vandread - 9:13 am on Jan 25, 2012 (gmt 0)

Just wanted to post an update. My site saw a traffic and revenue drop of about 15% on the day of the announcement. The site had three ads above the fold: A 728x90 banner at the top center and right, a 300x250 right sidebar banner ad and a 336x280 in article ad.

I removed the 728x90 banner ad, and moved the 300x250 banner down a notch.

The site recovered, and actually increased traffic after two days. It is a very busy site with lots of traffic and updates.

While I cannot say with 100% certainty that the drop and recovery was because of Google's algorithm change, it is likely that it is related to it. It could have been something else though, like a reduction of page loading time or a glitch in search engine rankings.

The site looks a lot cleaner now which I personally like. Heck, I would not have a problem removing all ads if I could find a different business model. Unfortunately though, ads it is, for now.