HubPages has introduced a very significant change a couple of days ago, underperforming hubs will now invoke the Google no-index spell. As expected this has unleashed a storm in the forums, a tradition whenever any change is made on the site, although this one promises to be of hurricane Eric proportions.
There is a lot of knee-jerk reaction, with many people misunderstanding what this actually means. The hubs will still be published, it is just that they will not be found on Google. However, since articles that get reasonable Google traffic will not be affected, it is difficult to see what difference this will make to traffic and earnings. HubPages rationale is that some pages provoke Google anger, and this, than reflects badly on the whole subdomain. By hiding the “bad” pages, Google might decide to like the whole subdomain better, and traffic might actually rise.
