Akismet ban lifted, kudos to their support!

Well, that was fast! I mean really fast. Just a few hours after I submitted my request, Alex from Akismet contacted me, and after several checks and emails back and forth by today's morning I am free! Feels really good, thank you Alex, and kudos to Akismet overall, it's nice to have business with you guys! :)

Does Akismet ban affect Google ranking?

LOL I was banned by akismet. Well, not me personally, but my brand new URL that I created for my main money making page just a couple of months ago and made a redirect - which several previous posts were about.

Funny how I figured this. I did not comment on blogs with this URL yet at all. Never till yesterday. And yesterday I went to investigate my main competitor links - which was prompted by my drop in SE results for my main keywords. Yes, I got a serious drop like a week and a half ago, two keywords went to the second page, and one dropped from 3rd place to 4th which accounted for a total 50% drop of traffic. And yes, my main competitor got ahead of me on all keywords. I am still investigating the reasons for this drop, hence an attempt to figure out what competitor is doing.

So, I went to Yahoo site explorer and took a look at his links. All the first page were blog comments on high PR posts, and I naturally went to comment on the same posts. Yet my comments did not go through! WTF I thought? So I went to one of my own blogs and commented there. Yep, it went directly to spam! OK, so I went to a handful on friends' blogs and commented there and had them rescue my comments from spam. Did not help. I could continue this route since I own quite a few blogs and my friends own even more together, But I just stopped and thought I would rather try Akismet support.

I don't remember making a single comment with this URL, let alone spamming blogs. Been there, done that, don't do this anymore for quite some time, so I am positive it was not my action that caused the ban. Then what? Likely it was my competitor. Dirty stuff, granted. Looks like he is not very picky in his methods. So my second thought was - heck, let me do the same to him! Then I sorta pondered about it and decided to play nice. Like I don't have a proof he did it, only suspicion. I will give him a benefit of the doubt, keeping this incident in mind however.

So I won't spam blog comments with his URL. And I won't try to get off Akismet blacklist with undercover activity - I will just submit a support request to them. I did not do anything wrong, why should I hide? Will see how it goes, and will try to keep you posted.

One more thought however - could it be that this Akismet ban affected my Google ranking? Searched the net, and found another blog post about Google downranking coinciding with Akismet blacklist. Something to ponder about...

Theoretically it should not happen, because this way BigG will promote dirty competition, which definitely will hit the relevance of their search results, yet practically there is no limit to stupidity, so you never know :)

Well, here is the letter I sent to Akismet support:

Hello,

Looks like one of my urls http://XXX.html is considered spam by Akismet. I am positive I did not spam comments. In fact this url is just about two months old, and I even can't remember ever placing a comment with it before yesterday, when I actually discovered it does not go through. I would greatly appreciate it if you can look into this for me.

Thanks and regards, Joshua

The results are here: http://adsense-diary.blogspot.com/2009/04/akismet-ban-lifted-kudos-to-their.html

Redirect 301 status. Ads layout

No changes on BigG. All is exactly as it used to be before the redirect. Now I realize I was hoping changing the url will have enough power to move me up a position or two. Well, no luck, looks like it is not enough with such a fierce competition. Yet every small bit counts, so I don't think this was the wrong move. It definitely proved beneficial in just a bit less competitive area - like a page or two down for the same keywords.

Interesting and not yet confirmed observation on the ads layout. Initially when YB picked up the right config, I let it run for a day, and then added other ad zones. Overall CTR and eCPM fell, but I attributed this to normal fluctuations. Now, in an attempt to squeeze a bit more from the same page I added one more ad zone from another ad provider to this page.

To my disappointment, I saw further drop in CTR and eCPM, not compensated for with the added eCPM. So, I removed almost all ad zones from the page yesterday night. Today I see a serious increase in both metrics. I will give it a couple of days, and then try to switch other ad zones back on. If CTR and eCPM follow, I will take it as a proven fact.

Redirect 301 and hub layout change status update

So far so good, on both accounts!

My main page stays at the upper boundary of its range for the main keywords, and even shortly went to position #3 today for one of them. Funny, it was listed with the old address at that time :) I figured where extra traffic is coming from - I got a rise on Yahoo for a secondary keyword, and now hold position #3 for it. Good result! Main keywords came back to the listing, but slightly lower - at #89. No changes on Live/MSN.

Now, another test I started a couple of weeks ago with the hub layout brought spectacular results, too! Remember, for the first half of February CTR was in the area of 3.5%, and it pretty much was in line with historical average. Now, since I made the change, average CTR for the period shoot up to 7.5%! More than twice, with corresponding change in eCPM. I like it too :)

I like it!

I don't know what will be down the road, but I like how I feel today! I am already having the second most profitable day of all time, and it seriously threatens the previous record, that was set almost a year ago. Right now it is showing $170.63 for the day, with the record being $185.35, and it still has more than 4 hours to go!

So yesterday night YieldBuild finally picked up the right configuration, and now I am enjoying the ride in the full force - CTR about 50% and eCPM approaching $30. Traffic seems to pick up, too - hence the spectacular results. Not sure exactly where extra traffic is coming from - SERPs for the main keywords are still inside their recent range, albeit at the upper boundary. Probably some secondary keywords got a boost from changing url - will try to check with GA tomorrow.

Well, overall I am really satisfied so far. It did not take long, just five days, and there were no drop in traffic at all. And if you are not using ad optimizer you will not feel the transition at all!

This all refers to google. No changes on Live yet, and I got dropped from Yahoo :D

Redirect 301 - completed

Well, it took BigG about five days to do the job. Right now page address is updated for every keyword I bothered to check. No changes in ranking in BigG, no significant changes on Y and Live either. Wonder if it was the good idea to implement at all. Yet on other pages I saw a definite improvement. Either improvement did not come yet and will come a bit later, or this change was not enough to alter the current status quo for this particular page...

Money wise I am still in dire straights - Yieldbuild still did not pickup the right configuration, and my eCPM still stays a half of what it could have been, earnings follow of course. Need to have more patience on this, I know it takes a while. :)

Trying to push YieldBuild to optimize faster

The whole day was agonizing over relatively low eCPM. Not really really low, it was around $10, which is not that bad at all - yet I got used to twice as much lately. I know what ad tabs configuration Yieldbuild should arrive at to get this eCPM, so watching it wondering around without any purpose finally became unbearable.

So I went in and edited out two ad tabs, so only one is left and what that thingie should do is just to figure out the right type of the ad and its format. Yet so far it did not pick it up, despite of my best effort :(

The total for today is around $65, and it unlikely to get much higher than $70 for the whole day...

No changes on search engines side. Still the same positions, and more or less the same traffic, that slightly grows, probably due to the seasonal tendencies...

Redirect 301 - current status

Search engines wise - nothing to report home so far. New page got indexed in Google and Yahoo, Live lags as usual. However, there are no changes in search results just yet. They still show the old address, and position remains the same - hovering about 20 on MSN, 80 on Yahoo, and the bottom half of the first page on Google.

Yet there is one thing I did not think about that hit me in the back - my ad optimizing service. It rightly decided that this is a fresh new page, and started all optimization from scratch. It will take anywhere from several days to several weeks to arrive at the optimal placement that worked that well for me at the old address!

Meanwhile I got a serious reduction in eCPM and of course earnings! Yesterday I made just around $65, and if not for ads re-optimizing it would have been in the area of $110...

Pulling the trigger

It is scary, really...

Despite of the tests that proved positive and very encouraging, it is still very scary to start the redirect on the main money-maker. Right now I am up $96 and change for a day. Will I see such numbers ever again? I don't know...

Yet I decided it's time to do this, and there is no reason to roll back but fear. Have to do this, right?

OK, so right now for quite some time this page is hovering between 6th and 8th positions for the main keyword and 5th and 7th position for the second main keyword on Google, holds position 77 (LOL) on Yahoo and 21 on MSN for the main keyword.

Quite competitive keywords I tell you. Currently BigG returns 25,900,000 results for the main keyword; 9,480,000 intitle; 19,700,000 inanchor; 7,560,000 inurl. For the second keyword those numbers are 41,600,000; 63,400; 513,000 and 8,620 respectively.

According to GA this page received about 140K pageviews for the last month, and currently it produces revenue of about $120 per day.

Guess I will try to write down the numbers on the daily basis for some time, and hope they will get better :)

Ok, it's time to pull the trigger, wish me luck...

Redirect 301 - looks like it works!

10 days after I started this experiment I am positive it works, and works even better than I expected. Out of two redirected pages one had very short lived drop of traffic - for a couple of days literally - and it came back to the pre-redirect levels and stays there. From being nowhere for the main keywords page moved to the second page of Google and stays there, even managed for a short while to jump to the first page and make a double listing with the main page.

Another one seemed to have a more prolonged drop of traffic - until I realized there was something else involved. Further investigation showed that this page was also receiving a significant amount of traffic from MSN, from another keyword. And I did remove that keyword from the title at the time of doing redirect, cause this made the title more oriented to the main keyword. Well, right now I restored the old title, will keep a look at this and report later...

Now, what happened earnings wise? Surprisingly, they stayed the same for the second page. This was due to the overall growth of cost of click for the last several days I think. For the first page earnings actually increased like 80%, probably due to the same factor.

In fact, I made the same experiment for the third page at the same time - I did not mention it cause it is using completely different keywords. Yet the results are pretty much the same - over the span of 10 days overall unchanged traffic and almost double earning :)

Chages on Hubpages. Redirect 301 status.

So I don't forget. I noticed the day before yesterday that one of my high-traffic hubs have a very low CTR, especially comparing to another traffic champion. Some quick analysis revealed that the layout of the above the fold portions of those hubs is different. Yesterday I made a change to make lower CTR hub layout the same as on higher CTR hub. Up to the moment of change (Feb 15 inclusive) the CTR for lower hub for the month of February was about 3.5%. Will give it a couple of weeks and come back to that at the end of the month.

Redirect 301 experiment does not stop to amuse me. Despite of rumors talking about 6-8 weeks it did not seem to take BigG more than a couple of days to pick it up. At some point one of those relatively low link popularity pages even formed a double listing with the major one, 5th and 6th positions on the first page of BigG for 40,000,000 results search! It did not last long though, a day or so, but now it still is on the respectable second page for the same keyword, much better of than it was before redirect.

So far I am happy with results and seriously am planning on doing this to the main money maker page in an attempt to move it higher than 5-6th place. Just want to wait a few days more to make sure the results hold.

Adsense Diary may be back

It's been a while. Quite a while I would say. I really lost interest in posting here when it seemed that I achieved the intermediate goal. Boy how wrong I was assuming I made it!

Well, I did achieve it, for a short while. And since then it was down and down and down. The last drop was the fall of the average click cost from 10c to 2c, that practically eliminated my income altogether, and forced me to face a hard reality - we are in a depression baby, and nowadays you have to work 10 times more to earn ten times less!

So I am back to drawing board, starting several projects at once and trying to resurrect what is left from the old ones. Good thing is that today I finally crossed again the $100 mark with Adsense - I did not see such kind of earnings since May! In fact at the end of January my usual numbers were between $10 and 20 :(

Actually the purpose of this post was to keep a record that yesterday I changed urls of two of my forums posts from ftopict-160 and ftopict-179 to main-keyword-1 and main-keyword-2. The idea was to make them rank better, since I noticed that almost all first page listings but mine had the keyword in the url or domain. I can't slip it into domain name, yet url is doable with 301 redirect, at least theoretically.

So I did not dare to try it on a main money-making page just yet. According to publications and rumors, it takes BigG about 6-8 weeks to sort out redirect 301, so I want to have other means of income for those two months! First I am going to figure out is it really 6-8 weeks, hence this experiment on a couple of much less profitable pages.