A few days back, to be exact on the 29th of January 2013, I wrote a little blog post about the new site Kim DotCom set free on the Internet. DotCom is known for his controversial approach of doing business. When he decided to discontinue the MegaUpload project (because of an Hong-Kong / USA raid on his empire) he decided to open the new MEGA site in New Zealand. Far away from the Internet Moguls and the hassle of over-stressed public servants.
DotCom’s $30 Million Mansion
It’s Obvious…
Ok. It’s no rocket science. This 37 year old guy is loaded. He does something that maybe a lot of people have thought doing, but he does it. Making Mucho Dinero’s. I guess you have seen the pictures of his mansion, his cars, his wealth…
Maybe we are not used to someone showing off in this way.
He gets a lot of attention from the bigger companies in the western world, because he attacks them the way it hurts them the most – in their wallets. He is advocating freedom and that’s scary if a company is dependent on their restricted sales of their content. Music, movies, software programs, news, advertisement ‘space’… You name it. It’s beginning to slip out of their hands.
That;s because ‘the people’ are going to own the content. The content that is going to make use of the internet possibilities – ready for a larger audience. What if YOU own the content. Then what? I guess not many people really understand the true consequences when idea’s don’t have a owner – anymore. And YOU are the truthful owner of any content you decide to share, weather it has been your idea to make that content in the first place – or not… I know this may seem far fetched now, but how will things look in the future?
Only a few years the MP3 codec was protected by the big companies because of the potential copyright infringements. A few years later Apple’s iTunes became a fact. Things change over the years.
What happened?
Controversial links. That’s what happened. One day after i published my post, with a direct link to the MEGA site, the number of unique visitors to my site dropped from a steady 250 a day to 100. And the next day, and the day after that. Organic search for keywords on my blog became almost non existent. Then I decided to take the direct link off of the post and the numbers came back to their regular numbers. Coincidence? Maybe, but I don’t think so.
Controversial Links
I know, maybe I’m seeing things here, but is it really a coincidence? My investigations proved otherwise.
According to my log files on my host there was a sudden drop in organic search results, like I said earlier and an increase in hits my Google Bots crawling my site. Why was that? I have no clue, what do you think?
I got single hits from .gov domain sites, but it didn’t look worrying to me. That just happens. I think, or is it?
Anyways, the visitor numbers are back to ‘normal’ and the log files do not show any weird visitor patterns. Googlebots visits are back to two or three visits per day.
Oh well. Just comes with the business… being scrutinized. But it feels like someone entered my ass with a flagpole.
Yeah. I must be seeing things, but the feeling is there…
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Hello Jan I remember this a couple years ago when then shut them down is this guy still in jail?
Thanks for a great post my friend.
RobG recently posted: Increase Blog Comments, Gain More Traffic, Use The CommentLuv Plug-in
He sure is, Rob.
He used to be the guy at MegaUpload, that was taken down by a joint operation by Hong-Kong and USA authorities.Now he’s back with a vengeance when he opened MEGA in New Zealand. Just wondering, have you heard about the fact that ‘private owned small sites’ were suffering from linking to a ‘controversial site’?
JanBierens recently posted: Controversial Links Can Bring Your Site Down?
Interesting
Amanda Jillian recently posted: Shadow Play
Any thoughts about this? Just wondering…
Wow Jan, I haven’t heard about this but you’re right about that traffic. That’s just strange but as Rob said that guy sounds more like bad news to me. Huh, decisions decision. I’m steering clear.
Wish I had more money! I don’t think I’d go that route though.
~Adrienne
Adrienne recently posted: How To Access Your Passwords Easily
Hi Adrienne…
It sounds just weird to me that linking to such a site could hurt… Anyways, I don’t agree with everything he does, but he has some good points about the (new) concept of copyright… If sharing is caring, why do the big companies adhere to their money? The iTunes project was/is successful although a few years ago noone ever would have dreamed about it.
Jan recently posted: Controversial Links Can Bring Your Site Down?
Yikes…scary stuff…oh and I haven’t said it yet, so Congratulations on getting married!!!!!
The Redneck Princess recently posted: Has TLC totally lost their minds?
Thanks, Donna!
Yup scary stuff. I am still not sure if this was all just a fluke or something, but the number of visitors were plummeting down. Back to normal (kinda sorta) now, Guess I am good in picking subjects that end to piss people off…
JanBierens recently posted: Controversial Links Can Bring Your Site Down?
Hey Jan,
Sometimes we can be wrong or right
But I think it’s better than following the herd. Truth is not accepted by majority sometimes. Anyway it reveals in the end 
I know what you mean, he has everything and feels like someone try to abuse the law and play games with it
That’s how people used to see Steve Jobs and claimed he followed someone else’s idea. But what’s the point? Now people love him even more for his inventions and some others take advantage of it. I don’t know him in person but like his products and ideas.
Did you try adding no-follow attribute for that direct link Jan?
I think it might work as it’s about search engine bots crawling and finds where it leads to. Nofollow would prevent bot from going out of your post.
Cheers…
Mayura recently posted: Save Web Content or Pages to View Later with Pocket
Hi Mayura.
Excellent advice. I will try to do that. I was under the impression that all links would be no-follow by default. There’s my mistake!
Thanks for pointing that out to me!
JanBierens recently posted: Controversial Links Can Bring Your Site Down?