It has been an interesting month here at CollectionDX. Due to something that was my fault; CollectionDX appears to have received a Duplicate Content Penalty from Google, resulting in us being pushed WAAAY back in the rankings. Yahoo, MSN, etc all list us at the top of the pile for “Japanese Toys”, but in Google we are absent. This has resulted in a 30-40% drop in traffic, but thanks to our readers we are still alive and well during this time.

Actually, this was a blessing in disguise. It allowed me to take a good hard look at CollectionDX and figure out what I could do better in terms of making it search-friendly. I am not trying to cheat any search engines; I just want to be a valuable resource for the Japanese and American toy fan. We have a wide enough readership that we did not take a significant hit to our traffic – this is a testament to the loyalty of our fan base.

We fixed what we think was the error and have sent a re-inclusion request to Google. Provided they find no flaws, the penalty should be lifted within 2-3 weeks.

It is amazing how small sites that rely on revenue to stay afloat live and die by Google. It is a reminder that it is content that is king, and if you provide value, the site will just work.

In an odd coincidence, the Google Adsense team contacted me about placing a new ad size onto some of our pages. I am not sure why, but I think they have a big client that wants to place a certain size add and Google does not have enough inventory. I have added a new ad to the News and Articles pages, and removed an old ad from those pages in exchange.  I don’t ever want advertising to get in the way of the ability to absorb the content, so please, let me know if you find these ads annoying or inconvenient.

In other news, we have modified the appearance of our Review Index Page. Now you can sort reviews by name or by date. We have also made the listing of terms 2 columns, and did some work with the page titles. We hope you like it.

The CollectionDX staff is gearing up for the big New York International Toy Fair coming up in February. We will be in NYC for 4 days, covering all the toy news you want to know. We’ll be covering Hasbro, Bandai, Mattel and all the big names. Stay tuned for our coverage starting Feb 11th.

Thanks for all your support!

Josh

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