UPDATE (July 27th, 2009):
Earlier this morning I got an email from Google accepting my Adsense account, sweet deal! Hope things go better this time around, after some browsing I realized that around the same time this happened, several other larger blogs had the exact same problems. They had pages de-indexed (some of them experienced this with LARGE portions of their blogs), rankings acting funky, adsense bans (some of them got them reinstated after several weeks), and a ton of other quirky behavior from their favorite search engine provider.
I’ll have to put some anti-fraud click protection in place, I’ve been researching it a bit on Google (lol, go figure). I think what happened was I was bombed with thousands of fake clicks to a couple of my sites. I experienced this recently with the private ad network I run on my forums. I had to update and implement some anti-fraud click modules for that as well.
UPDATE (July 25th, 2009):
After this post was written it basically played out like this.. As I said originally, the post ranked as a #1 hit right away for “fast and furious trucks” (from other ips, not logged into a google account, etc.) but then disappeared ENTIRELY a few days later.
Around the same time I got an email from Google informing me that I had been booted from Adsense; after pulling in a nice $40/month for a few months prior from a high-traffic project too! I immediately filed a dispute (I had done nothing wrong?!) and began to investigate what the potentially permanent adsense ban may do to my current rankings. I did this by reviewing a few of my more popular keyword hits to see if they were still ranked in the same position. Most of my long-established ones were normal, but got to some of my newer posts and sure enough, typed in “fast and furious trucks” and NOTHING.. for about a week. During that week, it did not show up at ALL.
I scoured Google for my link thinking maybe it just got knocked down in the rankings substantially after that initial hit, page after page, nowhere to be found. After I realized it was nowhere to be found (and had google analytics to prove it!) I made this post referencing the “ban” or “blocking” of the fatf post. About a week later of me checking it daily to see if I could find it, the post suddenly appeared again, a few pages deep in the rankings (about 20-30 I’d estimate) and began working its way back to the front page over the course of about another week.
I think I may have jumped the gun a bit on saying they “blocked” the post, however it was very strange that it was indexed and shown SO quickly, but then disappeared entirely. I’m talking.. one day there is 500 hits for the search term, the next day.. zero. It was stange indeed.. I wish I had a friend at Google.. (although I did get a Google Voice invite the other day as soon as they started sending them out it seems??? rad!)
Seeing as how I haven’t given any thought towards this post in so long, I just gave it another go and submitted an application for a new Adsense account. I’ll keep you guys posted!
Original Post from September 1st, 2008:
Not really sure why this happened but now Google is blocking my last blog post with the “Fast and Furious” truck pictures. They also thought it’d be nice to boot me from Adsense, which I’ve been a long-standing member of on many of my legitimate sites. I do NOT run linkfarms or ANY blackhat-seo methods or even dabble with it. I have always taken a very organic approach towards my online marketing. None of the pictures in the post are copyrighted and I don’t believe I violated any terms of anything.
First, a little history on the post. I saw that the new “Fast and Furious” movie was coming out soon and it actually looked like an entertaining sequel to the first one. I saw the split second of Trophy Trucks in the new movie and was stoked! Afterall, I run several desert racing related sites and own two project prerunners myself. Me and my buddy Zach watched the trailer together and afterwards he tells me that our mutual friend’s little brother works at the shop that BUILT that truck! Of course, I tell him “nooooo waayyy!” but he quickly brings up said brother’s myspace and begins showing me pics of the TT builds.
I thought this was way too cool so I decided to post the pics on my blog and share it with friends and other guys on my offroad forums. Within TWENTY minutes, my post about the fast and furious trucks was on the FIRST page for the search terms “fast and furious truck” and “fast and furious trucks”. I WAS SHOCKED! I have had several first page hits from this blog but THAT QUICKLY!?
Now, just days later, I have been completely stripped of even showing up in the search results. I did NOT steal any content (all text in the post was written by me!), the pictures on the post are personal photos from a friend, and I did not change anything from the normal way I’ve been blogging for the last 2 years. Despite this, my 1st page result for “fast and furious trucks” and other such terms have been stripped of me, without any warning, any notification, NOTHING. I was also kicked from the adsense program for “invalid clicks”. What a great way to spend labor day weekend. I have made an inquiry with google regarding having my adsense account reinstated.. seeing as how I did nothing to violate their terms? We’ll see how that goes, I’ll keep you guys posted.