Timing By the Bay

Long, long ago in what seems like another lifetime I lived in California in an area not too far from San Francisco which, I'm sorry to say, I didn't get the chance to visit often enough.  I do recall one time, though, when a trip to the City By the Bay turned into a potential Disaster By the Bay when my friend Scott had some problems with his Honda Accord.   For the most part it was a reliable little car and got him pretty much everywhere he needed to go but alas, this time it was the timing belt that decided to go!  You would think that a timing belt would have better timing!  Sorry, small bit of automotive humor there - very small bit!

Luckily the whole day wasn't ruined as we were fortunate enough to find a nice San Francisco auto repair shop in close proximity to where the timing belt decided its time had come (sorry, more bad automotive humor!).  Granted, it wasn't exactly the way we had planned to spend a portion of our money but I guess that in the long run, a timing belt was more important than more Ghiradhelli chocolates - though certainly not as tasty!   And it could have been worse, we could have been visiting Fresno!

Truth in Advertising?

I've been wondering about something lately that has me rather perplexed ... how can Dunkin' Donuts claim that America runs on Dunkin' when they don't even have stores in all of the states of America?

Is not North Dakota part of America? Is not Utah part of America? Is not Arkansas part of America? None of these states have a Dunkin' Donuts franchise and neither do a bunch of others. As a matter of fact, there is not a single one in all of California or Washington or Idaho or Montana or even Minnesota - all states that probably drink plenty of coffee but not any that they can get from the place that claims to have the coffee that America runs on.

How can this be truth in advertising? How you can a company lay claim to providing the coffee that America runs on when a good number of Americans have no way of obtaining it? Granted, there are more than 5,200 Dunkin' Donuts restaurants located in 36 states but unless my math is wrong, that leaves 14 states that cannot possibly run on Dunkin'!

Perhaps the ad execs are hoping that by proclaiming America runs on Dunkin' that eventually there will be Dunkin' Donuts franchises from sea to shining sea and that they will wipe out the competition from places like Starbucks, Steamin' Joes, Caribou Coffee, Tim Horton's, Coffee Time, Gloria Jean's, Krispy Kreme, Chock Full o' Nuts, and my personal favorite - Bad Ass Coffee - the coffee with an attitude!** Unfortunately we have none of those here in Connecticut but if we did you can damn well bet I'd be buying my morning cup of joe from those guys as I'm sure a cup of their coffee would definitely have you up and running rather than wondering if you'd ordered a decaf by mistake!

Now don't get me wrong, I do enjoy an occasional coffee from D&D - especially a nice big iced coffee in the warmer months - but the number of them that have popped up around here lately is quite alarming. Here in Norwich we have at least six or seven Dunks (more if you want to count the ones located in WalMart and Stop & Shop) and not much of anything else in the area except for a lone Tim Horton's sandwiched in between two D&Ds on the west side of town or fast-food coffee in the form of McDonald's or Burger King (blech).

Frankly I don't think it's accurate to say that America runs on Dunkin' but I can sure say that Dunkin' is running everything else out of town - least ways here in Norwich!

It's just too bad Amanda can't get a job at any of them but I get the feeling they're probably not hiring zombies ... though Amanda tells me that zombies run on Dunkin' when they can't get any fresh blood! Kid kinda looks like she needs some coffee, doesn't she??

**This is in no way an advertisement for Bad Ass Coffee - I just think the name is cool and I'd definitely go there if we had one around so if people asked me what I was drinking I could say it was a Bad Ass cup of coffee! Yeah, yeah, I know, I can be so juvenile sometimes!

Things That Make You Go Hmmmm ...

I was taking a look at some of my Stat Counter searches earlier this evening when I came across an entry for "page hits blogger" so out of curiosity I took a look at the Google search page that brought people to my blog. At the very top of the search page was the entry for:

Bloggers Blog

"For any blogger there are some codes are essential to be known as the following ... with that link to a page which is e.g http://blogger-hits.blogspot.com/ ...
blogger-hits.blogspot.com/ - 66k - Cached - Similar pages - Note this"

I had never heard of Blogger's Blog before so went over to check it out and found that there was some pretty good information on it in regards to building your page hits, the advantages of signing up with blog directories, etc., etc.

What I found pretty amazing, though, was the little box that I copied a screenshot of and pasted in this post that appeared on the right sidebar of Blogger's Blog which, as most people know, is from Google Ad-Sense. I didn't find the Ad-Sense box itself amazing, though - the amazing part was that the very first ad in the Ad-Sense box was for ... are you ready for this? PayPerPost!

I find this to be amazing and somewhat ironic as the reason myself and a lot of other bloggers no longer have any sort of Page Rank is because we chose to do paid posts with PayPerPost and now here I see that Google is running advertising for them. And getting paid nicely for hosting the ad I'm sure.

Now ain't that a kick in the virtual pants??

Sitting at the Bottom of the Heap

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Less than a week ago I posted about how my Google Page Rank had suddenly dropped from a PR4 to a PR2 (in the midst of writing a paid post) and today I have found that it has dropped once again to a PR0. A ZERO! What in the blue hell is going on here??

As much as I'd like to believe that Google is not actually punishing people for having paid posts on their blogs that are other than Google AdSense Ads, it sure looks like that is the case as I appear to be in very good company here at the bottom - Claire from A Little Piece of Me, Kai from both The Buzz Queen and Just Me, Tisha from Crazy Working Mom, Mags from Ms Maggie Moo Talks 2 U, Misty Dawn of My Dogs Keep Me Sane, and countless others found (or will find) their blogs to be ranked a big fat zero this morning. What I don't get is that there are others whose blogs have not quite tumbled yet that do paid posts but I guess it takes time to de-rank thousands of blogs so their time will be coming.

After getting bumped down to a PR2 last weekend, I spent some time researching how Google actually ranks pages with their fancy-dancy algorithm and the best that I could find was that it was based on backlinks. Backlinks are not supposed to expire according to what I read so how on earth did I lose all of my backlinks since last Sunday? I am confused, I am angry, and I am hurt.

I thought long and hard before I started doing any paid ads even though other friends who had been doing them for some time had encouraged me to do them due to the extra income that they could generate. I didn't want to "spoil" my blog with a bunch of ads but after giving it a lot of thought and deciding that chances were good I could still maintain the "integrity" of my blog while earning a little very-much-needed cash on the side, I decided to go for it. I started doing paid posts in September and I've tried very hard to make sure that they were quality posts and didn't detract from the regular, unpaid content of my blog. I still wrote about the things that I wrote about before, there were just ads in between that people were more than welcome to skip over but I can say that I tried to make those ads uniquely my own and I also tried to put a little extra into each one of them as I have always believed that if you're going to do something - do it to the best of your ability and make it something that you would be proud to say "yeah, that's mine".

I thought I had done that - was doing that - but apparently that matters not to the folks at Google. Despite the fact that my Traffic Rank, Reach, and Page Views have all increased over the past six months, Google has chosen to drop my blog's ranking to a lousy zero. I feel like I just flunked a test or cheated on my taxes or something. Boo to you, Google, and shame on you for punishing people who are trying to make a better living for themselves by doing paid posts.

Fortunately, the powers-that-be at IZEA (formerly PayPerPost) are aware of what's going on and are working on fast-tracking their new RealRank system which will eliminate Google Page Rank as being a factor in what a blogger qualifies for when it comes to eligibility for paid ads. If you're a Postie and are interested in reading about that, check out this post here in the IZEA Blog. In the meantime, though, it looks like that money I was counting on for Christmas presents is going to be hard-pressed to come by. I still have an opportunity or two available but until this mess gets straightened out I'm sure they are going to be few and far between.

This stinks - on ice - and I feel like I've been sucker-punched but what's a poor, helpless blogger to do? Well, this one has to go to work and put in some overtime today to try to earn a little extra cash which will keep me from visiting other blogs until tomorrow (I held over at work last night for the same reason) but I promise to get caught up as soon as I've had a chance to sit in the corner and cry over the fate of my poor little blog and feel sorry for myself for a bit.