What Pandas Can Do to Your Internet Business

We took a big-huge hit by the Panda/Farmer Google algorithm update. Our main money-making site dropped 45% in traffic. We no longer can pay some of our outsourcers but lucky for me they are quite loyal and have agreed to continue to work and wait until we can afford to pay them again. It started at the end of February and as of today we have had no recovery but our SEO teams are working hard and I believe we will have at least some recovery soon.

Google Panda - He's not as innocent as he looks!

This big hit has taught me once again not to have a business that depends 90% on Google, they can wipe out years of work and investment in a heartbeat. Although we are doubling up SEO effort on the short term because we need to recover some cash flow, in the long term we will work 100% towards offering utility and value to users. Our efforts will be to get a large percent of direct traffic although I cannot realistically say that we will be 100% free of Google.

We are leaving the office to cut expenses and we have also cut down our investment in content. We’re hiring a new programmer starting in September to speed up site improvements and development.

For years, really we have been playing the SEO game, links and content for cash flow. I think we needed a good kick in the rear, because to achieve great results we’re simply going to have to do much better. We have to build something of great value for users, not play to Google’s ranking system for generating income.