This blog lost about 2/3rds of its daily visitors, on or about August 20, 2024. That, against a months-long backdrop of steady daily page views.
“Tarnation”, I muttered, “what in blue blazes happened?”
Hopping horny-toads, what flea-bitten varmint did this? I’m-a-gonna blow ’em to smithereenies.
I write this blog mostly to amuse myself and a select few friends and relatives. But almost all of my page views are from strangers who find my how-to/technical information articles via Google. For example, my most popular post, by far, shows how to make a cheap heated faucet cover to keep exterior faucets from freezing.
And, upon re-reading the last couple of weeks of posts, I think I’ve found the problem.
I’ve been cussin’ too dang much. (And/or, Google just upped its standards in that area.)
To put that more technically, many savvy observers believe that curse words negative affect your search-engine optimization (SEO). In theory, that’s not supposed to be true. In practice, it appears to be true. And the only thing that stands out about my most recent posts is frequent (but humor-focused) use of swear words.
Google search generates more-or-less all of my referred traffic, so the only plausible explanation for the drop is that something has put me on Google’s bad side. Upon re-reading my most recent output, the gratuitous curse words stood out as the likely culprit.
An alternative explanation is that Google’s August 2024 update to its search algorithm found something else that it didn’t like about me. Turns out, quite a few websites saw a big decline in traffic just about the same day mine did. In theory, if I can cut through the technical barriers, there is a way for me to use the Google Search Console to see if there’s an issue. But that requires modifying the website and/or the DNS listing, neither of which I particularly want to do.
The lesson is that if our monopoly provider of search services takes a dislike to you, you’re toast. Whatever Google decides more-or-less determines how the internet runs.
Google giveth, and Google taketh away.
I’ve now gone back and cleaned up the past couple of weeks’ worth of postings. I’m hoping for the best.
We’ll see if Google can find it in her heart to forgive me. Whatever it was that I did to offend her.
