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I have had a roller coaster ride experience with Google. Spanning from utter reverence to complete disdain, to fear, concern, joy, revolution and many more experiences that all have left me with an impression of Google here or there.

My most recent experience of Google was a two day festival of emotion and reactions.

Many people wont have a clue what I am referring to here but I recently saw a serious drop in traffic on SA Rocks:

Those red arrows…never good. I freaked out. Emailed people, tried removing things I thought might be problematic. And then Mr Jason Bagley tweeted the answer in geniously casual fashion: “check out Google Webmaster tools - might be able to spot something happening in there.”

Yes, the answer was there. SA Rocks has a problem. I am not going go in to much detail other than to say that thousands of invisible links are injected in to the SA Rocks template occasionally. I didn’t even remember this issue and consider it a problem. But it was. Google had booted me off their indexes. Not. Good.

The drop in traffic is the result of having every page, every search term, every SEO effort that you have put in for over two years vanish off Google. Gone, kaput, over. Again, I freaked out. This is where the angst, anger, frustration and a mass of other emotions began to flow. I hated Google. I hated the fact they could almost literally grind my hard work to halt by simply removing me from their service. It’s a shocker. And they are strict. If you haven’t made use of them yet, I suggest you head over and get on top of Google’s webmaster tools. They will prove to be invaluable should you one day be booted off Google.

I received a message in my Webmaster Dashboard alerting me to the fact that I had been removed from Google. I then Googled SA Rocks, South Africa Rocks, Rocking, SA or anything that I knew would pop SA Rocks on to the top of the ranking somewhere on Google. Nada. Nothing. Niks nie. Kak myself.

But it wasn’t too bad.

I was alerted to the problem by the helpful text-person talking to me on my dashboard. I figured it out, invisible links, google, spam, bam. Went to the origin of the links, manually removed them and then applied to be reevaluated by Google. This is an absolute must if you ever want to be visible on the known web again.

Then I honestly thought that I would be waiting for weeks. But I didn’t I waited for two days and was reinstated to the Google Indexes. Thank goodness. Can’t tell you how glad I am that this is over.

Be sure to check up on your website, Google yourself, your websites and your profiles.

UPDATE: Apparently there has been some sort of a mixup regarding the Zapiro book launch. It seems as though there is someone from the PR company and Charity organisations involved with Zapiro didn’t really know when the book launch was so instead she led us to believe that the launch was at her event which was a charity event and hence we were asked to pay.

On a side not: I still maintain that media should never pay to promote events or attend functions.

I absolutely love Zapiro’s work. I think the man is a genius and one of South Africa’s great heroes. With that said, I think he has made a shocking error with his book launch.

It is not clear whether Zapiro is calling the shots or whether his PR agency has completely and utterly lost their minds. Either way I am a bit shocked.

To attend Zapiro’s book launch as media is going to cost R200 per person. Crew of two = R400 for the event. I have done many weird, strange, odd, different and uncomfortable things in my time in the practice of journalism. I have NEVER paid to cover a story or promote an event.

Zoopy was told to pay R200 per person to attend the event and were basically told that we should feel lucky because media gets a 50% discount. Really? Media get a discount, well gee-wizz-wow I am bowled over at your kindness.

Direct quote from “events coordinator”:

As per our discussion earlier, unfortunately we don’t allow any media to attend any of our upcoming events for free.
Our normal price per person to attend the event is R427-50 including VAT, however we offer Media a discounted rate of R200-00 per person including VAT.
Should you still be interested to attend the event, please contact me before the end of today and have your credit card details ready to process the payment online as we only accept payments upfront to pay the venue. Our system is set-up to only accept credit card payments when a booking is made 5 working days prior to an event.

So in return for our R400 Zapiro’s book launch will get national exposure, a professionally produce media video and the possibility to be featured on some of the biggest news websites in the country. That sounds like a fair trade to me.

I am sorry but I don’t care if you are a journalism intern, the editor of the biggest magazine or Jeremy bloody Clarkson, media should not have to pay to attend any launch of any book that could aid in the sales of that book.

Absolutely ridiculous.

The frustrating thing is that Zoopy (and I am sure many other media organisations) have covered Zapiro launches and events very successfully and for free in the past:

If you want to read Zapiro I suggest you visit Mail&Guardian online every day and have a look at Zapiro’s free.

Again I need to state that I think that Zapiro cartoons and all of his work is absolutely incredible, so don’t make us pay to help you spread the word.

Anyone ever received one of these?

Think at the point of receiving the error I was posting a link to WhyVOTE? to a group. Oh well.

I am going to buy all my holiday gifts online.

I will only shop from local online stores/products.

I will keep the price per gift under R120.

Those are my holiday shopping assurances.

I am really chuffed to be a part of a fantastic (and very smart) initiative by the International Marketing Council (IMC).

The basic idea, as I like to understand it, is that 11 international bloggers who are all prominent in their respective fields will all be heading for SA for a ten day whirlwind tour of our magnificent country. You can see more about the project over at We Blog the World. So the ten day tour will invariably allow the readers of the 11 international blogs to be exposed to the wonders of SA. Therefore invoking a desire to find out more, experience SA, travel to the country or simply read more SA stuff. Great move by the IMC I think. It’s social marketing. Brilliant.

I have been invited to take part in the tour.

Don’t fool yourself thinking that I will be on a joy-ride for ten days. Big Mistake.

Bizcommunity have proudly offered my a column for the ten days where I will be writing about the trip and publishing video and photo content through the ten days. I will also be double posting the trip on my two blogs, nicharalambous.com and SA Rocks. If that isn’t enough I will also be posting to the Zoopy blog sporadically, the We blog the world (WBW) flickr group and the Zoopy profile/landing page for the event. I am going to be one blogged out blogger by the end of this week.

But it will most definitely be worth it. The IMC have put together an incredible trip for all of the attending bloggers.

Here are a few snippets of the trip, where we’ll be and what we’ll be doing:

A heli flight over the peninsula

and then we head off to JHB for various events, viewings and museum trips

I am incredibly excited to be taking part as many of the things on the itinerary are things that I have been wanting to do in SA for ages but have never had the chance.

Expect some great content.

Head over to Matt’s blog and see who else is taking part. Leave comments or contact me if there are specific questions you would like to see the visiting bloggers answer while they are here in SA!