Or am I simply writing about things people are no longer interested in?
Here's a graph giving an overview of traffic to my blog over the last two years. Despite not putting much into promoting it, there was steady growth in traffic through to March 2022; then, there was a disturbing trend downward to historic lows. Facebook was consistently my best traffic source, followed by email marketing and then Google searches.
My question is this: "Why have I suffered such a dramatic decline in traffic?"
I want your answers in the comments section at the bottom of this article. Thanks.
There are many possibilities, including me not writing about what people are interested in or more competition from better writers and experts. Or, could it be that my blog is being "shadow-banned" by Big Tech?
Shadow banning, also called stealth banning, hellbanning, ghost banning and comment ghosting, is the practice of blocking or partially blocking a user or the user's content from some areas of an online community in such a way that the ban is not readily apparent to the user, regardless of whether the action is taken by an individual or an algorithm. For example, shadow-banned comments posted to a blog or media website will not be visible to other users accessing the site.
This next chart is for the year 2022. The growth in email marketing is promising. The average session duration remains consistent at about 12 minutes, which is good because it indicates people are reading what I write. Then, again, there is that disturbing drop-off in all traffic.
The following chart is for January through to April 2022, which is consistent with the overall trends in growth and interest in what I'm writing about is consistent as indicated by the average session duration. Then things start trending downwards from March, if not sooner.
Here is a summary of the most popular articles for 2022. There was huge interest in health scams, so I should have written more about that, but COVID mandates were unleashed upon us and the rest of the world, hence the shift in interest to COVID-related articles.
Then, in March 2022, the Big Drop in traffic began.
As an aside, the negative effect of shadow-banning on our business sales has been significant, but Alofa and I decided early on that being true to ourselves was with the financial losses. Ironically, what has saved us financially is the surge of people contacting us directly by email and phone seeking assistance with overcoming their vaccine injuries.
Was that drop in website traffic due to "COVID Fatigue", competition from better sources, shadow-banning, or a combination of all of the above? Please leave your comments at the bottom of this article; thanks.
The drop in email marketing is an interesting one, as are the drops from Google and look at Facebook, which did ban me three times last year for spreading misinformation, as did LinkedIn and for the last six months. Facebook and LinkedIn are dead ducks, and Google is not much better these days. I'm unsure about Twitter but keeping a close eye on developments there.
I'm sure that some of the drop-offs have been due to many people having had enough COVID stuff, not just from me but from multiple sources, especially the Government, and I fully understand this and hold no resentment. It is tough for all of us to be under this constant barrage of conflicting information and appalling fear-mongering, and for some, it is best they take a break, but that does not mean they have given up on doing the right thing. Let's think of them taking some rest and recreation from the frontline.
However, I think the primary cause is Big Tech - Facebook, Google, LinkedIn and others - using sneaky techniques, including Facebook allowing our Government backdoor access to their platforms, presumably from March last year, to interfere with free speech.
My articles on "sensitive" topics no longer feature in a Google search; they are buried deep down in the search pages unless the search topic includes my name. Do this exercise:
Google: "here's your family COVID virus protection kit." see if you can find anything written by me on the topic. Then:
Google: "gary moller, here's your family COVID virus protection kit", and see what pops up. Nowadays, you will only find my work online through a direct URL or by searching with my name in the string.
I suspect one tool used by Google to hinder email marketing is sending many of my emails straight to the recipient's spam folders. I say this because the emails from bloggers that cover similar sensitive topics, such as vaccine deaths are habitually consigned to my spam folder. So, I'll assume that is happening to my emails as well.
We can conclude that modern-day censorship is sophisticated and comes in many subtle forms.