I guess this is all about Google - it's always been all about Google because Google is roughly 70% of all search traffic - that's good if it works in your favor but terrible if it's not - it can sink a business. Why? Because there's no viable alternative to Google for Organic Search, and not that much for Paid Search either.
If Google goes south on you - and it stays South - your sunk.
Well, that's what Google just did to Know More Media, including my blog - I lost more than 2/3 of my normal traffic over the last 36 hours - normally I get between 1500-2000 visits a day, it's been down to under 600 - none of it from Google, except a couple Google Images hits - that's it.
So what is life without Google? Well … if this doesn't get fixed soon, I doubt Know More Media will be able to continue (that's just my opinion, by the way) because the advertisers will back out.
It may just be a glitch that gets fixed in a couple of days - but what if it's not? What if someone at Google just decided, on whim (since they don't explain much) to shut the switch off…. you kinda got to wonder about the power of a monopoly.
Maybe Google isn't an actual monopoly in Search - but it's the de facto monopoly, because just about everyone starts a search at Google - and therefore, Google is an aggregater - the biggest aggregater of audience there is - they have just about 70% of any one who's searching at any moment in time, pretty much anywhere in the world - and that's tremendous power.
Now, another thing I noticed, and maybe it's just a glitch, but my RSS Feed Subscribers just jumped from 2073 yesterday (covers Tuesday) to 2722 today (covers Wednesday).
Are the two connected? Is the traffic drop from Google raising my RSS subscribers or is that the real number?
I checked a few blogs in our network and outside of it, and their numbers are more or less the same as they've been - no jumps.
So where did the jump of 25% in RSS Feed Subscribers come from? Hmm…
