Google's "mobilegeddon" update last month, which was designed to favor mobile-friendly sites in search results, had no impact on HubPages. But a secretive algorithm tweak soon after was disastrous.
HubPages, a collection of more than 870,000 miniblogs covering everything from the "History of advertising" to "How to identify venomous house spiders," saw its Google search traffic plunge 22 percent on May 3 from the prior week. Of the company's 100 top pages, 68 lost visitors over that stretch.
Unlike some previous updates that hurt HubPages' lower-performing sites, this one was indiscriminate, said Paul Edmondson, founder and CEO of the San Francisco-based company. Furthermore, Google refuses to provide any details.
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