How Penguin Affected Me

According to Google, the algorithm went into affect on April 24th. Well, I’ve got to say that I noticed a change in my earnings on the last day of March and my earnings have been steadily declining since then.

My decline didn’t have much to do with the Penguin, my issues had to do with tons and tons of error messages generated by the Google AdSense code. For some reason, my sites suddenly started to generate errors and the odd thing about it was I hadn’t touched those sites in months.

Culprit of the Error Messages

The first wave of messages occurred because the code suddenly wanted to find a file located in a folder called doubleclick in my blogs’ root directory. In an attempt to correct the problem, I created a folder called doubleclick and searched Google to download the missing file the code needed.

Whew! All was good for about 24 to 48 hours until the same error messages started appearing again. The error messages weren’t so bad but they had an affect on my income. You see, the 404 “File not Found” errors were generated after someone clicked on an AdSense ad and the subsequent page wouldn’t load.

The subsequent page was the advertiser’s page, but somehow the AdSense code looked for the page on my sites. Of course they wouldn’t find the pages on my site because I don’t have the advertiser’s pages physically located on my blogs.

After further investigation, it seems these errors were generated by image ads. So, to put an end to the nonsense, I modified my code so AdSense would only display text ads. Problem solved (or work around implemented).

Back to the Penguin

It took me a few weeks to figure out my error problem, so by then Penguin waddled into my life. After doing a little reading up on Penguin I made one change to my websites. I moved the 300 x 250 ad from within the top of my posts to the right sidebar.

Somewhere on the Google AdSense Webmaster blog, there was information about the ratio of ads to text above the fold. By moving the ad to the sidebar, more of my content appeared above the fold and the ad still had a prominent place.

When penguin was first implemented I noticed a momentary drop in traffic and search engine ranking, but things seem to be balancing out and the traffic and page rank have normalized (whatever normal is).

Penguin and My Online Strategy

My online strategy is still the same now as it was when I first started 5 years ago. Write quality content. I’m sure social networking and good backlinks help, but as I’ve mentioned before, I’m not a social networker and I don’t actively seek backlinks.

Maybe my time as an active online writer is drawing to an end. I’ve found what makes me happy as an online writer and my “style” may be obsolete. I like to write about certain subjects and I like to write in a fashion to help people. That’s it.

I don’t like to worry about hats (whether black or white), popularity, gaming the system, backlinking strategies and the like. I’m quite selfish in that I want to write about what excites me and hopefully it will help someone else. Sometimes its lucrative and sometimes not.

So, when Google rolls out the Otter, the Hyena, the Cheetah or the Petunia, my writing style and strategy will remain the same. That’s my story and I’m sticking with it.

It sounds like Google prefers sites to develop natural backlinks. In other words, if you write good and engaging content, folks will naturally link back to your sites. I wrote a post on my backlinking strategy a little over a year ago.

Not Much to Say

I feel for the folks who were affected by the latest change. It’s a blow to wake up one day to see all your hard work flushed down the tubes. However, I fully believe those who take the time to evaluate and learn from the situation will come up with an alternative way to make things work.

There’s not much I can say about backlinking that I haven’t already said somewhere on NJFM.

For folks who haven’t heard, here’s what I’ve said about backlinks:

• Do Follow vs No Follow Backlinks
• Blogging, Writing Articles and Social Networking Traffic
• Google’s View on Article Marketing
• How do You Drive Traffic

Crystal Ball

Looking into my crystal ball, I see an uptick in emails offering guest posting options. Currently I receive about 2 or 3 guest post requests a day. Additionally, I fully expect to receive an increase in requests for reciprocal links. With the demise of popular backlinking networks, folks are looking for alternatives.

FYI, as a rule, I don’t accept guest posts or participate in reciprocal linking strategies. I give one way links to sites I admire and respect and do not expect a link back. You see, this is still my hobby and I treat it as such. If your hobby were building model airplanes, would you want someone to build one for you? No, because the joy is in the creation.

Going Forward

The Internet is fickle and old timers have learned to weather the storms. This is just another storm to be weathered. If you were affected by this latest Google change, I’d be interested in hearing how you intend to weather and survive this particular storm.

On my own sites I could tell the referrer was Amazon. Most of the traffic was coming from Seattle, Washington and Fresno, California. There were one or two hits originating from other cities, but the majority came from Seattle. On Suite 101, the traffic referrer was listed as [direct] but I suspect it was Amazon too.

A Suite 101 side note: I find it comical that we, the Suite 101 writers, must wait a year before we can post our Suite articles elsewhere, but plagiarists get to use our articles right away.

Unfortunately, the traffic surge was the equivalent of being Stumbled, a lot of traffic but no clicks.

I did a quick search online to see if I could find any info to shed light on the situation, but couldn’t find anything.

Out of curiosity, did anyone else notice such a traffic surge and if so, do you have any idea what caused it?

From time to time I experiment with different plugins to enhance my blog’s functionality (functionality…such a tech writing word).  Anyway, I use a plugin that is supposed to help detect hack attacks.

After having a couple of my blogs hacked some time ago, I’m a bit sensitive to hacking.

The plugin I use is called WordPress Firewall 2.  Recently I had been receiving notification emails initiated by the plugin telling me a certain IP address was attempting to insert malicious code into my site by attacking a certain file.  After receiving 20 such notification emails in a short period of time, I decided to take action.

A Little Research

I looked up the IP address and it seemed to be a Google bot.  Not being 100% sure that it was, I did a little research.  My research left me on the fence.  It could in fact be a Google bot or it could be a hacker redirecting an IP address to make it look like a Google bot.

After being online for several years and never having this happen before, I decided to err on the side of caution and ban the particular IP address.  I did so by modifying my .htaccess file and inserting the following code:

order allow,deny
deny from XX.XXX.X.XX  (x represents actual IP address)
allow from all


Sit Back to See What Happens

The world didn’t come crashing down after inserting the code and the annoying emails stopped.  Whew, dodged a bullet.

Several days later (about 3), I noticed the traffic for that particular blog dropped significantly.  Hmmm, what’s going on?  So, I searched for my site in Google and found it. The site was there in a great position on page one of the search results but beneath the site’s URL were the words “You are banned.”

Yup, I dodged the bullet when I should have employed fancy footwork.  Instead of getting shot in the upper body, I shot myself in the foot.  The IP address was actually a Google bot.  So, I immediately removed the code from the .htaccess file and temporarily deactivated the plugin. Fortunately, the “banned” statement was removed within seconds and the traffic returned.

Better Safe than Sorry

When I originally received the email notifications, my first line of action was to contact Google to see if it was really their bot.  The problem with contacting Google is contacting Google.  It’s not easy finding the right department, email address or even forum thread in which to post a query.  Instead I took matters into my own hands.

Bottom line, I lost about half a day’s worth of income, but I’d rather that than have lost several weeks or months worth by fighting hackers.  Another online lesson learned.

Internet marketing 101 states:

• The money is in the list. If you don’t have a list, stop now and build one.

Internet Marketing 102 states:

• Create a squeeze page. Give ‘em something free so they’ll sign up.

NJFM is a No Pressure Zone

Internet Marketing 101 and 102 might work for other sites and other niches, but I’m opting not to squeeze or pretend to give away things for free. When I give away things for free, it’s just that, free. No strings attached.

I gave my first ebook away for free, I share info here for free and the information I’m sharing in my newsletter is also free. I don’t feel a need to give away anything else in an attempt to get folks to sign up.

Here’s the scoop. I’d like for you to sign up for my motivation for writers newsletter. Here’s the link. Don’t look for free give aways such as another book, a report or anything of the kind. Sign up because you want to. You can always unsubscribe if you so choose. I’d like you to stay because I believe the info is worth it, but if it’s not for you, I understand.

About the Squeezin’

I’m sure you guys have been squeezed before. My question is, once you’ve been squeezed, did you stick with the newsletter or did you drop your subscription after the 2nd or 3rd mailing?

Don’t get me wrong. Squeeze pages work. Folks have doubled, tripled and quadrupled their email list by creating effective squeeze pages and email campaigns. If that’s your thing, by all means, squeeze on. As for me and NJFM, we’re a no squeeze zone.