The July and August 2012 Crash of Elsmar

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Gert Sorensen

Re: The Crash of July and August 2012

Thank's Marc. Both informative and very good news indeed. I appreciate you keeping us in the loop.
 

AnaMariaVR2

Trusted Information Resource
Re: The Crash of July and August 2012 - September Status

ELSMAR coming back sounds good...moving forward.
Thanks!
 
Re: Status as of 15 September 2012

That's probably it. It's a conspiracy to get Marc --> :thedeal: (My "alter-ego"...) ;)
So, it seems that whatever magic Marc is weaving, it is working :)
Your alter-ego looks like another alter-ego: Heisenberg.
As I said elsewhere, I'd say Elsmar is out of "ICU" but is still in "the critical care unit".
That's just the "Cheech Wizard" stirring his potions and invoking his incantations.
Seriously, though, I would hate to see this website go away. IMNSHO, this website is the single most valuable resource for quality professionals in the world. I'm sure that the folks at AIAG and ASQ would disagree but they are woefully uninformed; other than buying standards (and that is questionable...anyone try to search for and then purchase a standard at the ASQ store?), I find this website more valuable to actually running a quality system than all the others combined. I have run a NUPIC compliant system, implemented an ISO9001 system, a TS16949 system, and survived 15 years (yeah, I lurked for 5+ years before registering) of audits by folks like NQA, DNV, NUPIC and Siemens with the help of the people on this website. I am currently researching a possible ISO14001 registration and I started here, even before buying the standard.

My biggest fear is that Marc may not be an actual wizard but a mere mortal and that someday we may have to do this without him.
 
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Marc

Fully vaccinated are you?
Leader
Status Update as of 10 OCT 2012 - The Crash of July and August 2012

Status Update:

I have just updated the server stats thread.

The month of August was problematic for the first 2 weeks. Week 3 was "unusual". The last week showed some improvement.

September, however, and October (so far) have made me optimistic. Elsmar is definitely out of the "red" and appears to be improving. However - Right now Google has been "tweaking" their algorithms significantly. In fact, they now call Google Search a "Knowledge" service as opposed to it's "old" moniker as a "Search" engine.

With Google+, Facebook, and LinkedIn now playing a significant role it's hard to tell what will happen.

At this point my dive into "OMG" territory has obviously changed to Cautiously Optomistic. Elsmar is out of ICU (so to speak), spent some time in "critical care" but is now moving to the "general recovery ward".

As is evident from Quantcast, Elsmar has had it's ups and downs over the last 2[sup]3/4[/sup] years:

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Quantcast - January 2010 to Present
Quantcast Jan 28 2010 to Oct 9 2012.jpg

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Here is a graph going back to the start of Google Analytics tracking in August 2008:

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Analytics - August 2008 to Present
Vistors Overview Weekly Aug 1 2008-Oct 9 2012 - 20121009

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I have no idea what caused the "crash". I have made a lot of changes, but those were to "static" html pages. No significant changes have been made to the forum its self. I can tell you that I have been following a lot of webmaster forums and there is quite a lot of confusion in part because Google is making a lot of frequent, significant changes to their algorithm.

At this point there isn't too much I can do other than to wait and watch. I'm sure we all know Elsmar will never be a big site like Linkedin, but for it's size I think it does well and helps a lot of people.

It's been a while since I have thanked the Moderators and the "Regulars" here who do so much to help people by answering their questions. Without them Elsmar could not exist.

My sincerest Thanks to each of you!
 
G

graveemma

Yaa I searched Elsmar on goolge for some specific search terms and I am glad that its coming in top results.
 

Marc

Fully vaccinated are you?
Leader
Things are much better here, but it's getting weirder.

Here's a good article about what's going on and why it's so hard to do SEO any more (not that I did much SEO anyway to begin with).

Will Google Obliterate SEO?
 
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Marc

Fully vaccinated are you?
Leader
It's hard to tell. It's December which is always slow. Google has changed it's algorithm so much and continues to do so that I aren't following long with trying to figure them out. Right now cash is sufficient to see what happens between now and the end of February.

Good side is I have put in time on LinkedIn, Google+ and Facebook so we're seeing some traffic out of them.

Essentially we're in limbo. I haven't charged any of the current advertisers since October on moral grounds, you might say, so currently income is from AdSense. In January I'll have to decide what to do about the current advertisers. On the other hand, if you look at the stats Elsmar is around the 2010 level visitor wise and a lot of the advertisers have been here longer than that (and I have never raised an advertisers rate). So..... I just don't know what to say off hand.

The internet is changing much faster than I am.
 
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