Terry Oglesby wonders, “Have any of the rest of you noticed a sudden upturn or downturn since mid-April in visitors referred by Google?”
Indeed, I have, on both OTB Prime and Gone Hollywood (although, oddly, OTB Sports is seeing its highest traffic ever).
Terry’s suspicion, that “Google had redone their search protocols to highlight or otherwise favor Blogger/Blogspot blogs (that they now control),” is unlikely. Indeed, they bought up the Blogspot blogs about two weeks into my blogging career, back on February 17, 2003!
When I moved off Blogspot that April, it did take nearly a year for my Google traffic to follow me over, despite it happening very quickly for the other search engines, leading me to have the very same thought. My guess, though, is that Google has just changed their algorithm in some way that’s working to our detriment.
That happened to OTB over a year ago, when they decided to purge most of the blogs off GoogleNews without explanation. Also, for some reason, OTB doesn’t poll on Google Blog Search even though we’re very highly ranked on the main search engine.
Go figure.
UPDATE: This post, from my May 2003 archives, seems tangentially apropos:
There have been numerous musings on OTB about the lousyness that is blogspot. Kathy has offered to help people get off blogspot. Michele is begging people to do likewise.
Now, I understand why the very poor — who are not getting a tax cut anywhere near as large a tax cut as Bill Gates under the oppressive Republican plan — can’t afford a real host. But why the hell is Dave Barry (aka Cannot find server) still on it?
