Has something happened recently that we here at JAPUNDIT have missed?
After a long period of visitor numbers holding virtually steady at a certain level, JAPUNDIT has, over the past week, had a precipitous drop in visitors to about half of what we normally get. This all happened over a three or four day period, and we are at a loss to figure out why.
In addition, our comments discussions have become very quiet of late.
I have been extremely busy with real-world work that has kept me from writing as much as I want, but I have had similar periods in the past without seeing a drop like we saw this week.
Our RSS subscriptions remain steady and the podcast continues to grow.
If anyone has any idea about what happened, please let us know.
Personally, it’s late ‘winter’ here in Vancouver and the days are finally freakin’ light enough and dry enough to get out and stay out a bit
I’m determined to spend some time in the outdoor cafés and not in front of the computer all. the. time.
Is this an unusual dip in a usual annual dip around this time for Japundit?
Politicians haven’t been doing many outstandingly stupid things lately, either. And I’m just ennuied by the US news: Obama, Clinton, McCain, oh my… .
Also, truthfully, the ‘vittel’ onslaught tired me out a bit and then I got distracted by my Nokia N800 Lovefest.
But I realize I’ve been negligent in heaping praise around here for a while, too.
Must do something about that. First thing up: back to the Podcast 100 thread and comment on *that* incredible achievement. Course, that comes after lunch
I must also really gear up to try to out sakurize the Japanese. The buds are growing on the trees, you can sort of feel the trees coming awake and, boy, do we have some spectacular urban blossoming trees views that hold up pretty well against the arboreal Motherland’s production.
Do you have data on which type of traffic is low? (search engine referrals, plain link referrals, type-ins, a certain country, etc…)
I might suggest that if you don’t have answers to the above, that you use GoStats to track that data (you can break it down day by day to make comparisons)
Maybe everyone’s voting in Texas and Ohio? These things might just be one of those things that happens, we’d see oddities on J-List where we’d get a normal number of clicks from various sources, then see 5x the number of clicks for some reason. It’s always hard to figure out what the heck is happening since the web is a perfect “Chaos Theory” simulator.
I think I’ve figured it out. Someone has hacked into your site and uploaded a load of adult content. Google has picked up on this and dropped you a few pages in the search results. Here’s my reasoning:
1. View the page source code, scroll to near the bottom to see all the dodgy links above “Japundit is proudly powered by…”.
2. Type site:japundit.com into Google and you’ll see you’ve got tons of dodgy stuff uploaded in your store/templates/ folder.
So what should you do?
1. Delete all the content and links they’ve put on your site.
2. Make sure your permissions are set so that files are 644 and folders 755.
3. When you’re absolutely sure you’ve deleted everything, go into Google Webmaster Tools and click “Request reconsideration”. Explain the problems you had and Google should return your Google rankings in time (it could take a few days to a couple of months).
If there’s anything more I can help you with, just ask.
Wow, great detective work that man!
Well, all I’ve got to say is that the Internet is wonderful and Japundit readers are the greatest.
Betty: Nice to hear from you, as always. Of course, my message was not meant as a rallying call to everyone to start commenting, but we have missed ya.
r.chmura: I will check out your service asap
peter: When it first started, I thought it might be something temporary or even a correction, but the drop was so fast and so deep that I started wondering if we were even on line.
Nick: Yikes! What a shock. And what a pain that now I have to go through and do something about it. Thanks much.
And thanks again to everyone for your comments. If anything interesting pops up, I will get back at you.
Wow, Nick. In the immortal words of Paris Hilton, that was hot.
You also have hidden links to ‘drugstore’ sites near the top of your header. Don’t forget about those. That would explain the all the penis pill ads that show up in the google ads right now. If ilab-lila.com is legit, it looks like they’ve been hacked too.
Wow. How come I never got penis ads? (Not that I’m complaining?).
Um, how does all that ilab-lala.com stuff get on the site? And why is the ‘display’ is set to ‘none’ in the source code?
Fascinatin’, fascinatin’… .
I would also love to know why the Google ads on the front page are all directing me to battered women sites… . Very strange.
Thanks, snarfer. Will get on those. . .
Yeesh. WordPress is awesome, but it seems like it’s so vulnerable :/
Yes, Heather. . . Vulnerable it is!