, did they tell you why you were banned? Did you duck cough someone? I didn't see that if you did. Was a comment removed? Oh, well, never mind. The forums are pointless now anyway – way too much Squid squawk.

I can hardly wait for your new Hub. When you publish it, come back here and drop a link. That's a link I'll publish because I'm sure it will be highly relevant and quality-QAP-verified content.

By the way, Seth and his wife have been known to serve cooked squid to their neighbors for lunch. (Check that out on Google.) You might want to work that in somewhere, you know, like you are what you eat, or something.

Hey guys - I was rude in terms of saying blah-blah to someone and saying gosh how wonderful sarcastically to someone else. Really not much more than that. I think everyone - Squids, Hubs and HP owners are all a bit sensitive at the moment - and I was trying to annoy all of them. Not a duck cough in sight though.

I saw that LOL. I didn't think it could get you banned.

Well, gosh how wonderful Mark. Someone has to read sarcasm into that comment because you can't hear someone's tone of voice in a forum post. And some people are making hugely long forum posts, which go on and on and on, saying the same thing over and over and over, and which have more words than some Hubs I've recently seen. If that isn't blah-blah, then I don't know what is.

If you were actually trying to annoy people, then I don't think you did a very good job of that and I am really, really disappointed in you because I know you can do much better than that.

Haha - well lol and touche Writer Fox. Yes, considering how I write, I was being reserved. Fuming, but reserved. It was a good lesson in forum games. I guess I lost but really it was just a waste of time.

Did you write a book about it? lol.

Ridiculous! Guilty of being funny??? Yet there are the elite who can truly be nasty and get away with it time and time again.

Hi Writer Fox - Wow, you really put a lot of time and effort into the timeline of the breakdown of Squidoo. It sounds so unbusinesslike of Seth and the others, while I thought the site was a good site. Your article is excellent, though it appears some writers from Squidoo do not agree with part of your assessment. Maybe some facts were unknown. Thank you for sharing this article, and good luck to all the writers who are involved in this merger. I enjoy contacts with everyone. May traffic return as soon as possible. Blessings, Audrey

Hi Audrey. Most of the Squidoo writers didn't like the gaming and often reported people, to no avail. The Squidoo forum was filled with those kinds of complains. People simply wanted a fair payment system that paid them for the traffic they received and they really wanted the site to succeed. It's unfortunate that so many were mistreated in so many ways.

Just like everyone else on HubPages, individual writers will do well here, depending upon whether Google likes their content or not.

The scary thing is that all of that uploaded content, 175,000 new featured pages, hasn't increased traffic to HubPages at all. In fact, traffic is lower than it was on August 14, the day before the acquisition was announced. That is not a good sign, especially since traffic normally increases in September when school starts again and summer vacations are over.

@Writer Fox, thank you for your reply. Yes, I am one of the Squidoo crossovers. You've given us a lot to digest. I am impressed with your thorough approach and research. There always were gamers on Squidoo. I dropped out for a few years because I felt that management's approach was too encouraging to them and not encouraging enough to serious writers.

I returned a year or so ago, when Google slapped Squidoo hard, and it appeared management was cracking down on blatant plagiarism and on what some here term the "shower curtain" style pages.

While I had my doubts about all those new sales pages called "Product Reviews," which management pushed heavily in the last year, I was grateful to see some members of management writing helpful articles about ways to develop deeper content. I had hopes Squidoo was growing up. Then Seth dropped the bomb, and here we are.

I've been amazed at the quality of support available to us here on HubPages, including the detailed Learning Center. It's a lot to grok in a short time, but incredibly useful and well-organized.

You've been a great help in the forums as well, as have Relache and several others. Thank you for your kindly welcome to us. I hope that, after the fallout and bouncing back, we help to make HubPages all the more successful.

Hi Kathryn (Ecogranny). You, like so many others, knew "There always were gamers on Squidoo." And, yes, management encouraged that. When Seth set up the site and first announced his plan, he envisioned it as a social site where members were the main viewers. He never seemed to expand from that idea and, as the Web matured with powerful social websites like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, Seth never really changed his focus until it was too late to clean up the content for search engines.

When you returned to Squidoo a year ago, traffic had already fallen drastically and never recovered.

HubPages never focused on internal traffic, so you won't find the same kind of game-playing here. You don't make money off of internal traffic here and posting on the forum or commenting on people's Hubs is not done for brownie points or for any monetary purpose because there is no reward for those activities.

Most of the people making good money here never post on the forum and never make comments on Hubs. There are those, however, who are obsessive forum commenters because they are trying to sell their books or drive traffic to their own websites. There aren't many of those types and they are easy to spot because they frequently mention their off-HubPages content and where to find it. (I have never linked to my own websites nor do I ever mention them by name. This is on purpose and I don't need to solicit viewers for my sites or my books.)

I'm glad you have benefited from my forum comments and I hope you will be successful writing on HubPages. Just focus on what Google likes, read Google's advice for great content, and you'll do well.

Your analysis is brilliant and spot on. This is, IMHO, one of the most well-researched, accurate, and readable articles on the topic that I have found. Thank you.

Thank you so much, ChezChazz. The research for this article took a great deal of time, but I'm glad that all of this is documented for posterity, as it were.

This article is starting to get search-engine traffic now, so the information is starting to circulate.

I appreciate your comment.

WF.....You have provided so much detail here, this should explain all the facts of reality to anyone curious and/or confused.

I will freely and humbly admit I shall remain in the dark in terms of fully understanding the game of online writing sites.

However, what is very clear to me---after doing an extensive investigation into Mr. Seth Godin----I realized I needed to go no further in order to see the writing on the wall (pun intended)

Lo & behold, I discover that Mr. Godin attended High School in a Western NY town approximately 30 miles from my Hometown.

I'll not elaborate....waste of my time. Anyone can find bona fide information on SG.....as opposed to his own "Blow-Hard" self-praising and highly inflated Bios of Fantasy.

While online sites are not my forte.....human beings ARE. Take it from me...or not....This little man with the shiny head and yellow-rimmed specs.....looks precisely like what he truly is. A Cartoon Character.

"I'm betting some of you, the best of you, will follow me."???? Really, Seth? You really printed this?

Sorry buddy, but I'm betting all everyone is waiting for is the Big Event......when you finally get your head out from up your A$$.

Good to know more of the facts. I think even after we do make updates, many of our lenses to hubs won't work. With Google constantly changing, it will be interesting to see what happens.

@LindaSmith1 wrote, "Since the Squidoo fiasco started, everything has gone down the sewer. IMO every lens transferred should have not been automatically accepted. Every lens should have had to go through the QAP process, just like our new hubs do, before they were ever featured."

This would have been wisdom on HP's part.

Writer Fox, if only I could have read this over a year ago, I wouldn't have been one of those writers who stuck it out and tried to help rebuild Squidoo. I was committed to the site, as I had over 400 "lenses" on it at one time. The money, for a while, was good. Once it began going downhill, I just thought we needed to re-work our pages. I fought for Squidoo, because that's how I am, loyal even to the death! HA! What I like about this Hub is that it doesn't get into name calling or bitterness, but just the facts, ma'am, as they said on Dragnet. Once I finally saw the writing on the wall, that Squidoo was dead in the water, I was ready to move on. I hope that I can somehow begin to redeem myself and my writing by listening and learning from more experienced Hubbers like yourself. I have deleted much of my work, and probably will delete even more. I'm hoping that I have some quality writing that will yet be appreciated. Thank you for all this history, and I now see with "open eyes," the folly of being a loyal Squid.

Writer Fox, this flabbergasted me. I never knew all these things and I used to wonder why many writers in Squidoo complained but since I did not understand much of what was going on, I just kept my mouth shut. I gave up about a year and a half before Squidoo got sold because I had a hard time writing sales reviews. I asked my niece to write some for me just to keep my giant status. I did not earn much but because I did not know what others were earning, it did not bother me much. I wrote to improve my writing and there is no better way than write. I read all of Seth's books so I had tremendous respect for him. I was hesitant to be part of another content farm but I just had to edit my work here seeing that they were published and I did not really want to be associated with messy content. But the little experience I had, made me sit up and take notice. Many of my lenses which did not even get noticed in Squidoo, came up on top here and the first days I was puzzled. I did not know hubs are reviewed by persons. I started reading some of the help in hubs pages and learned much. I am still editing but am encouraged to keep on.

@ Fpherj48 – Traffic to Seth's typepad blog experienced a significant downturn in July, according to Alexa traffic ranks. After the sale to HubPages was announced in mid August, traffic rank plunged to the bottom of the chart. Whether Seth knew it or not, he was more dependent on the Squidoo tribe than it was on him. I appreciate your lengthy comment here.

@ SandyMertens – It's true that many of those articles will need to be revamped to be successful on search engines. Sometimes starting a new article from scratch and with a new URL is the best approach. Many writers are successful on HP and it's not so difficult to learn their methods. It just requires a different approach and a new mindset.

@ Colorfulone – I agree with you completely and cannot imagine why HP did this intentionally. It's like waving a red flag in front of the Googlebot. Really, what did they think would happen? I have a strange suspicion that Seth might have received his compensation for the sale of Squidoo in the form of HP stock. (Scary thought, isn't it? But that would explain a lot!)

@ NancyHardin – You, like so many others, were hoping for the best from Squidoo management. Unfortunately, we have all seen the results of that management. I think the writers will be much more successful moving on than the management team will be! I appreciate your giving your personal experience here. Your comments add a great deal to understanding the position of many writers on Squidoo.

@ Aesta1 – I'm so glad you have had a positive experience so far on HubPages and I do understand that you and so many other Squidoo writers were never really aware of what was going on behind the big orange squid. The demand to write short product reviews was the final disillusionment for many Squidoo writers.

This is quite a good read. I thought that there was trouble with Squidoo but I played along. I reached Giant and Angel status, and had several Purple Stars, blessings, and the likes. I never made all that much. Since the switch to HP, my material has actually been doing better. I'm encouraged again!

Hi Javr: I'm glad your articles are working out well on HP. Many people writing on Squidoo didn't understand why the site was failing. Thank you for commenting.

I am also a former Squid and for the most part, I was oblivious to what was going on. The most I made at squidoo was $65 one month, and then it dribbled down to pennies. I was optimistic about life at hp and studied the learning center materials. I somewhat embarrassed to say that , in my own opinion, some of my transferred hubs were not up to hubpage standards but were published nonetheless. I now think that all transferred lenses should have been unpublished pending quality assessment. It would have been better for us all that way.

I am writing on the iPhone so will keep this brief.

Hi June. It's good to hear from someone who had articles on Squidoo. I have to agree with you that the content transferred to HubPages should have been screened first. It's now been six weeks since the transfer started and HubPages' traffic is LESS than it was before. A new Google Panda algorithm update was released and all of that un-scrutinized content actually hurt this website. Even so, HubPages' management is allowing the content to remain without revisions. Few website content managers would agree with that decision.

Thanks for commenting.

Now that the transfer is finished and the HubPages site has been evaluated by both the new Google Panda and Penguin algorithms, the effects of the transferred content to HP can be dissected. These are the results as of October 22, 2014.

1. In the week before the August 15th announcement, HP had 335,638 featured Hubs averaging 4 unique views per Hub per day. Sqidoo.com had 175,000 articles available to search engines and averaged 2.14 unique views per page per day. Taken together, the 510,638 articles averaged 3.37 unique views per page, while the content was on two different websites.

2. Today, HubPages has 452,765 featured Hubs which received an average of 2.6 unique views per Hub per day over the past week.

3. The transfer from Squidoo increased the number of Hubs by 34.9%. Unique views per Hub per day have decreased by 23.7%.

4. In the week before August 15, traffic to Squidoo averaged 375,254 uniques per day and traffic to HP averaged 1,344,731 uniques per day. In the past week, traffic on HP has averaged 1,163,635 uniques per day – a decrease of more than 32% when the articles were on two different websites.

5. The combined traffic to HP and Squidoo in the week before August 15 was 1,719,985 unique views per day. The average traffic to HP during the past week was 1,163,635 uniques per day.

6. The seasonal increase of traffic from late August to the third week in October, 2013, was 57%. In 2014, there was no seasonal increase in traffic to HP.

7. The most noticeable decrease in HP traffic is from unique views from mobile: down more than 21% from the week before August 15.

That sounds about right, my traffic and income this month seems to be down by at least 40%.

That is pretty telling. Thanks for sharing your research, by the way. Now I guess the question is whether we can expect to see improvements as things settle down or will this be the way of the future.

I am another Squid Angel and Giant Squid I also did the Rocket Squid program. I was beginning to see my personal traffic increasing, but kept having lenses locked for no good reason. I agree that the HQ team or somebody there had their own agenda. Since coming to Hubpages I saw a traffic increase and all of my lenses were accepted here as I submitted them to QAP as soon as I could. Then the whole of HGP got hit and I am still seeing slowly rising traffic in fact I am getting more traffic from Google than before. I found your facts intriguing as I was never sure who was the problem Bonnie or Seth or both!

Hi Jodah: I'm really sorry to hear that. That's a significant drop. So many writers have been affected by combining the content of HubPages and Squidoo. I think one way of dealing with the traffic loss would be for HP to give the former Squidoo writers the option of transferring their articles back to the Squidoo domain. Management is unlikely to make that decision, but I think that is the right decision to make.

Hi June: I think today's statistics will remain the new reality for quite some time.

Hi Stephen (DressageHusband): Your comment about somebody on the Squidoo management team having their own agenda has been said by others as well. Seth Godin and Bonnie Diczhazy were both involved in decisions, but other people were also part of the management team and stayed well out of the limelight. We will never really know what went on in the management ivory tower, but it is interesting to note that none of these people are involved in a new venture together and appear to have each gone their separate ways. I'm glad to know that your articles are doing well on HP. You are one of the more fortunate writers.

Very interesting article, Writer Fox, and thankyou for doing the research. I never knew about some of this.

Like DressageHusband, I was a Squid Angel, and a Giant Squid, but it never seemed to make any difference to my traffic, which was never very much.

Although I still don't get a lot of traffic here on HP, I am beginning to think that the site is hugely better than the Squidoo site, and I really like the way that problems with hubs are shown on our account.

Hopefully, once I update all my articles to HP's standards, traffic will improve.

Voted up.

Thank you for you input, Snakesmum. It's good to read the comparison between the two sites from writers. I'm glad to know you are having a positive experience writing on HubPages now.

I appreciate your taking the time to comment here and share your views.

An excellent article, WF. I did well for a time at Squidoo but was hit and eventually had my lenses moved to HP (I have/had accounts at HP and Squidoo).

The rules at Squidoo were pretty lax until they were hit, then Squidoo got much more stringent all of a sudden. Not stringent enough for Google though, apparently.

I think HP made the right move dividing into subdomains.

Just stopped by to re-read this and catch up on the comments.

I hope all is well with you, Writer Fox.

Writer Fox, your fans would love to hear from you. Me included.

Writer Fox, I hope you are safe and well. (and didn't get banned because of the clique that came over with the transfer).

@Paul, If you moved your content before the mass-migration, that turns out to be a good decision on your part. Did your traffic follow to the new location? About subdomains: Did you know that there are 84,632 subdomains on this site right now? That's quite a lot compared to the number of featured articles!

@Colorfulone, Wow, I've only been gone for a few days, but it's nice to be missed. I was off the site most of the summer and I'm not sure anyone noticed! Anyway, I just published two more articles and those will be my last ones here for quite some time. I'm just really busy with my main websites and can barely keep up with the comments and DMCA notices on HubPages. Is the clique casting spells again? Their comments would be great in an ebook about forum bullies. May have to write that when I have time. (My ebooks usually do very well.) Anyway, I just completed a review of the InfoBarrel site which I was hired to do. That's a sad situation.

We are happy to see that you are okay WF. As to answer your question, yep but it seems to be a laying low mode for now.

I have a few blogger sites and weebly sites, as well as one on my own domain which are niche sites actually. I am thinking about moving content to them, but some of it is page 1 Google, or avg page 5. Thing is I don't have Adsense anywhere but HP after losing account with them once for clicks which I had no control over. Not a lot of sales, but one a month on avg at HP right now. I have a lot of new hubs, so i don't know if it is a good idea to move them.

Wow WF, you had us worried. Glad to see you are okay. I look forward to reading your review on InfoBarrel. I stumbled upon an article on that site while looking up something. Then I did some research to see if it looked like a good site to write on. I didn't like several things and it looks like you feel the same. I'll be looking for your review, is it a hub? Or elsewhere.

Writer Fox, when you say you completed a review of InfoBarrel, do you mean you wrote an article about the site? I have to say, I'd be very interested in reading it, but I'm guessing you can't tell us where it is (if it's an article). I decided to publish some articles there based on reviews I could find which were rather minimal/inadequate in many ways. I published about 11 articles but have hesitated to post more because it's not looking promising to me. So, I'm wobbling, so to speak. At any rate, I'd trust your review way more than I'd trust anything else I'd found about the site.

You have been missed; welcome back! What is sad at InfoBarrel?

Yes, you were missed. Good to know you are just busy making money. Yeah, you can get a lot of smooth talking clique spell casting material from a couple of resent thread for your eBook. Some people like reading that kind of stuff so they know how to do it or combat it. I hope you write a best seller in it's category. Anyway, I'll check out your new hubs when I get a chance. to do some reading. - Blessing and stay safe.

Hi Linda,

I'm sorry to hear about your AdSense account, but there are other advertising services you can use. If you just search on Google for 'AdSense alternatives', you'll probably find a few dozen of them.

If your content is doing well here, I wouldn't move those articles. But, content which is not doing well probably needs another venue.

WF: I lost my first adsense account a couple of years ago and have not bothered with it for my blogs. There reason was about false clicks, which we have no control over. I use it only for HP. My blogs are under the old gmail address for Adsense and I have deleted content, as well as most of my blogs. Most of my hubs, at least 30 or so are only a few months old, and less, so I have a lot of new content. I have about 10 hubs ranking page 1-7 for G search engines. Some of my top pages, according to Webmaster tools are old ones that are picking up traffic. I am getting more traffic here, sales here, as well as my sites that aren't getting a lot of traffic.

Fascinating and eye-opening. I knew almost nothing about the backstory or history of Squidoo. I had no idea at all. Have a Blessed Christmas. Theresa

Hi Theresa,

I'm glad you read this because it makes it easier to understand why that website failed and what happened to HP traffic when the content was moved here. Happy holidays and have a great 2015!

Writer Fox - What an excellent summary on an important milestone in the Squidoo / HubPages merger. I am curious, in the year since, do you have an update on how the merge has worked out for HubPages? From some of the comments and seeing the decline of rank on Alexa, I'm getting the impression that things are not going as well as anticipated. I have noticed that HubPages have been getting the Google preferential treatment in searches just as Squidoo. That is a good thing for hubbers.

Thanks for the info.