Google released Penguin 2.0 update for its search alogrithms yesterday and Flickr is first casualty

Yesterday Google updated its search algorithm with Penguin 2.0, and all the blogger community is wary of the update.  But it seems that the first casualty of the update is the well known photo sharing site Flickr.com.  If you visit the Flick home page you will be met with above image.  

It has be two hours now since I went to Flickr and still I am getting the same image and message.  Pretty messed up really with millions of users getting same message.  Though I am not sure Google's release of Penguin 2.0 has anything to with Flickr going down, but the image clearly suggests so with the words BAD BAD PANDA!  A Flickr user and personal friend tells me that Flickr is down since yesterday.

Webmasters have been watching for Penguin 2.0 to hit the Google search results since Google's Distinguished Engineer Matt Cutts announced the imminent launch in March. Cutts officially announced that Penguin 2.0 is rolling out late Wednesday afternoon on "This Week in Google".

"It's gonna have a pretty big impact on web spam, It's a brand new generation of algorithms. The previous iteration of Penguin would essentially only look at the home page of a site. The newer generation of Penguin goes much deeper and has a really big impact in certain small areas."

In another blog post, Cutts has said that a total 2.3 percent of search queries were affected and the roll out has been completed.  So the update was launched on 22.5.2013 and theoretically  if you sites rankings and SERPS are still the same you have not been a victim of the Penguin 2.0.  If you have notice a drop in the rankings, do check whether your backlinks are pointing towards some unwanted site, as they are the main culprit for the drop.

Keep checking your keywords as well as websites in the Google Search window to see if you have been affected by the update.

Vijay Prabhu

Spammers visiting your blog is common, but do not click on the hyperlink, you encourage them by doing so!

Since I started this blog back in December, 2012 every day I kept my eyes peeled for number of viewers visiting my blog.  Everyday I hoped the page views would be better then yesterday.  It is the ultimate satisfaction for any blogger to see a high volume of page views for his/her blog. May be more than ad revenue!  Because like Aamir said in 3 Idiots, 

Baccha kabil bano, kabil ... kamyabi to sali jhak maar ke peeche bhagegi

Its very simple, write good content, the visitors and readers will flock your blog and with them you will get good revenue.   However it this article is not about readers or visitors to your blog, it is about spammers visiting your blog.  When I started blogging, I was happy to find a website with url videoshub.needz.it visiting my site often.  But one fine day I discovered it had visited my website 59 times in a day, I was worried and clicked on the link.  As you would have guessed by now the site featured unwanted content.  So I googled it and found out a way to stop it, thanks very good blogger friends I have and complained about it in a very decent way with Lunarpages, they raised a ticket about my complaint and resolved it. Since then it has never visited me you can also do the same by visiting Lunarpages support page, if this particular site is troubling you.

But my run-ins with the spammers have never stopped.  Till recently a site called kallery.net visited my site.  When I checked it out, it seemed to be some kind of image gallery in Korean language.  The latest ones doing rounds on my website are filmhill.com and current.com.  The webpage that is hidden under the current.com is flf-course.com which contains some sort of ad.  I was a bit surprised because current.com is a very reputed site. But spammers work in mysterious ways.

I have only one thing to say to my fellow bloggers, never click the hyperlink or url.  Better still stay away from bloggers visitor stats, they are not absolutely correct and also they induce you to click on unwanted hyperlinks.  Please read Proffessor Mungeltons blog and tecnoxp.com for list of all kind of spammers that are found to visit blogs. 

If you want a error free hit counters or hitstats for your blog kindly visit my friend Rehmat's website here for different kinds of stats counters. 

All in all, I would say to my fellow bloggers that these spammers are really parasites who survive on our clicks so if you want to effectively end the menace, stop clicking on them.

Kindly write in your experiences with spammers on your website/blog and share them with fellow bloggers as all of us are affected by them.

Vijay Prabhu

Has Google changed its search algorithms from 8.5.2013, the search results are definitely different

Perhaps you have not noticed, but Google seems to have quietly gone and done some changes in the algorithms it indexes the web pages with.  For starters before 8.5.2013 I had 5000+ pages of vvpvijay.blogspot.in indexed by Google and on 8.5.2013, when I checked the search results it just had 434 pages indexed.  

That is not all, Images uploaded by me and my co-author Vijay Deepak Chhibber, under the heading Photo of the Day have all but disappeared.  The new indexing pattern shows just 3 to 4 images if you enter Vijay Deepak Chhibber in the images window of Google Search.  

I researched the net for SEO and other people who follow the Google's indexing patterns but as of now nobody seems to have a clue.    Though today, my indexed pages are back to 4000+ which is a normal range, the images are still not visible in the search.

This I think is a reason of the next Page Rank update Google is undertaking albeit very silently.  If you remember, Google last updated its Page Rankings on 11.2.2013.   You can read all about the next Page Rankings due in June, 2013, on my friends top SEO site, supportivehands.net.

Have you also noticed the change in the indexing patterns? If so kindly share your experience.  Together we can research into what is really happening in the indexing world.

Vijay Prabhu

A complete SEO Engine for the newbie bloggers : Woorank

My Blog will complete 5 months on 16th May and as all newbie bloggers, I too am a little bit squeamish about my blog rankings.  I also strive to get a better ranking because a better ranking automatically gives my blog a place in the SERPs (search engine result page).  Most of us would agree that our readers come mostly through search engines.  Google in particular, followed by Yahoo! and Bing.  But most of the times, as a READER, if you want to know about a particular subject, you key in the word in the Google search box and click on the results that appear on the first page.  Sometimes you may visit the 2nd or the 3rd page but rarely do you go to the 10th page.

So, if you blog is somewhere in the 10th page of the SERPs, no one, read no one will ever visit your blog.  To get good readership, your blog has to be up there in the first 5 pages.  If you have a niche article, you can get into the first page.  Though all these is technical mumbo jumbo, you have to be a little aware and literate of these techniques.  

If you type in your blogspot name in the search box, you will see several domains listing your blog info.  Sites like Domaininfo, Bigstatsweb, Statmyweb, Craftkeys etc. will give you approximate visitors, ranks, backlinks, keywords etc.  But none of the above mentioned sites do a thorough study of your site from analytical point of view and give you a doable solution.  

This is when I visited woorank and found this one extremely useful for my SEO needs.  It not only gave me the usual details like rankings, visitors, worth etc but it analysed my site and gave me clear cut instructions on how to improve my website and its SEO.   It gave me a SEO score, told me where I could improve and errors on my site.  The scores given by woorank are on following attributes :

Visitors
Social Monitoring
Mobile
SEO Basics
SEO Content
SEO Links
SEO Keywords
SEO Authority
SEO Backlinks
Usability
Security
Technologies

All in all a complete SEO analyzing tool which I loved and am sharing with you fellow blogggers.  Give it a try, visit woorank and try it for yourself.

Vijay Prabhu