Well it appears we finally have the long awaited pagerank update, only it’s not exactly what everyone expected. A while ago, about 2 months to be exact, I checked iwebtools and RealityWired’s predicted pagerank was estimated to jump from a PR4 to a PR6. Cool beans. Then a few weeks ago people started noticing negative impacts and the rumors were it was related to text link sales. Rechecking my predictions, PR was stuck at 4 with little movement. Subsequently I dropped Text-Link-Ads from this blog, figuring that action was coming too late and if it truely was having the affect people were seeing the damage was done. This morning however, my Google toolbar showed our PR at 3. Yikes!

Reading around, that’s not the half of it. It seems that many people, including A-Listers one could argue are the mainstays have been hit with negative penalties. Some of the sites Google has put in the penalty box include (from http://andybeard.eu):

http://www.autoblog.com/ PR6 PR4
http://www.engadget.com/ PR7 PR5
http://www.problogger.net/ PR6 PR4
http://www.copyblogger.com/ PR6 PR4
http://www.joystiq.com/ PR6 PR4
http://www.tuaw.com/ PR6 PR4

A few search and money related sites as examples

http://www.searchengineguide.com PR7 PR4
http://www.searchenginejournal.com PR7 PR4
http://www.johnchow.com PR6 PR4
http://www.quickonlinetips.com/ PR6 PR3
http://weblogtoolscollection.com/ PR6 PR4
http://andybeard.eu PR5 PR3

That hurts and many the level of speculation has increased dramatically as to why the change. One thought occurs to me, maybe it’s not so much a penalty as it is a resetting of the scale where a PR6 was considered unobtainable not so long ago, it seems quite commonplace now, as was PR7. So maybe the importance of the scale has been adjusted and a PR3 still meets the same criteria it did when it was a 5 but on the new scale it’s just a 3.

Who knows. Like everything else the Google does it will most likely remain a mystery and discussions will be filled with speculation for months. One thing is for certain, it’s no longer lonely in the penalty box.

Update: The slide continues as we are down to a PR2. Yippie, I’m throwing a party.

Well, it’s time to put a bullet in the head of both these programs as neither has really done anything for me. Auction Ads showed some early promise but then it got sold and went to hell in a hand basket. It’s always amazing how a product can be doing so well then when another company buys it, it gets so frakked up. As for TLA, well, I don’t command the traffic that a John Chow type does so the only real incentive I’ve got going for me is PR (assuming you believe in that type thing). Given the recent climate about Google and selling text links and the fact for months this blog was predicted to jump to a PR 6 then last week it’s predicted to stay at a 4 I think I’m done with them too. Maybe it’s related, maybe it’s not, but it’s not worth the risk of inciting the Google gods for no more than the few pennies a month the program generates. Sorry guys, but you got to go!

If you run a website then one of the most important and frustrating things you have to deal with is how and where to get traffic. If your a new site this can be overwhelmingly frustrating and many people (myself included) have sought to get that golden article that lands on the frontpage of Digg. Over the past month I’ve had a couple posts get noticed, nothing that sent earth shattering or server exploding traffic my way but enough that can be measured. The results are more than a little interesting.

I got brushed by Digg around Sept 4th, again nothing too mind shocking but enough to register a nice little spike. The effect lasted for about 24 hours, right up to the point the post got buried (as it was starting to gain some good momentum no less).

Initially the article started off on Reddit and that provided a nice little spike, again, nothing major but enough it caught the attention of a digger. The effect was the same, very short lived. In fact, several articles submitted to Reddit resulted in subsequent traffic spikes, all showing similar results, very sharp spikes that trailed off quickly. Not nearly as quickly as Digg, but nothing super sustainable either.

Another article posted around the same timeframe got Stumbled and it went crazy (for me anyway). The interesting thing was that while it showed the same sharp increase in traffic it took it way longer to die off than either of the other two networks, maintaining traffic for nearly two weeks. In fact, I have a couple articles that got Stumbled more than 6 months ago that still send regular traffic.

I’m not the only one that has noted this either, Shoemoney noted similar patterns with both Digg & Fark as compared to StumbleUpon. Shoemoney notes the differences in terms of time on site, suggesting that contrary to popular belief Stumblers tend to hang around longer than most people believe. Looking at my own numbers, they aren’t as dramatic but seem to coincide with what Shoemoney saw. StumbleUpon had an exit rate of 54.31% while Digg was right there at 54.19% but Reddit didn’t hang around long at all with an exit rate of 87.73%.

What’s all this mean? Well, to me it means that Digg is overrated and Stumblers ROCK! Digg traffic is purely “in the moment” traffic and while it may bring you new reader it’s not sustainable after the initial shock wave. StumbleUpon is, in my opinion, the best of the major Social Networks. It’s easy to use, doesn’t arbitrarily kill submissions because of some predisposed prejudice and the members really make it a community. Unlike Digg who rules with an iron fist and gives power diggers the power to totally kill something based on their own bias. Power Stumblers certainly have the ability to command major amounts of traffic but Stumblers seem to be more concerned about things of interest to them or things they feel will be of interest to others (that’s the big difference) where Digg appears to be a “members only” club, where if your not part of the “in” crowd, you have little hope of ever being invited to dance. It? also doesn’t really matter that something you have might be of interest to a large number of Diggers, if it’s not of interest to the main stream it’s dead.

If your looking for decent traffic, then getting involved in StumbleUpon is a key thing you should be doing. Aside from the potential of major traffic if Stumblers like your stuff, just participating will turn you on to some pretty cool sites and individuals. You can tag me on StumbleUpon via crazy4bass.stumbleupon.com, drop me a note or add me as a friend.

September was another good month for Reality Wired as traffic nearly tripled. Both Adsense and IntelliTXT again posted increased earnings, but Auction Ads and Text-Link-Ads were virtually non-existent.

Adsense - $229.43 (more than doubled August earnings)
IntelliTXT - $538.95 (increase of about 30%)
Auction Ads - $0.72 (think I lost .20 here)
Text-Link-Ads - $3.75

Total: $772.85

So I pretty much doubled august earnings or close to it ($430.55), that’s pretty good for what amounts to just fooling around, testing different things. I have come to the conclusion that Auction Ads suck and I’ll be removing them from the site. I might replace them with something else, I might not but they’ve never really done anything since their first month so to me they’re just taking up space.

Traffic was also up this month, nearly tripling what I had in August. That’s thanks in most part to Stumblers (you guys ROCK!) and a brief brush by Digg. RSS feed count didn’t make the 200 subscriber goal in September so that sucked but it did this morning, close but no cigar. We did however, break into the Technorati top 10,000. Woot for us.

Again, I’m pleased with the performance but like last month I don’t really have a goal for October. For me this is a hobby not a job so it’s not critical that things follow some regimented plan. I post when I can and whatever interest me or seems to be hot at the time. For those that asked last month, to which I never answered (sorry) my biggest referrers were by far StumbleUpon (again, Stumblers ROCK!) who accounted for roughly 23% of my traffic, direct hits accounted for another 13% and Google was 12%. The remainder was split up among various referring sites.

So things are starting to roll along now and I’m sure if I really put my nose to the grindstone things would grow by leaps and bounds but this is simply proof that regardless what all the so called “know it alls” have to say, what really matters is just sticking with it.