Drive Slowly : Google Ahead
Got to read about a new contest on InternetDuctTape. It’s a Blog Anniversary Contest by David Airey, a Graphic Designer who is giving away prizes to the tune of $4000.
Those who fear it to be another fake contest after Ashwin Khanna’s, can stand relieved as the contest is backed by a dozen of Sponsors including Lorelle VanFossen, John Boardley of I Love Typography, Problogger, Nate Whitehill, Maki of Dosh Dosh.
That was about the contest you can get to read about it at http://www.davidairey.com/graphic-designer-prize-giveaway/ (all links removed on David’s request). Contest closes within a few hours from now.
While going through David Airey’s blog the first post I got to read was Google crackdown: DavidAirey.com hit with search rank penalty. David just a couple of weeks after declaring this competition observed a fall in traffic from Google and position dropping from Search Results. He fears it to be penalization from Google either for posting paid advertisements or for holding this competition. Exact reason is not known as Google gives no warning/penalization message to webmasters. Incidentally John Chow too faced a similar penalization.
What makes sense is that Google does not support building links that are done in lieu of payment or expectation in form of prizes or a reciprocal link.
By the way, the title of this post is inspired by a road side sign that I remember seeing years back. It said “Drive Slowly : Speed Breaker Ahead”
I also read about google penalizing people that hold competitions that link back to them while I was preparing my contest idea.
I still went ahead with my (current) blog contest because my goal isn’t to get high search engine listings or beat the google algorithm but just get some new people hitting my site, once it’s got a decent number of subscribers and gets organic (non contest) links coming in then google will notice it anyway.
google algorithm prediction ahead, watch out for Heisenberg, it’s uncertain if he’ll be there though.
Andy Bailey
28 Sep 07 at 9:21 am
It may not be true that in this instant case Google had penalized site, but with traffic getting down David Airey fears it and has other reasons too…
In absense of any warning who knows what is happening behind scenes…
I got dropped to PR0 from 4 by going for own domain and it impacted traffic too.. let’s see when we see TBPR update…
Jalaj
28 Sep 07 at 9:37 am
It does seem strange that David was penalised; however, let’s hope things sort themselves out. Will be interesting to see future updates on this issue.
Nice title, btw.
johno
3 Oct 07 at 9:23 pm
google sometimes act weirdly
but cannot do without google also
Traffic falls drastically once you are out of results of google
mine Page Views decreased from 500 to 50
but got back in Google resluts
lalit nagrath
12 Nov 07 at 5:19 am