paulingraham

Update: I have now stripped out any possible connotation of soliciting links, in an (over?) abundance of caution. Instead of “Donate by Linking,” the page is now just “Linking Information” and provides only factual information about what constitutes a correct and relevant link to PainScience.com. I believe the original page encouraged only sincere, natural linking well within the spirit of Google’s rules, but with these changes I hope there’s no longer any possibility of misinterpretation.

I came close to reverting! But I was assured by my consultant that it was temporary, and I was strongly committed to the brand upgrade. And... boiling frog. The 90% losses phase was relatively brief. When things started to improve a bit, I assumed they would continue to improve. By the time it was clear that it wasn’t going to keep improving, it was already late January, and it was getting a lot harder to turn back: lots of energy already put into promoting the new brand, convincing publishers to update their links, etc. “It's a trap!“

I just sincerely wanted to stay with the new brand, even if it was painful in the short term, and I never really dreamed I’d be sitting here a year later and still no recovery.

Opinions differ on that! It was thoroughly hashed out and tested. “SaveYourself” had over-promising and vague religious connotations that made many people uncomfortable (me included). PainScience.com was more appealing to the right audience. More about the rationale here: https://www.painscience.com/about-moving-to-painscience.php

My business is quite oblivious to the season. But, if anything, December sales have always been on the slow side: people seem to think less about self-help info for pain problems at this time of year.

Rank losses were pretty much exactly proportionate to traffic losses. And much, much worse than 10-20%!

I agree, asking for links in that context was unwise: I was focussed on the wrong thing. I’ve now removed that. (Note that I also nofollow most links between my sites. I do not use one domain to promote another.)

I don’t know if Google should be blamed or not.

Google certainly should penalize spammy, unnatural links ... and any attempt to get them. On the other hand, I hope it’s not against the rules to encourage relevant and earnest links. I should take the page down if there’s any doubt. Meanwhile, I’ve added a very strong warning that links should be editorially relevant and sincere.

In any case, the “donate by linking” page is quite new. The domain move disaster was months old by the time I first published it.