Flashes of Panic

A few weeks ago I noticed that traffic for this site has been plunging. I used to average just over a hundred visits a day; recently (i.e. the past week or so, though the trend started three or more weeks ago)it’s been less than half that. It’s easy to see where the change is: when traffic was higher, I was getting slightly more than half my traffic from search engines, mostly Google. Now, search engine traffic is somewhat less than a third of the much-diminished total; that translates to about a quarter of the traffic it used to be.

In the grand scheme of things, this isn’t a big deal; I like being read, but the search engine traffic is not regular readership. I don’t have advertising on the site, so the reduced traffic isn’t hitting any revenue source. However, eventually this site’s position on search engines affects other sites I link to in which I do have some financial interest, specifically the various CMI projects. So this morning I tried to track down what was going on.

Google’s Webmaster Tools tell me that I’m still listed. However, when I look at the “Top 20 queries in which my site appeared”, I find some odd stuff. In the top 10, I find terms like “free ringtones” (#2; I’m the 206th result) or “wallpaper” (#3; I’m 902nd) or “free ringtone” (#5; I’m 108th). I maintain an attitude of puzzled bemusement towards the ring-tone economy (why would I want my phone to sound like anything other than a phone?) and I’ve certainly never written about it. Why on earth would this site come up in searches for these terms?

The answer seems to come from Technorati. They find a slew of sites linking to me; some the expected other weblogs, but a few unexpected ones (hello, California Library Association?) which appear to be nests of comment spam. And that comment spam is… linking to this site. Using terms like “free go phone ringtone”.

Because, of course, you can find that stuff here, right?

My best guess is that this is meta-comment spam, that the spammed comments etc. were meant to link to similar comment spam on this site. But, of course, I filter that stuff. (At considerable cost to my blood pressure, I might add. Such is the cost of being a good internet citizen and taking responsibility where others won’t.)

My hypothesis is that since I appear to be the “beneficiary” of this (these) spam run(s), I’m getting penalized in the search results. One more reason to love spam. Don’t you?

Now Playing: Cowards from Abigail by The Nields

Technorati Tags: google, spam, technorati, weblogs