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.

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.

If you’re an AdSense publisher, I’m sure you’re familiar with the warning atop of your AdSense account. The warning tells you that your ads are displaying on unauthorized sites. The warning looks like this:

After seeing this warning for years (It seemed like years), I decided to look into it a little further. After all, AdSense had emailed me a few earning increasing tips in the past, I might as well see what this warning is about.

Horse before the Cart

I’m going to back up just a bit for those AdSense publishers who are not aware of the authorized site feature.

To prevent unscrupulous scrapers, spammers or other villainous fiends (sorry, was watching an old cartoon this weekend) from stealing your AdSense code, placing on their sites and clicking the heck out of the links to get your account suspended, AdSense implemented the Authorized Account feature. You can find the feature by clicking on Account Settings  link located on the upper left-hand section of the Home page.

Once on the Account Settings page, scroll down until you see Access and authorization. There is where you set the authorization preferences. I learned the hard way that it really works.

One of my sites consistently received clicks, but I never received earnings. It took me months to realize I had not included it as one of my authorized sites. I lost quite a bit of income for that little oversight.

Unauthorized Sites

If your account is anything like mine, after your list of authorized sites, you’ll see a few sites and IP addresses that are not authorized. The sites look like this:

www.google.com.sg
webcache.googleusercontent.com
translate.googleusercontent.com
www.bing.com
74.6.238.254
74.6.117.48
www.google.ca

These sites are search engine cached pages. I researched the two IP addresses listed and they belong to Inktomi Corpation (aka Yahoo). In other words, they are legitimate cached pages of your blog/website. These are not spammer sites.

I always ignored the warning until I decided to get to the bottom of it all. I found this on the AdSense Known Issue site:

Message for Unauthorized Sites Persists on Homepage
Details: When using the authorized sites feature, any sites that you haven’t authorized will trigger an alert message on your home page. We currently consider any framed or cached pages to be unauthorized, including when a user searches using Google Images and your site is displayed via frame. We encourage you to add framed and cached URLs of sites you trust to your authorized sites list. We’re investigating ways to improve this feature.

After reading that, I decided to add the sites to my authorized list (always check the IP information before adding an IP address to the authorized list).

Results of Adding the Unauthorized Sites

I did this research around midday on Thursday of last week. That means half of my Thursday’s earnings are based on the old authorization list and half on the new. Not wanting to jump to conclusions, I waited a couple more days before performing an analysis.

Here’s the scoop. My AdSense earnings from Thursday to Sunday of this past week are 62% higher than they were for the same period of time the week before.

Milk, Spilling, Crying and Such

When I realized how much money I had consistently left on the table I thought about crying over spilt milk, but what good does that do? I’m happy that I made the changes and am encouraging you to do the same if you haven’t done so already.

I love it when small changes yield large results!

If you enjoyed this post, why not sign up for NJFM’s Motivation for Writers Newsletter. A dose of motivation will be sent to your inbox every Monday.

Although Tidbits used to get a pretty decent amount of traffic, it didn’t make a lot of money. The most frequently visited pages on the site were the food pages. Food pages don’t make a lot of money. On occasion, visitors would read one of the higher ticket topics, but generally they were interested in how to cook steak.

Panda’s Second Punch

I have another site that didn’t seem to be affected too much by the Panda as far as traffic goes. As I looked at my weekend stats, last weekend , before Panda, this site received 1289 page views (according to StatCounter) while this weekend the same site received 1375 page views. With the miniscule increase in page views, you would think there would be either a miniscule increase in earnings or the earnings would remain pretty much the same, wouldn’t you?

Not the case. Here’s where the second punch comes in. Last weekend the site earned a little over $53 with AdSense. This weekend the site earned a bit over $41, an earnings drop of 22%. This less than positive anomaly also occurred after the first Panda algorithm change. Sites that were seemingly unaffected traffic-wise were affected financially.

A further comparison of my Infolinks earnings for the same site showed that last weekend the site earned $18.28 while this weekend the site earned $17.48. The 5% fluctuation is nothing for me to be alarmed about. The earnings were still within their normal range.

Back to the First Punch

Getting back to Tidbits and Stuff, the AdSense earnings do not mirror the 40% drop in traffic. The weekend before Panda, Tidbits’ AdSense earnings were $4.38. This past weekend it earned $4.06. My Infolinks earnings on the other hand, went from $4.67 to $1.82.

One set of figures makes sense to me while the other set does not. Who knows, maybe things will even out over time, but in the meanwhile all I can think of is Ricky Ricardo walking in the door and yelling, “Google! You got some splainin’ to do!”

Actually, Google doesn’t owe us an explanation.  They run their business as they see fit.  Similarly, we have to run our businesses as we see fit.  We can’t control Google, but we can sure control what we do to help neutralize Panda’s 1, 2 punch.