Scary! Scary! Google forgets In Photos

Written January 15, 2007 in Words

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I wondered why traffic was slow to the site today and then I searched for donncha. Insted of this site being the second or third link it’s nowhere to be found. I know it’s only a Google hiccup that other blogs have experienced too of late but it’s frightening watching my logs. They’re not moving, much.

You can practically hear the tumbleweed blowing across the screen it’s so quiet.

Much later .. I figured out what caused the problem. It was my Google sitemap. The “R&H Hall” tag caused a problem because it wasn’t encoded properly. Adding a urlencode() around the right bit of code fixed that. Must tell the author of UTWgoogleSitemaps…

User tags: "scary pictures in motion", "scary rss feed", "scary pictures", "scary google", "scary pictures", "real scary pics"

9 comments on ' Scary! Scary! Google forgets In Photos '

I follow your blog, I’m subscribed to it twice, but when I clicked on the link to read it, I see 15 ads! and it’s not immediately obvious where the content is. Could it just be a case of being de-rated because of that? It really does look excessive! I’d go mad if I wasn’t just following the RSS feed

Written by Colm on January 15, 2007 at 9:53pm
Ach but there are still some of us who are passing by

Written by redmum on January 16, 2007 at 12:16am
Sorry Colm, but now that you’ve commented you won’t see any adverts on the last month’s worth of posts which is a bit of a thank you for contributing!

I don’t think it’s the adverts though. A few bloggers have complained of the same thing happening to them and it righted itself eventually! Thank you for your support redmum!

Written by Donncha O Caoimh on January 16, 2007 at 12:43am
Never mind the previous comment, I’ve changed my ad code so that only the sidebar advert shows up now as it’s the best performing here by a long mile.

Strangely enough, the same position on ocaoimh.ie doesn’t do nearly as well and it’s the content adverts that draw the clicks.

Written by Donncha O Caoimh on January 16, 2007 at 1:41am
I’ve also just subscripted to your RSS feed, no adverts or weird stuff here. Looks all fine. With regards to your Google positioning, they are rolling out another data centre change, as well as toolbar PageRank updates. These might have finished by now though.

Written by Daze on January 19, 2007 at 11:20am
My Google traffic has actually more the doubled over the past few days, though it’s still a mere fraction of yours. Would be interesting to know if it’s just the Google Dance in motion or if such a small sitemap error really did cause such large problems.

Written by Rirath on January 20, 2007 at 4:33pm