OK, so that’s a little dramatic, but still, my blog’s google placement for certain keywords has suffered sorely and it troubles me.
It all started with comment spam. I installed a spam eating plug-in to keep the flood from pouring over my blog, and it worked well - too well. At first, I was delighted to see that my INBOX was no longer filled with emails alerting me to the fact that posts needed moderating. After a while, it seems that they tapered off all together. “Great!” I thought, “This thing must really be learning what spam looks like.”
After some time, I googled “AGI” and noticed my site wasn’t in the result list. I thought that was odd as the keyword “AGI” had always included my blog in the top 10 or so (this is just a guess as my vanity googling was never very formal). I thought my page rank must have gone down, so I checked…
“Ahhh! Blank pages everywhere!”
Somehow the plug-in had jacked the WP “loop” and the result was blank pages - lots of them. For some reason, the problem didn’t manifest itself until sometime after installing the plug-in.
I’m no PHP hacker, but I did my best to follow the code. I was never able to figure out what was happening; I suppose if I knew more about WordPress, I could’ve figured it out as the PHP was fairly easy to follow. I didn’t want to dive into WP more then I already had (I’m going to replace it with a homespun Django blog anyway), so I decided to just update it to the latest WP version and see if that would fix it. It did.
Now, I find that google has nearly dropped my blog off the face of the earth. Check the search results…
Gundy 1st — 6th
Gabe Gunderson 1st — 340th
Gunderson ~15th — 392nd
Gabriel ~35th — 931st
Gabe ~35th — 871st
AGI ~10th — 291st
Asterisk C# 1st — 313th
The traffic graph seems to back it up:
Anyway, If I’m not in your blogroll, you can add me to it and help stop this search engine injustice! Or, if you need less lofty motivation, you can just do it to throw a dog a bone!
P.S. I’m now using Akismet to fight spam (on the recommendation of others).
April 24th, 2007 at 9:24 pm
“Akismet has caught 9 spam for you since you first installed it.”
Wow - 5 minutes ago. Looks promising.
April 24th, 2007 at 11:13 pm
I added you to my blogroll since you asked so nicely :) and akismet rocks! I don’t know what you were using before, but akismet is hands down the best spam controller I’ve seen. Hope everything is going well for you!
- Phil
April 26th, 2007 at 9:09 am
Posting more often might help to get your Google rankings up again - besides, I’d like to hear from you more often.
April 26th, 2007 at 10:12 pm
@Phil801 - If I knew it would get me on your blogroll, I would have groveled long ago :)
@David - I agree, I need to post more often, but like many, I find myself drained after work and blogging is the furthest thing from my mind. Oh well.
April 30th, 2007 at 11:59 am
Hey Gabe,
Looks like your ranking has bounced back. Google loves you! Looking forward to seeing the Django blog.