Two Cautionary Tales

Tweet

The June issue of Business 2.0 Magazine will make it to newstands and subscribers on time. Why is that news? Because, it almost didn't. Just two weeks before the issue was to go to press - oops - the entire issue: layouts, articles, advertisements, the whole banana, was accidently deleted off the editorial server. Even bigger oops - there was no back-up copy.

The magazine is catching all kinds of gleeful ribbing on tech sites and blogs. I will not join in. I say kudos to the edtiorial staff that scrambled to reassemble two to three months of work in a matter of days. I'm sure the people involved will one day, years from now, look back on this - and still not laugh.

This is what they would call at my daughter's elementary school a teaching moment. So, giggle all you want. But, then go back up your data.

Another take on Google hell

Forbes has an interesting article on web sites who have fallen from grace in the Google search engine... and left to languish in a world without traffic, views or hits.

The article features a number of horror stories profiling company web sites that somehow hit Google's algorithm tripwires just-so and plummeted from high rankings in their search categories down to oblivion. One jewelry business was stuck in what's called Google Hell for six months and lost $500,000 in sales. Apparantly, it's like the Hotel California. You can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave.

The story is generating a lot of buzz. Techdirt makes a number of great points about businesses that rely too heavily on Google in the first place, as well as the fine line between maximizing search engine optimization and merely exploiting it. Another teaching moment...

Renee Oricchio is a technology writer and former supervising news producer for CNN Financial News. She has been covering the computer industry since 1987. @oricchio