Back in the game

This read more like a ProBlogger post than most of my typical content, but I think it’s worth saying…

I didn’t tell too many people, but for the past 2 months, MobileTracker has been absent from the vast vast majority of Google search results pages (SERPs). I wasn’t trying any crazy blackhat optimization techniques–I just rely on having great and timely content–so it came as a complete surprise. I talked around a bit and consulted forums and found out that for whatever reason this can just sometimes happen. I’m happy to report that it looks like the dark days are over and the goodtimes are back.

Luckily, I had some great exclusive content pieces that went up during the outage, as well as a lucky uptick in placements at Yahoo. Still visits were down about 25% overall–missing a few thousand visitors that average a few page views apiece is a hard thing. Advertising revenue was down, but was still at a decent amount (very livable). Personally I would have thought AdSense would have seen more of a dive since search engine viewers click ads more often than daily visitors.

Traffic is now higher than ever and the future is rosy.

While it wasn’t fun, it’s nice to know that it’s possible to continue with the site and income if there is a big (permanent) shift at Google. This experience reaffirms my goal to not depend on any one source of traffic or revenue.