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.

Well, when I clicked on my statistics page for my page views, one of my sites had “that look” while the other sites were playing nicely and didn’t even notice that I walked into the room. The site with the guiltiest look was my Tidbits and Stuff site. That’s the site that is prone to get into trouble.

Cause of the Look

I noticed in the past three days my Google earnings were off the chart. The last time they were that good, it was because Panda was about to strike. So I did a bit of snooping and found an October 5th tweet from Matt Cutts in which he advised of Panda changes over the next few weeks.

The Panda Update and Site Reaction

As I looked at my children, er, I mean sites, their response to Panda was expected. You see, Tidbits and Stuff is sometimes shunned by Google and then picked back up again. This is because I gave birth to Tidbits and Stuff before I knew anything about web parenting. I made the majority of my mistakes there.

Just like any good parent, you never give up on your kids. I kept Tidbits & Stuff but realized it would always be vulnerable to Google’s algorithm changes unless I did a total overhaul. Not wanting to do the overhaul, I use Tidbits as my online playground in which I continue to make mistakes.

Problematic Characteristics

As I analyze Tidbits and compare it to the rest of my sites, Tidbits has two characteristics that my other sites don’t:

1. The focus is not single subject. You’ll find information on cooking, health, finance, pets, writing and more when you visit Tidbits and Stuff. The rest of my sites are focused and single subject.
2. I used content from free article directories. I’d say about 50% of the content on Tidbits comes from free article directories while the rest is original. Some of the articles were from writers who requested to write a piece for the site and the rest I wrote myself.

What Am I Going to Do?

As far as Tidbits and Stuff goes, I’m not going to do a thing. I’ll write articles and place them there when the mood strikes. I’m sure Google’s algorithm will change again and Tidbits may find favor. If not, so be it. I’m used to the bumpy ride on Tidbits and Stuff. It taught and continues to teach me a lesson of what to do and what not to do.

Similarities with Other Sites

I see that Suite 101 and HubPages have also taken a hit with Panda this go around (again). The one thing I see that Tidbits, Suite and HubPages have in common is that they are not single-subject sites and they have a wide variety of authors. This is just my sitting at the kitchen counter observation.

Going Forward

Writing is an inside out sport. You learn a few rules (i.e., grammar, spelling and in the case of online writing SEO) and then do what your gut tells you. I’m going to keep on doing what I do and allow the Panda to do what it does.

After visiting Lis’ Passive Income Online blog and finding out about a free book writing tool called Scrivener, I’m motivated to get back to writing my books. Between ebooks, a few sites and Suite 101, I think I’ll be okay. Hopefully Panda was nice to you guys.

If the moneymaking sites don’t make money, I recommend getting rid of them because unless you figure out how to make it profitable, it becomes a time and emotion drain. Sites created out of passion or a genuine interest in the subject matter is a whole different story.

The Story of a Pig

It’s not really a story of a pig, but in an attempt to honor the title of this post, I’ll refer to my Visit Hudson Valley site as a pig.

You see, I created the site back in 1996 when I was exploring the inner workings of site creation. Back then one of my favorite pastimes was eating in restaurants and discovering new foods. Being relatively new to the area, I searched online for local restaurant listings, but there weren’t any. Remember this is back in 1996 when folks were still afraid of the Internet.

Since I couldn’t find a site that had the information I was looking for, I created one. I loved creating sites, playing around in databases, taking pictures, eating out and so on, so Visit Hudson Valley was a labor of love. As time went on and life happened (in particular the illness and subsequent death of my mom), I lost interest in a lot of things, including creating websites.

Revisiting the Pig

Over time, my interest in the Internet returned and I re-created Visit Hudson Valley (yes, re-created VHV because when I lost interest I allowed the domain to expire and the site was totally offline for a few years). Around that time I created Tidbits & Stuff and a couple of other sites. My interest in the various sites ebbed and flowed, waxed and waned, peaked and valleyed (no pun intended). You get my drift.

Over the past two years I allowed Visit Hudson Valley to sit there in its own sty (lost interest again, but this time I didn’t take it offline). I didn’t update any of the databases nor did I add much content. It just sat on the Internet unloved and uncared for (queue the violins). Last month I earned a whopping $4.82 from the site. It was never a huge moneymaker, but $4.82 is pretty bad even by VHV standards.

A New Tube of Lipstick

This month I slapped a little lipstick on the pig in the form of a new blogging theme and I’m working on updating the databases (there are about 5,000 entries across all of the databases so it will take quite some time to go through them all).

By changing the blog theme and adding a couple of entries, I’ve more than doubled my last month’s earnings in the space of 1 week. Let’s face it, when you only earn $4.82 it’s not hard to double those earnings.

Lesson Learned from My Pig and Lipstick

All too often we take our sites down because we’ve lost interest. I’ve found that interest, just like so many other things in life is cyclical. If you were once passionate about something, give it time, your passion will return. It may take a month, a year or 3 years, but it will return.

All I know is that when folks search for “things to do in the Hudson Valley,” or, “Hudson Valley Maps,” or “Hudson Valley Restaurants,” my little piggy shows up somewhere on the first page of Google’s search results. That wouldn’t happen if I had taken the site down a second time when my interest waned.

In this situation, it’s much easier to make an old pig look good with a little lipstick than it is to create a new pig from scratch. Before you ditch your old pig, let it sit for a while. When the interest returns, pick out a nice shade of lipstick and apply.
 

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According to my numbers, somewhere around September 22nd, things changed. Actually, it could have been September 21st because I saw another record high day of Google earnings (in excess of $100), but the following day, my earnings dropped.

Following the high and the next day drop there was a balancing out of sorts. It’s hard for me to say exactly what was going on. What I did notice, however, was that my overall page views seemed to have dropped an average of  between 8 to 10%.

When I say overall page views dropped between  8-10%, I’m using the total page views across all my sites as shown in my StatCounter account. StatCounter isn’t the most accurate indicator but I’m able to view my numbers in one glance.

Taking a Closer Look

When I look at Google and my search results, I really only pay attention to my 2 highest earning sites. As I checked my Google ranking for one of them, it still bounces between #1 and #2 in the search results for the major search term. As far as my second highest earning site, it still remains in the same position as it was prior to the algorithm tweak (even though I’ve not added new content to the site for 2 months).

Could it be a Hiccup?

Although my overall monthly AdSense earnings were a hair higher than last month’s (that’s good considering there was a holiday early on in the month), I’m not complaining. Last month my daily average was $59.37 and this month it’s $59.67. Like I said, just a hair higher.

I did a little roaming around the Internet to see if anyone else has noticed a change in page views/earnings and came across this post  on Web Pro News. It seems that Google launched an iteration of the Panda update last week.

What this Means Going Forward

For me, this means business as usual. I’ll continue writing for my various sites and force myself to finish working on my ebooks (I’ve not been very motivated in the book writing department). Having a few products to sell helps to offset Google Panda fluctuations.

If I were a newbie and just starting out right now, I’d immerse myself in learning about one freelance writing wile writing for upfront pay. I’d squeeze out some time to write a few residual articles and play around with creating my own blog or two.

Google has been making algorithm changes since the beginning of time (Google time). Some changes are big and some not so big. It’s the way of the Internet. If you have a good strategy, and follow your plan, you should fare pretty well.

About a month ago I wrote how my new site was an apparent victim of the Google Sandbox. My strategy for getting the blog out of the sandbox is the exact same strategy I used for getting it tossed in the sandbox. My strategy was to post high-quality articles to the site once a week (more frequently if time allowed).

While in the sandbox I would periodically check the Google search results to see where my site placed. The first few times I checked, I gave up after page 30. A week later I found my site on page 20. I did a little bit of the happy dance because at least I was able to find it before page 30.

Weekly Page Rank Checking

Each week after I added a new post, I’d check the Google search results to see if my site had moved up in ranking. It first moved from 20 to page 17 and the following week it moved to page 12.

Last week after posting my weekly article I found my site on page 3. Well, once I found it on page three I became a little obsessed. I started to check the search results daily. The site bounced from page 3 to page 4 back to 3 and sometimes to page 2. Actually, I was perfectly fine with it bouncing to and fro. It was much better than placing on page 30.

Search Result Ranking Game

I played a little game with this obsession. As the site started placing better, I started my search on page 4 and worked backwards to page 1. Imagine my surprise when I not only found posts on page 3, but I found 2 posts on page 2 and get this…my site is showing as the second entry on the first page of search results. So, not only does it appear on page 1 but it also appears on page 2 and page 3.

I’m enjoying a muted celebration today. I say muted because you never know with Google what could happen next.

Understanding Google’s Point of View

As odd as it sounds, I can understand Google’s logic with the sandbox situation. Of the major search engines Google is always the first to index a brand-new site. A new site usually gets good rankings when initially indexed. That doesn’t always last. Because there are so many scrapers, scammers and unscrupulous Internet folks Google tosses the new site at the back of the line until it can figure out whether or not the site deserves top billing. So the good and the bad is your site gets indexed quickly, but you never know where it will end up.

Bing, Yahoo, Ask and the others take a while to index new sites. So while the other search engines had not indexed my site I was receiving traffic from Google because of its quick indexing. By the time the other search engines got around to indexing my new site Google had tossed me in the back of the line. The good is I still received traffic from the other search engines.

Whatever Google does behind the scenes to determine whether or not a site is worthy of top billing takes time. Some sites get top billing faster than others. This depends on a host of factors, one of which is keyword competition. I may not enjoy sitting on the receiving end of this treatment but I do understand why it needs to be done.

Keep on Truckin’

While Google was doing what Google does, I continued doing what I do. I continued building my site. The upside of being in the sandbox is that it gave me time to build a more robust site. The site has so much more to offer readers than when it was first indexed.

If Google changes things again I will stay the course. When I think about Google sandbox and their rules and regulations I can’t help but think about that article I wrote many moons ago entitled How High is Your Bar. If you set the bar high enough and maintain that level of quality, I don’t think there is much to worry about.