A few days ago I noticed that my revenue and clicks have plummeted on pixel2life.com and I started to panic. I open up awstats and sure enough, traffic is down an average of 5000 visitors a day since last Thursday. I do a bit more digging and find out that almost ALL of my Google traffic has come to a grinding halt. I’ve gone from 5000 visitors a day from Google to less than 300! Can we say “nightmare”!? I have been pounding away at Google’s various helpdesk contacts, and so far, no dice.

I have TONS of pages listed, but I did a search for www.pixel2life.com on google.com and I get the following:

“Sorry, no information is available for the URL www.pixel2life.com”

This can be seen at HERE.

If I search simply pixel2life the search results don’t even show pixel2life.com in the search results. I used to be the first result. Check it out HERE.

I have also completely dropped on all keyword searches that I normally placed high on.

So far, I have received absolutely nothing from Google on this, and calling their corporate office was completely useless because there is no phone support for free services. At this point, it looks like I’ve been penalized. I then run over to Sitepoint and the entire Google forum is FULL of the same or similar complaints like mine and apparently there is a technical glitch.

Either way, I’m kind of freaking out over this because I’m losing revenue and traffic big time. This had better get fixed soon or I’m in serious doo doo

Dan

Hey all,

Due to the crazy about of comment spamming from porn and drug bots, I have set my journal to sign up required for anyone that wants to leave a comment. My apologies for the inconvenience, but I’m tired of cleaning out 100 spam comments a day. You can sign up HERE.

Thanks,
Dan

Well, this is a new chapter in corporate idiocy as far as I’m concerned… I would LOVE to have a job where I look for kids on the net drawing pics of some famous corporate logo and then threaten to sue them.

Here’s the story.. a couple of weeks ago, a tutorial was submitted by rakkerdesign.nl on how to draw the famous Volkswagen logo at P2L. It was a great tutorial and the end result was pretty realistic.

Last week, I get this letter from the Corporate folks at VW:

Dear Sirs,

my name is Stefan Krilla. I work for Volkswagen AG section Corporate Identity/Design Wolfsburg/Germany. I was surfing through the internet, when I found a tutorial link about making the Volkswagen logo on your site.

The Volkswagen logo is a registered Trademark!!! No one is allowed to replicate it! Any offence against it will result in legal effects.

Therefore you have to delete the link “Make Volkswagen Logo - Learn an easy way to make the logo” from you list. The tutorial is submitted by “Rakker Design” in section “Drawing” (05-02-2006)

I also contacted the author and told him to delete this tutorial.

Thank you for your cooperation in this case.
Best regards.

Stefan Krilla

I wrote them back telling them I had no content whatsoever on our server pertaining to this tutorial and that they were barking up the wrong tree, not to mention I thought it was pretty sad they felt the need to go after this kid for drawing their logo, which is simply fan-art as far as I’m concerned. I hate people that rip off other people’s work and try to pass it off as their own, but this is NOT that kind of situation. I’m pretty sure we all know to whom that famous VW logo belongs to.

What’s next? They start contacting people that have VW cars in their personal photos? Maybe sue Auto-trader for all the stolen stock photos people use in their ads taken from the VW website.

Anyhow, I had zero intention of removing the link, but I unfortunately received an email from the owner of the tutorial informing me that the tutorial was taken down due to legal threats from VW and asked me to take it off the P2L listing. Too bad… was looking forward to some good ol’ e-confrontations with the corporate Goliath.

Anyhow, thought that was pretty lame of VW… what are your thoughts? I know copyright and trademarks are a touchy subject, but I think this was overkill. Imagine Microsoft started going after people drawing their logos? They would get annihilated in the media.

Dan

A humorous look at tutorial writing for folks that write tuts and submit them to tutorial portals for traffic. People get so offended when their tutorials are declined, so maybe they should give this a read and find out why.

read more | digg story

Nice article Jay!

Well folks, looks like I get to retire now! The generous Mrs. Hoopla (I swear I am not making this up… it’s from Mrs. Hoopla) because she’s apparently a dying 70 year old who doesn’t want her dirty family to get the money after she kicks the big one. So what is this poor woman to do? Donate it to me of course! Don’t believe me? I have the email to prove it!

Hello,

This offer might be strange, but is the wish of a dying 70 years old woman who now realizes belatedly that there is more to life than mere acquisition of cash{money} and fame. My name is Mrs. Maria Hoopla a widow. My late husband and I perhaps due to our aristocratic background and bad influences lived and never cared for nobody or whose ox was gored, our motto was be rich and famous and the world will be at your feet. I am diabetic and recently diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. The report is obviously not good, several chemotherapy treatments have not helped either and the obvious fact is that I have few days/weeks more on planet earth.

Being childless couple, I inherited all my husband wealth and our relations are no good, as they are waiting patiently for my death to use all our money for illicit and obscene business/things. Before my health deteriorated that I am completely dependant on them for basic necessities I have done charitable ventures within our neighborhoods and beyond and this angered them as they wish to reap from where they did not sow.

Having come to the realizations of what life is all about-caring for others. I have given legal consent and full authority to my attorney-Barrister Ruud Van Boer of Winschoten Consultants based in Amsterdam the Netherlands to immediately disburse all the money to people/charitable homes and the choice of beneficiaries was done by sampling. Your name was luckily picked and I have willed the sum of U.S.D{Ten Million, Five Hundred thousand U.S.D} only to you wish is presently deposited in a security company.

This money should be used STRICTLY for humanitarian/charitable cause. Contact my lawyer immediately who will guide you on the modalities on how you are to visit the security company in Amsterdam the Netherlands for the collection of this money. His e-mail address is ruudvanboer@netscape.net.

Please quote my personal reference number for ease of collection-law/chamber/solicitors/je/ws/WILL/000122 when reaching him by mail, he will give you all the Legal documents to boost the release of the Funds to you.

I plead with you never to deviate from this agreement and I beg of you to pray that my soul rest in peace.

Thanks.
Mrs. Maria Hoopla

How cool is THAT?!

So now Nigerian scamming scum no longer try to scam you with lotteries or account transfers to hold… they just want to flat out donate everything to you. How charming!

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to call Barrister Ruud Van Boer of Winschoten Consultants to collect my millions from Mrs. Hoopla!

Faken