Victory over Google!

I slash my hit rate!

This must be how BP felt after capping the blown-out oil well in the Gulf of Mexico. The Google tsunami is over!

For now, anyway.

As I reported in an earlier post, my blog had become the “beneficiary” of a tidal wave of visitors (speaking in relative terms, of course). My hit rate suddenly doubled or even tripled. According to Sitemeter data, as much as 72% of the new visits were to Where's my money?, a snarky observation on the inanities that characterize San  Francisco's KSFO talk radio. It was all Google's fault. People who searched for “money” were being treated to a strip of “Images for money” that included a clip I had used to illustrate my post. That was enough to divert hundreds of people every day to look at an image of a guy carrying an oversized money bag.

Ordinarily, I would be happy to welcome more visitors. In this instance, however, I grew weary of the flood. Sitemeter reports acquired a deadly monotony as the horde of picture-seekers swamped those who had come to Halfway There to read actual words. I could no longer keep track of who came to see what. Last week I took steps.

First I deleted the image from the post in question. Days passed without Google noticing. The deluge continued. Then I made the post unavailable by saving it as a draft. Success! Traffic returned to normal. After a couple of days, I restored the post. The mob was instantly back. The sought-for image was gone, but Google was still lagging. I took the post off-line again and the hit rate dropped accordingly.

A few days ago I felt brave enough to repost the article. It was still without the attractive nuisance of the money-bag illustration, but now it was also missing the stress of Google's regard. The search giant had found another source for Mr. Money-Bag and the stampede was quelled. My victory was complete.

I got rid of over half of my traffic and I'm happy about it. Should I be concerned about this happiness? Oh, oh. Confused now.