So no doubt about it Adsense is totally screwed up this week. They have definitely got some problems. I started seeing weird numbers maybe around Tuesday and so I went out on the web looking for what exactly the nature of the problem was. The only thing I found was a link that it turned out to be Darren’s famous Problogger site. I left a comment telling some dude that the numbers do eventually settle down, but that the Adsense panel would give you temporary bad numbers for about 12 hours. And when I went back today my comment wasn’t there. Now I have left maybe one or 2 comments over there before, usually NOT agreeing with the ProBlo. Like for example this CRAP called Twitter that everybody seems to be jumping up and down about. So maybe I’ve been “banned” but I also keep a browser open for 4 and 5 days so sometimes it browser can get funky if you do as much web stuff as I do and not close it. So maybe the comment didn’t go through. But ProBlo did have a link to the Adsense current known issues .Those updates over there are pretty sparse, but I will at least confirm there’s a problem. And I use PPC on some of my site, so I’ve disabled that for now because I can’t monitor my cost to earnings accurately. AND if you use PPC I strongly recommend doing the same for now . For instance right NOW, Thursday night, I’m getting multiple readings showing click numbers that don’t add up to the total.

In other news, I’ve been getting junk email for the last 2 weeks or so. I haven’t gotten spam email on this blog but maybe once or twice in the last 12 months until this last 2 weeks, so what’s changed? I started leaving comments. AND I started using an email address from the welcomebackrosenthal domain. That’s it. Years ago I learned that having a website and leaving your email up there allowed the harvesters to collect your email and start spamming . So what I’ve always done is leave an email but do it like this Dave @ welcome … or DaveATwelcome …. So either I would put a space in there or just spell out AT. And about a month ago I switched to a contact form for the blog so NO email at all is visible to people or spambots. But I also “come out” to the public recently and started commenting. For most of the life of this blog my process has been pretty simple; I blog every day. I wasn’t going out trying to make friends, or visiting other blogs (except for the purpose of learning), and certainly not commenting. So I started doing that kind of stuff recently, and of course you have to leave an email. And so what I’m going to do is make up a bunch of test names for the next month john@welcome, bill@welcome, JimBob@welcome and try to figure out HOW the spam is following me.

Issue three; My landing page might look weird. If you’re seeing something weird let me know. I’m seeing one thing in Internet Explorer and something else in Firefox. But something is going on with my post topic lists and I’m sure about that. Speaking of changes to the blog. The Alexa widget is coming off tonight . As most of you know I wrote a piece about how having the widget and the toolbar could drop your numbers and give you a better number. But in the first or second week of April Alexa changed their formula, and I said I’d hang in there to see what happened, and it’s been 3 weeks and my numbers haven’t changed, so I’m keeping the toolbar so that my site and anybody else’s site I visit gets “credit” but I’m not sure about the widget anymore. So I’ll take it off and see what happens. If the numbers start GOING UP AGAIN, I’ll break out the code and slap it back on there. I also have taken my Text Link Ads this month; I had a couple of links bringing me in a few months, but EVERYBODY got a Google PR boost this past week and I’m over here writing my ass off for 6 months and I’ve had the same PR3 for the whole time. So here I go, hat in hand, to the Google masters to see if I can supplicate myself enough for a PR4.

And just to go into a little more detail about this Twitter thing ; I actually have an account over there. And every day I add one update, just to see if anything is going to happen. But I have to be honest I’m doing that while holding my nose from the stink of this social media site. If you use it, more power to you, but here’s my spiel about social media; it needs to actually add value to somebody’s life. The site is a little on the ugly side with its “simplicity” but that’s not the issue it’s just an observation. But I don’t need to know what people are doing every minute of the day. Most of the people I see rave about it say stuff like “It’s like being in the office again, and I work from home.” If you want to be “around” people go be around people, listening to a giant chat channel is not being around people. And I really can’t get down with this jumping on the bandwagon mentality. ProBlo writes a piece, Mashable does one, probably Maki did and JohnChow certainly did. And they all say they don’t get it but they BETTER do it since everybody else is doing. I can’t see it making me any money, and I can’t see it getting me any new readers. I had ONE hit from twitter from somebody doing a keyword search. The people getting any traffic are the people who were big BEFORE they joined it. And then 2 weeks ago the thing was having issues, followed by one of their top programmers leaving, followed by them getting a bunch of millions in VC money. But do you know what? The only people making any money are the people developing apps for twitter, because THEY are providing a real service ; helping these sheep get to the slaughter house more smoothly.

With social media, with each thing you join you’ve GOT to put in the time and hang out, and let people get to know you, that’s the “social” part of the social media. So how are you going to do that if every time a new thing comes out you’re doing that one. Remember when everybody was saying you’ve simply GOT to get into Technorati, then was Digg, then it was MySpace and StumbleUpon, then Sphinn, then Facebook-oh God you HAD to get into Facebook. Now it’s Twitter. How are you going to write a blog, research blogging, do ANY thing else with your life and put in time at each of these things? You can’t. You have to pick some and go with it. And here’s the thing; not every one of these things is going to be right for you in terms of RELEVANT traffic. So know about these social media sites, have an account, but be picky.

UPDATES UPDATES UPDATES: so it’s 2 days later and I’ve learned  a few things. One, Akismet can tag YOU as a spammer, so when you go around leaving comments if they stop showing up, you need to try leave a comment at your OWN blog. If it gets put in the spam, you need to dig it out to "train" Akismet. They say it takes a few days, so I’m in the process of working that out. TWO, you might see the Alexa back on this blog. I got my new score last night and its half a million lower! So now I don’t know if it’s working or not, but I’m inclined to think it is.

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Tags: Computers and Internet //