#the only blogs i have blocked are bots and i’ve never blocked a single tag

[misfitmiska]

I keep seeing these posts calling out nasty trends that I’ve literally never come across in my life. I must be either really good at curating my online space or absurdly lucky jhgfghfhg

[universitypenguin]

What happened to u? U okay?

Hello!

First off, thank you for your concern. I appreciate it and I needed it after the past two days. To answer your question - I'm doing great.

I don’t have a lot of context about your question, but I’m guessing your concern is due to my recent blocking spree. A day ago, I went through my followers list and found some minors. I’ve previously seen smut fanfic writers concerned by underage people interacting with their posts. Until I had to block a few of them, I wasn’t aware how uncomfortable it would make me feel.

Since the blocking spree, I've had a lot of thoughts. I'm about to spew them everywhere. You might regret asking me if I was okay. Sorry about that. No one needs to read this whole manifesto about my rollercoaster of emotions the past few days. But in the interest of transparency, I'm posting this very long note.

What I want my readers to know is the following:

Tumblr is both a place for fanfiction and a social media site.

When I interact with followers and write explicit content, I have to be careful about what I'm saying and who I'm saying it to.

I don't intend to block or purge my followers in the future.

As long as I appropriately tag and put warnings on my work, that is adequate protection for my blog. Everything I write containing explicit content is tagged.

However, I won't interact with users who don't have an age stated in their bio.

There have to be boundaries, given the content of my writing. But I've also come around to the realization that I'm not capable of policing every interaction. Tumblr is a public forum. Minors following me makes me uncomfortable. But by the same token, my work is clearly labeled at 18+ and so is my blog.

There's a lot of explicit content out there for minors if you really think about it. In my high school freshman English class we talked about the book "The Color Purple." Believe me, that was explicit and we were only 14. Any minor with a library card and a Google browser can access a lot more intense content than what I write. I hope they're all being safe, but I can't have a melt down blocking spree again.

I'm not a cop, I'm not a parent, and what minors consume is down to them and the adult responsible for them. If I know someone is a minor I'll block them, should I notice they're trying to interact with me. Otherwise, I'm not purging my followers ever again. It's too much drama. I'd rather leave Tumblr than do that twice. I'm tired and I'm starting to work on my post graduate classes, I work full time in a demanding job, I'm in the process of editing my novel, and trying to keep up with my personal life. Quite literally, I don't have time to block. Writing fanfic is supposed to be my fun time. Let's keep it that way.

Due to the fact that some people I blocked were later unblocked after I took a closer look at their blogs, I'm posting a full explanation below. A quick summary is this:

After only writing for three months, I'd amassed 500 followers. On Monday I blocked almost 200 of them. Then I reviewed my block list and editing down some people who were prematurely blocked. [I assume the anon is one of the unblocked who had me disappear from their dash. Sorry!] This blocking thing isn't sustainable. In the future I'll run my blog differently as far as interaction goes in an effort to be responsible.

Continue reading for the saga of:

The Great Blocking Spree and Existential Crisis of an Erotic Fanfic Writer.

The Blocking Spree:

On Monday I realized a thirteen year old was following me and interacting with my work. This creeped me out.

*Commence blocking spree*

Then I realized how daunting my followers list was. I had 500 followers prior to Monday. That day I blocked about 200 people (some of them prematurely - more on that later.) So after the daunting task of trying to assume, to check bios for ages, to review blog content and determine the user's age, I was tired. Today, I even took a moment to reconsider if I wanted to use Tumblr. Because if all this is my responsibility, maybe I don't have the time or dedication to manage it. When I can be chill, I try to be. This attitude also affected by blocking. It contributed to me unblocking people. When I was doing the blocking spree, I'd give people with no age in their bio a fair shot by reviewing their posts.

I blocked some bot accounts, then a bunch of blank blogs, some ambiguous people who very well could be of age. For the first 100 followers I was pretty aggressive. Then my attention span dropped off and I was a bit more ambivalent. I realized I was doing a crappy job of moderating and wondered what the point was.

The point was that the thirteen year old interacting with my work freaked me out. When I found two sixteen year old followers, it pushed me to continue the purge.

So on I go, blocking. I'm so responsible for doing this, right? But my methodology is crap. What is context for being an adult? Someone had posted about budgeting advice. I thought the budgeting advice was too good for it not to have come from an adult. But my father's a financial advisor and to be honest, I could have given that level of advice at fifteen just from osmosis. Someone had pictures of themselves entering their marijuana plants in the Oregon State Fair. Okay, you've got to be over 18. I didn't block them. Someone else complained about their stats professor and I didn't block them. But in retrospect, one of my high school friends got permission to take college level math courses when we were seniors. She was seventeen when she had a stats professor. The thought circles back - what am I accomplishing here? Next, I went back and unblocked someone who ranted about her Tinder matches being 60 year old men. I wondered if their post was even real. I've lied on the internet before. Nonetheless, I persisted and worked through all 500 followers. When I was done I had 312 followers left.

Post Blocking Spree Existential Crisis:

I know that all the blocking in the world can't stop a teenager who wants to read smut fanfic. I'm not much for posting on social media and I'm not used to a lot of anonymous interaction online. Honestly, I got rid of my SM accounts during college when I felt it was wasting my time. This is the first time I've really use a social media site to post content since college. My twitter account is unused, my Instagram is for close personal friends only, and my TikTok is for mindless consumption of cat videos. (I've trained the algorithm to feed me only cat videos, it's great and I highly recommend it.) I don't post on TikTok, so I don't consider it full use, just lurking.

Okay, Alice, get back to the point....

Right, being anonymous on social media. My blocks are a fence and it's based on self identification from the blogs that follow me. I have little faith in underage consumers to out themselves. I have even less faith in their honesty or respect for an adult's boundaries. They're at a stage in life where they want to push the boundaries. Telling them no is all but inviting them in. I did my blocking spree because I was worried about backlash from someone's parents. But what reasonable judge would come after a fanfic writer? Come on. Logical thoughts but me emotional distress was still brewing.

Why I am the one responsible for who clicks the follow button on my blog? I've always clearly identified what I write and tagged my work as smut.

That thought snapped me out of my whirlwind of anxious thoughts. So I started looking into the laws. My regular work involves medicine, not the legal profession, so I was lost. I found some state level laws that made me glad I'd gone on a blocking spree. California and Florida have specific language in their laws about 'providing minors with explicit content.' But what exactly is that? What I researched applied to the following activities: co-writing smut fanfic with other people, sexting, roleplaying and online messaging.

I run a fanfic blog with limited interaction. I've never done an ask. I don't roleplay on here and I don't want to.

The blocks weren't personal. They were partly based on the awareness that Tumblr is an interactive site and a place that's had a problem with child pornography in the past. But I'm not the smut police. I suck at blocking, and I doubt I did a good job of purging my followers list. This is when it hit me that boundaries are only what I can enforce. They've never been about how other people relate to me, only how I relate to them. (Wow. I've never sounded more like my mother in my life...) After this thought, I started considering what actions I ought to take if I wanted to keep posting fanfic on Tumblr.

My Post Blocking Spree Clarity...

It's up to me who I interact with. I don't have to reply to every comment and re-blog, but I'd like to. I'm stuck between wanting to write for everyone and handling interactions on a social media site that's mostly anonymous.

The fact remains: I can't be the smut police because I suck at it.

What I've decided is that I'll make it very clear on my blog that this is an 18+ space where I publish erotic fanfiction. Smut will always be appropriately marked. I'm not going to interact with reviews, re-blogs, and messages from accounts who don't have their age in their profile. I won't include them in my tag list either. The internet is a public forum. Just as with publishing erotica, once it's out there online for download, it's done. As a ghost writer and an author, I don't control who buys my original fiction, which is just as spicy as my fanfiction. (Trust me, it's explicit. I once had a romance editor tell me I should dial it back on the smutty parts of a novel because "it's a lot of sex for a non-erotica market.") The key difference on Tumblr is about interaction. And that's something I can control. I can decide when I reply to other users. What brought me around to this was the realization that even after the blocking spree, I can't review every single like I get. That's an amount of time and mental energy that's beyond me. Just the past two days have been exhausting and sapped my will to write. Which sucks because I need to go write the next chapter of "Restitution" before tomorrow.

I think the reasons I went on the blocking spree are nuanced. The thirteen year old freaked me out. So did the other underaged people who had ages in their bios. But it also relates to my work. In my job I've seen some nasty child abuse cases. Early on in my career, when I was a 23 year old new hire, I was working on an autopsy for a child abuse victim who'd been murdered by their parent. It was so terrible and graphic, I had to ask one of my older colleagues to take the case. This colleague didn't like me. But she took one look at my face and took the file. She closed out the review without a question and never brought it up again to anyone. I was very grateful. Where I used to work (and where this incident took place) was a major city that holds the unfortunate title of being the human trafficking capital of the US. And something I learned working there was that most human trafficking victims go with their captors willingly. In two years at that job, I never saw one who'd been kidnapped from a dark alley like you see on TV. They were all groomed on social media and thought they were escaping their families (who were often overbearing, toxic, or dysfunctional) for a get away with friends. It was a fun adventure with their internet buddies, until it wasn't.

In retrospect, the underage interaction I found on my blog made me react because of what I've been through. The autopsy case kept coming back to me today while I was at work and I've finally untangled my emotions enough to figure out what caused my melt down. When I was blocking, I was feeling an anxious motivation that I know can only stem from the stress I deal with at my job. Don't feel sorry for me about this - I know my work in medicine helps a lot of people and it's a tremendously satisfying career.

Our Saga's Resolution & How I'm Going to Deal With This In The Future...

- - - - -

In post block clarity, I offer this conclusion:

I'm writing on a public forum. My work is appropriately tagged as smut. In the future, I will also use the tag #no minors to help with filtering. I've always asked underage people not to interact. And on a public forum, what more can I reasonably do? Going forward I will only interact with those who have their age posted in their bio. But blocking sprees and policing every interaction isn't feasible.

I'll review how I'm going to run my tag lists as well. I need to think it over and let my followers know my decision as to if I'll continue using them. Because tagging is definitely interaction and my current tag list was not screened at all. *face palm*

Finally, to my readers who have blank blogs or don't have an age listed. I respect your right to privacy and I'm careful with my personal information as well. But I've also had an uncomfortable two days. If you've lasted through this venting session until now, you must understand that I'm upset by underage interaction. I'm setting my own boundaries and going forward, I'll own my side of the internet. No interaction from me, unless I know your age. Full stop - no exceptions. I think it is reasonable for me to suggest that you leave something on your blog that signifies you are not a minor, whatever that may be. Someone who I didn't block that stands out in my memory had a bio that said "90s baby." It was simple, direct, and left no doubt they were over 18. No age reveal and not even a name. If you put something like this on your blog it'll help explicit content creators feel more comfortable about their interactions.

I went on a spree this Monday and I admit to being heavy handed and aggressive about pruning followers. I had an emotional reaction due to work stress and I didn't think things through logically. I'm relieved for the chance explain myself and set new boundaries that I'm capable of sticking to in the future. But remember - the block button is on my side of the screen. At the end of the day, you might be unhappy with me for the block, but it's my button, it's my blog, and I'll use it as I see fit.

Thank you for reading.

[wildwoodmage]

I’ve been dealing with some writer’s block, but trying some new strategies to get through it. Here is a snippet from an AU that’s been on the backburner for a while.

Note to self: update my AU list and tags. That’ll take some doing, but it’ll be nice to have a tidier blog

Under the cut: Android AU, Robotnik’s POV

The fiery little bot kept trying to boot up prematurely, either unaware of or unfazed by the damage it had sustained. It was only after removing its core that Robotnik was sure that it would hold still until he was finished with its repairs. Normally, removal of the core was only done when a bot was headed to the scrapyard. A lesser engineer would have surely done just that, but Robotnik saw something special in this one. Though its exoskeleton was crumpled like tinfoil and its wiring was smeared with ash, a single light on the core still flashed as it tried to wake itself up. The chassis could not be salvaged, and it was no easy task to build an android from scratch, but oh, it would be worth it. Robotnik was reminded of this each time Sonic’s core flashed.

Based on its performance in the arena, Sonic was aptly named for a fighter that attacked before its opponent could think twice. The chassis that now sat in a wrecked heap on Robotnik's workbench had never been much more than scrap. It had surely been destroyed and patched together a hundred times, and judging by the pocket change that Robotnik had used to purchase it, there had never been much care or quality put into its construction. Sonic's brain, however, was no hastily-built knockoff. The sleek piece of machinery would not be out of place among the drones that patrolled the capitol or rained down hellfire on enemies of the state. Sonic would not have the broad analytical power of Robotnik's supercomputer, but it would have no competition when it came to rapidly processing sensory data and leaping into action. Even in its black market body, its quick reflexes and intuition had been glorious to behold. If its body had been able to keep up, Robotnik might have been rescuing a different bot from the scrapyard. And once he crafted a body that could keep up with the likes of Sonic, well...

The core blinked again, insistent, irrepressible. "Oh, stop that," Robotnik said, even though Sonic could not hear him, could not even know that he was there. "You'll just have to be patient. Even I can't rush perfection."

[renegade-is-in-my-blood]

Being in the blogging business for around 8 years now I came to learn a lot. Let’s hear from the old bitter blogger about the difference between being an ambassador and being a customer. When you’re investing more than you’re gaining from the collaboration it’s not really a collaboration you’re looking for.

There is a new trend going around social media, especially Instagram. I’ve been getting collaboration offers on a daily basis even pre COVID times but now the amount of pseudo collaborations increased.

Hands down it is an incredible business strategy from the business point of view.

Everyone wants to be an ambassador.

Ambassador became an even more prestigious title than an influencer. Influencer posses some sort of responsibility for their actions whilst ambassador is just being paid for simply being.

Who wouldn’t want that?

Many brands use this knowledge to the fullest and offers these pseudo collaborations.

So what is a pseudo collaboration?

Well, it starts off by being contacted by a brand.

You’ll receive a ctrl+c ctrl+v message from a brand-name-scout. The message contains several cute emojis and addresses you as a gorgeous, pretty, cutie, love, honey, sweety, and if they really want to get you, even by your Instagram name.

It’s usually followed by a bunch of compliments about your fashion style, vibe, Instagram, or whatever. Then there is a lie about following or just generally noticing you for a while without ever seeing your insta story, like any of your posts, or even actually following you.

Now it’s time for an offer beneficial for you.

Usually, it’s free products, a way to earn a commission, or just the sheer option to be able to call yourself an ambassador. Every single brand out there offers a “support” like anyone really knows what’s that supposed to mean. I had several ones even offering me a travel trips, but never elaborated on it after my further questioning.

Now comes the hook with a “do you want to learn more?” question.

If you think I’m exaggeration for the story and I can’t be generalizing all of the collaborations offers into a simple standard form I wish you were right. Here are some of the screenshots of my current Instagram DMs:

You might think: “What’s wrong with that? They’re trying so don’t be mean. Just ignore them.” let me remind you how dumb Instagram algorithm is.

If your account is followed by bots, messaged by bots, liked by bots Instagram assumes you’re one of them or you got hacked by them. Sweet of them for trying to protect you thought, but holy hell did that made everything super complicated for me.

I got several messages from the brand scouts messaging me again because their previous account got deleted.

No shit Sherlock, it’s like you can’t keep creating accounts, following and messaging a bunch of people at once and ask for money anymore.

So now every time my account gets suspicious activity such as too many likes/follows/messages Instagram suspects my account got hacked. Each time they require I change my password and let me tell you I ran out of password ideas months ago.

That’s not the worst part though.

After each time I change my password I’m blocked for 7 days from liking, following, or adding tags to my posts and that sucks. Just to get a better picture of this issue I’m blocked approximately once sometimes twice per month.

The block comes hand in hand with a shadowban that lingers for god knows how long, meaning Instagram is not gonna support you in any way. That’s why I have around 40 likes on a posts with 47K followers most of which are bots anyway.

I loath Instagram app yet I spend hours a day on the hellish site and I’m not only one.

We spend so much time on Instagram anyway so when a chance to earn money form it comes along you’re tempted to take it. Brands know that.

Imagine you’re a small-town girl with around 400 followers on Instagram. You already feel pretty popular right?

Now imagine you get the messages I shared above but you get just one. Someone out there thinks you’re so popular they want you on their team, you are just like the big influencers, you get job offers for being an Instagram star. You’re the next Kardashian.

You can have all of the things they said to you BUT you need to do something for them first. You have to pay for it.

And here is the catch with all of the pseudo collaborations.

What they don’t say to you in their first message is what it’s gonna cost you.

Many offers you free stuff but you need to pay for the one-time shipping. Some brands offer you a unique discount of around 40-60% off so you’ll pay just a part of the price and you can call yourself an ambassador.

I don’t know about you, but I thought that was called the customer. You buy a product, you wear it and occasionally you take photo of it on your social media sites. The new term is an ambassador apparently.

I get why so many people agree to this kind of collaboration. It’s new for you. It makes you feel good and successful in your friend’s and families eyes. And there is that hopefully undertone of making money from it.

Aren’t the brands unprofitable when they give away discounts and free stuff?

In a theory, yes, but there is one thing all of the brands that messaged me had in common except for the audacity.

Overpriced products.

I got messaged by jewelry stores, fashion stores and gym equipment stores most of the time. I took the time and did my research on every one of them.

When a store sold jewelry, they had the same products as the rest of the jewelry stores I got contacted by. A small variety of around 8 products most of them sold out anyway. And let’s not forget the ridiculously high prices. You can’t charge a cheap Chinese necklace you can get on amazon or aliexpress for under a 1$ for 40$.

So even if you’re paying just around 30$ for your ambassador order they are still making a profit on your wannabe Instagramer need cuz they purchased said items for far less.

Well, I’m being a little miss know it all right?

How can I talk about pseudo collaboration like this when it’s all based on assumptions. Well you know me, I’m curious as hell and I actually went through 3 pseudo collaborations myself just to prove a point.

I literally spend money so I can tell you about it right now so here is how my 3 pseudo collaborations went like.

All of the ones I choose were jewelry based pseudo collaborations. With the corona times, post offices are overwhelmed with parcels. I ordered big parcels in recent times and they arrived with around a month delay. I figured smaller jewelry in an envelope form would be quicker to arrive and I was right.

Pseudo collaboration number one VONACHI:

A simple yet luxurious-looking website with very few decent pieces of jewelry, offered me 3 free pieces to take a photo in and promote. I would also get a 60% discount code and every time my code would be used I would receive 30% of the money amount. Incredibly overpriced amount in the first place.

Here is the list of all of the benefits they offered.

The scout that approached me was very eager. They kept insisting I place my order right away. No time to waste.

To make it clear I got a simple code to apply in a check out that subtracted the price and I got the pieces for free. All I had to do was pay a 20$ shipping fee what seems like nothing but for 3 small necklaces, it is way too much.

Another thing that was odd was that I was required to take a screenshot of my order and send it back to scout. I guess to prove I was legit.

After bunch of further compliments and claims how excited they are to be working with me we ended our conversation.

If you think I was being reckless to give my credit card and home address to such a questionable site don’t be.

Honestly, I trust zero people, sometimes I don’t even trust myself. I used a card I have no to very little money on and I got it shipped to a work address.

My parcel from china arrived in around a month and a half. I got one black box with one necklace and the other 2 necklaces were in small plastic bags. I received a note about welcoming me to the program and asking me to contact vonachi’s official Instagram account for setting up my discount code and that’s exactly what I did. The official page responded after longer time period with just a “this is your code” message. I took a photo, tagged vonachi as a business partner, and shared my code. I did my part and I was never contacted by them again.

My 60% code is VONAMBNAT and as you might have guessed no one used it so far.

Or at least no one told me it was used. If someone were to use my code I would be contacted by vonachi and here is the problem. I’m supposed to trust them with their credibility cuz there is no other way for me to check it for myself. This is what it’s missing from the old Time collaborations of mine. I would get a tracking code, an account login, graphs, statistics, and one on one communication with a brand in my previous collaborations. But you know Golden times for influencers are long gone.

Now I’m left to just simply trust them.

Why would they ever confess someone used my code? If a customer gets 60% off and I’m getting 30% from already discounted item there is just a very little left for vonachi. They don’t say anything and get to keep my 30% share.

They didn’t put much effort into tracking system cuz they are not expecting their ambassadors/customers to make any sales anyway.

The products were not that bad. They came in a bit rusty and tangled but I was excepting much worse.

Hell, I was not expecting them to legitimately arrive.

Pseudo collaboration number 2: ENGELSINN

I initiated this pseudo collaboration myself. Engelsinn paid a significant amount of money to Instagram promoted post and that’s where I found out they are looking for ambassadors.

I filled out an application form.

This one felt more legit cuz they actually asked for followers count and all of the communication occurred via email. Automated emails but still it reminded me of good old days.

I was given a 40% discount code to use on my first order. The shipping was free but it still cost me another 20$ to get the product. Since placing my first order I got a 20% discount code “nat7x20” for my followers to get 20% off their engelsinn order.

When my code is redeemed 2 times I get one jewelry of my choice for free.

Do I even need to mention that I didn’t get any email since?

Well, that’s not exactly true I got 2 more emails each with another discount code I could use for 24 hours and buy more of their stuff. But none about redeemed code.

Engelsinn is a german based brand and living so close I got my parcel in around a week. I got myself a rose gold knot bracelet and I feel like a hypocrite but I actually really love this one and wear it every day. I know I wouldn’t get it if it wasn’t for the research but I’m glad I did.

Btw the ad about engelsinn looking for ambassador is still up there and it still says they have only a few places left. It’s been 2 months.

Pseudo collaboration number 3: CUZETTE

I got messaged by them on my Instagram and their offer was super confusing. They promised it all. 3 free stuff now, free stuff every month, paid trip to several destinations, and even 50$ voucher. The scout called me sweety exactly 9 times during our conversations. It was super annoying.

So I choose another 3 free items and paid another 20$ for shipping. When I asked about the 50$ voucher I was told I would need to refer 5 friends who would also become cuzette ambassador or delegate as they named it, to get the 50$. No info about the travel trips though.

I was told to contact the official page for more info but it took days for them to finally reply with nothing new just more compliments and excitement about the future. It’s been 2 months and I still haven’t received my order just as I was expecting.

Later on, I endorsed in conversation with several other brands asking for more info, looking for something different than standard copy and paste form. Unsuccessful.

Every time I asked how many ambassadors they have in their program the answer was always “around 3000“. Once again, you have 3000 customers and not 3000 ambassadors. If the only people who buy from you are people you ask to buy from you, you’re doing something wrong.

But your business plan is on point.

When I asked about who and where makes their products I was either met with a silence or a sweet talk about a responsible brand.

These brands are providing people with content. You get to take photos of the items you ordered and you get to be as creative as you want. In these COVID times so many brands had to cancel or postpone their collaborations with bloggers or Instagrammers. I saw huge travel/luxurious instagramers switch form hotel and travel collaborations to promoting kitchen wipes. Times are tough and you got to do what you got to do.

Yet these small businesses with hight prices are thriving?

You know it’s not about the product but about the potential.

Profiting on greediness.

So smart.

To prove my point even further I got to confess one more thing. I mentioned before that I manage Instagram accounts for different brands and among them is one fashion store. I was not only at the ambassadors’ side but on the scouting side as well.

All I had to do was search for people who looked like they would be willing to become an ambassador for our store and had decent amount of followers. I had saved message form and all I did was try to guess peoples names so the message seemed more personal. Once they agreed to a discussion I let my boss take the lead.

So yeah, try to really think about the offers you get.

Look at it from all points of view and ask yourself if it’s profitable for anyone else but the brand.

If you want to have offers pouring your way try adding #ad #spon #collab to your next Instagram posts. That’s how they look for their next ambassador.

Everyone wants to be an ambassador. 

Pseudo Collaborations- Everyone wants to be an Ambassador Being in the blogging business for around 8 years now I came to learn a lot. Let's hear from the old bitter blogger about the difference between being an ambassador and being a customer.

[hoidn]

20 questions

tagged by @sarking

name: tree [lowercase. always.]

nicknames: variations on the word ‘chicken’ are used exclusively by my mother. i don’t really do nicknames. they were imposed on me throughout childhood, so when i got to college i decided to nominate one for myself and thereby remove any other choices. but i was never entirely comfortable with it and have since returned to forcing people to pronounce all four syllables of my given name. it is, apparently, something of a hardship to the world.

height: 5′6 - 7″? i really don’t know. the last time i was measured was for my high school graduation gown and i grew a bit more after that.

orientation: wall. (that is a joke. see this post.) i’m asexual. (romantic, repulsed, autochorissexual if you wanna get specific.)

nationality: antipodean.

favorite fruit: apples; i miss all fruit, but apples were the first that i lost--i haven’t been able to eat one in 20 years. they were my favourite reading snack when i was growing up. i’d lie on my bed with a book and an apple (usually a granny smith, sometimes with a bit of cheese) and it was the best feeling: the crisp crunch of the apple, the soft whisper of the turning pages, getting lost in a story. 

favorite season: i’ve yet to meet a winter i didn’t like.

favorite flower: peonies; many moons ago i made a mini-picspam post about them, in fact.

favorite scent: petrichor |ˈpɛtrʌɪkɔː| noun [ mass noun ] ORIGIN 1960s: blend of petro-‘relating to rocks’ (the smell is believed to be caused by a liquid mixture of organic compounds which collects in the ground) and ichor.

favorite color: green; although i’m very particular about my greens.

favorite animal: THERE ARE SO MANY HOW DO I CHOOSE ONLY ONE

coffee, tea, or hot 🍫:  i’m really not all that fond of hot beverages tbh. i drink a cup of ginger tea in the morning with my toast, or to help with nausea. i’ve never liked coffee and i can’t remember the last time i had hot chocolate.

average hours of 💤: never enough.

🐶 or 🐈 person: DOG. cat = DEATH.

favorite fictional character(s): THAT IS TOO HARD

number of blankets you sleep with: zero. i can’t stand weight on or restriction of my legs in any way. when it’s hot, i sleep without covers; when it’s cold i sleep under a lightweight doona and add layers of clothing as necessary to keep warm.

dream trip: antarctica

blog created: 2009?

number of followers: 89 (?! xkit blocks this and i had to go digging because i can never remember where to find it. most of those have to be porn blogs and bots. it’s simply not possible that 89 humans want to look at the shit i reblog.)

random fact: the tongue is not a single muscle but something like 32 different muscles.

[dweebpheles]

With tumblr being one of the only social media platforms I bother with, seeing all of my favorite artists (that tag their posts, nsfw or not, that have a +18 disclaimer in their bio, that make their living doing commissions and advertising their art from this very site) really upsets me. I dont have a snapchat, twitter, instagram, anything else. Just tumblr. And Seeing some of my favorite fandom bloggers delete their blogs, even seeing some of my mutuals delete their blogs--not because they post nsfw content, but because most of their sfw posts are getting flagged and they are just done with the bullshit? Yea, it sucks balls.

I'm not leaving tumblr, for the, like, 4 of you I talk to on this app, and I'm not one to often voice my opinion, but I seriously think this is pretty fucked. People who use this app to make a living are getting fucked over. Dare i say it. Even Sex workers are getting fucked over. Porn bots? I've gotten followed by four today. I've had to blog and report them for spam. Nothing is changing with the main problem--the porn bots. Have I ever came in contact with a sex worker on here? Yes. One. I've seen their blog, and all of their content was tagged nsfw, and so I just blocked them and went on my merry way. They even had a bio that said "please block me if you're under 18, this is an nsfw blog, don't interact". Like. I'm not saying they're all like that. I wouldn't know, I've only encountered one. But like. Most nsfw stuff never shows up on my dash, and if it does, I block and go on. Reason I say MOST nsfw stuff, is because the only nsfw stuff that DOES pop on my blogs is

FUCKING PORN BOTS.

And I'm so. Fucking tired. Of the porn bots. And nothing is happening about the porn bots.

Used to, the porn bots would just follow me and send me the typicall repulsive fucking messages like "h0t single big tiddy babes in y0ur area! See if she is 0nline n0w" with a link that would probably give me 12 viruses, so I would block, delete, mark as spam, report, done.

Ever since this ban on nsfw content has come up, not only has the amount of porn blogs following me DOUBLED, But the stupid fucking posts are showing up on my feed.

I'm just sitting there scrolling through my fandom content on my feed and between all of the posts I'm liking and reposting, mainly consisting of memes, and the assorted amount of fandom I'm in, boom, some basically naked girl in a G string giving a guy a bj in a swimming pool and it's labeled "h0t babes in your area" or some stupid fucking shit, and oh, what's that? It's tagged "sfw"! I'll be damned, the bots are learning, and thus they're becoming FOUR TIMES AS FUCKING ANNOYING.

I know people on this app that are +18 and the only problem they have with nsfw on this app is with the porn bots. They have no issue with nsfw creators/sex workers--if they find an nsfw creator or a sex worker blog, they just block them, and block some extra tags. Problem solved.

I have 54 blogs blocked. 50 of those are porn bots. Like 6 of those porn bots are posting what I think is child porn. I have reported all of the porn bots for spam multiple times, and only a few have been taken down? 3 of those blogs I've blocked are exclusionist, and the last one I have blocked is that sex worker--I blocked them just so I didn't have to see their content. I didn't report them, their content was tagged and there were disclaimers like, everywhere all over their blog.

But I've seen about 20 people that I follow for art delete their blogs/content because of this ban, when this was their biggest platform. People that have been here WAY fucking longer than me. People making their living selling their art here. People with like 5000 followers. Some of these people, yes, draw nsfw content. But they have made separate blogs for their nsfw art, with disclaimers and all kinds of tags.

But not a thing has been done about the porn bots. In fact, they got worse. Not sure if this has happened to anyone else--like, porn bots posts showing up on your feed/following you twice as much I mean.

But. Idk. This is just my highly disorganised input. This post is really really rambly, like, I just kinda spilled my thoughts but. I'm pretty mad about all this and I know people on here are much angrier than me, much more affected than me, and much more willing to speak out than me. But here's my input, though it's a little all over the place.

[fromanotherroom-revived]

Dear former fromanotherroom followers:

Reposting so it shows up in the tags. Long story short, original blog was terminated. Full explanation under the read more.

Yes, fromanotherroom has been wiped from tumblr. No, I didn’t deactivate. On July 25th, I was trying to scroll through the app, when it suddenly stopped working (with a very helpful message “it did not work”). I figured the app was just acting up as it does, so I tried to log in through my computer.

“Your account has been terminated.”

I rushed to check my email, and it was as I feared. The blog was terminated due to alleged copyright infringement. I sent a couple tickets to staff, with no response whatsoever. Someone must have filed complaints against me, or I’m simply another subject of copyright holders being huge jerks. Either way, it’s disappointing, and I’m still a little in shock. That said, I understand why it happened.

Is it fair? I don’t really know. It doesn’t matter because I was dumb enough to keep the blog attached to my main blog, so that’s all gone too. Nearly 6 years worth of posts, reblogs, uploaded artwork, etc.

It should go without saying, but no more requests will be taken. At all. Ever. At least, not until I can find a secure place to upload them. I can’t put myself in that position again. I’m afraid that if I piss them off a second time, they’ll track me through other means (eg. my IP) and block me from the site completely. I haven’t heard of it happening, and it probably sounds paranoid, but I don’t wanna take the risk.

A warning to blogs that have been inspired by fromanotherroom:

I can’t and I won’t tell you guys what to do, but please consider that this stuff has repercussions. At the least, you should take precautions: back up your stuff, do not attach your music blogs to your main blogs, and check your email regularly. The biggest regret I have is not checking my email thoroughly, or I would have caught the warning signs and I would have had the chance to save my blogs. The emails that Tumblr will send you, should you be accused of infringement, often end up somewhere you can’t see them or some place you don’t check very often. tldr; be vigilant, staff is legally obliged to delete you over something like this and you will not get your blog OR url back.

Final note:

It was a very good three months, and I sincerely thank everyone who was there to make it as popular as it was. Because of you guys, basically every single post on that blog is still around simply because they’ve been reblogged so much. Yes, all the audio posts still work, if you can find them.

Anyway, I’d just broken through 60,000 followers, which is insane because I never even imagined a person could accrue that many followers unless they had a bot doing it for them. Unfortunately, I believe it was this popularity that also drew negative attention to the blog.

I’ve kept the askbox open, but only so people can send messages and ask questions. If anyone knows of a place where I can safely upload my edits, let me know. I’ve resurrected my main blog as well. If you want the url to that, message me.

[littlehollyleaf]

Questions for the Blogger!

tagged by @lankybrunettepartdeux (my apologies for being half-hearted about this, I’m a lazy ass!)

Rules: Answer 30  questions and tag 20 blogs you are contractually obligated to know better.

1. Nicknames: I tried very very hard at Uni to give myself the nickname ‘Leaf’ but it never worked out :p 2. Gender: Female 3. Star sign: Scorpio (but I never seem to fit ANY of the descriptions) 4. Height: don’t remember, can’t be bothered to check... something like 5′1 5. Time: 11.45am (BST) 6. Birthday: 7th Nov 1984 7 & 8. Favorite Bands & Favorite solo artists: I’ve combined these because my answer covers both - see truth is I don’t really ‘do’ music, so... never really sure who is solo and who is a band (is Pink the person? is Bon Jovi the band? idek!) and... I have SONGS I enjoy, but don’t really pay attention to the artists most of the time... kinda like Meatloaf, listen to Swift sometimes, recently grabbed a bunch of songs by Halsey... have also listened to Kansas and AC/CD... but I like cheesy shit too like ABBA... um, Bonnie Tyler... Annie Lennox... Dolly Parton... basically I have no musical taste is what I’m saying, and generally whatever fandom I’m in dictates what music I like at the time 9. Song stuck in my head: “Purple Rain” (oh gee I wonder how THAT happened :p) 10. Last movie I watched: Kingsman The Golden Circle :) 11. Last show I watched: Justice League Action (well one episode :p) 12. When did I create my blog: don’t remember... 13. What do I Post/Reblog: geeky stuff 14. Last Thing I Googled: literally just now “who is in control lyrics” - because I couldn’t remember the artist of the song for the Q above (that’s how bad I am at music) 15. Other Blogs: got an LJ still kicking about somewhere 16. Do I get asks: it has been known :p 17. Why I Chose My URL: my name’s holly, I’m small... also when I first needed to create an online username for LJ back in the day my first choice of ‘hollyleaf’ was already taken 18. Following: too many :p (tumblr has been running slow for me for a while and I suspect it’s cos of the amount of blogs I follow... I try and prune now and then but... eh) 19. Followers: too many! seriously guys, what are you all here for? I’m so ridiculous! (I suspect a lot are actually porn blogs/bots though - I only discovered this year how to check who is following you and that you can block them... I so can’t be bothered to wade through my existing followers and try and figure out which are and aren’t real though) 20. Average Hours of Sleep: 6-8 21. Lucky number: 7 I guess 22. Instruments: See above about me and music - playing is worse because... I can’t always tell when something is out of tune (my dad is legit tone deaf and I’ve long suspected I may take after him). I did play the flute to Grade 2 when I was younger though. I enjoyed it but never really... got INTO it, you know? I was always, like, ‘playing by numbers’ I suppose? 23. What am I wearing: PJs. It’s my day off leave me alone. 24. Dream job: No job. I have ZERO ambition. If I could just chill and fandom and snuggle with my cats every day I would. My job gets me money to live, that’s all (although I do like my job okay!) 25. Dream Trip: SDCC! Although atm I am also really kinda interested in visiting Japan 26. Favorite Food: Pork, probably. Unless you count drinks, in which case Coke and/or Mountain Dew. 27. Nationality: Brit. 28. Favorite Song RIGHT NOW: Ah no single one, just dumb stuff that gives me nygmobbelpot feelings mostly - “All of Me” by John Legend, “Loving You is a Dirty Job (But Someone’s Gotta Do It)” by Bonnie Tyler, “Strange Love” by Halsey... (I REALLY NEED some foxma songs though, so if anyone has any ideas??) 29. Last Book Read: Last one I finished was “A Skinful of Shadows” by Frances Hardinge (who is AMAZING and it was AMAZING everyone read her if you like slightly spooky stuff that, thank goodness, LACKS ROMANCE). Currently reading “Lockwood and Co. The Empty Grave” by Jonathan Stroud :)

30. Top Three Fictional Universes You’d Want to Join: 

Doctor Who (because it’s basically ours but with the chance you might stumble into the TARDIS one day, so I could theoretically keep my life largely as is :p)

Labyrinth (again, basically ours, but if you played your cards right you might get whisked off for a magical adventure with the Goblin King for a night, which is a win!)

The Librarians (this has the same element of ‘our world but magic is real’ but in a twist on the above I’d actually be happy to be part of the action in this world, because the characters’ magic adventures seem fun and with the least amount of trauma involved, lol! I don’t think I’d be smart enough to be a Librarian though alas)

Oh sorry, did you think I’d say Gotham or spn? Fuck that, you know if ~I lived in those universes I’d be Extra #3 in the cold open who gets violently slaughtered by the monster/villain of the week, so no thanks! (and even if not - I could not handle the stress of living in Gotham, have you SEEN what happens there??)

[cayannamon]

Tagged~

Tagged by : @randomslasher and @finiteframe3 ♥♥♥

1. Nicknames: Luna, Cayann, Mom, Dad, Daddy, Chey-Chey, Lulu, Satan, etc. 2. Gender: Female 3. Star sign: Aquarius 4. Height: 5′5″ 5. Time: 3:03 pm 6. Birthday: Feb 8 7. Favourite bands: AC/DC, Blue Oyster Cult, Bon Jovi, Crystal Castles, Daft Punk, Eagles, Fall Out Boy, Icon for Hire, Imagine Dragons, Imogen Heap, Journey, Kesha, Lenka, Maroon 5, My Chemical Romance, Mystery Skulls, My Darkest Days, Panic! At The Disco, Paramore, Pentatonix, The Pretty Reckless, Queen, Studio Killers, X Ambassadors ((not all bands per se, but, I think I should just stop now lolol )) 8. Favourite solo artists: Halsey or Marina and The Diamonds, probably. There’s a lot more but…too many… 9. Song stuck in my head: “Girls/Girls/Boys by Panic! At The Disco” right now 10. Last movie watched: Mulan 11. Last show watched: “Camp Camp” probably 12. When did I create my blog: Cayannmon was started….March 15th ((heh ides of march)) 6 years ago.  @cayannamon-arts  was started a year ago on August 3rd.

13. What do I post: Fandom stuff, my art, social issues, memes, tutorials, etc. etc. Honestly it’s just one big mess. 14. Last thing I googled: Soul Eater ((cuz of the au we were discussing in discord earlier)) 16. Do you get asks: Occasionally 17. Why did you choose your url: Well….**pulls out a tome and dusts it off** Back when neopets was like a huge thing, they would give you these generated usernames and stuff. If my parents had ever had another child, their name would be Cayenne and since my name is Cheyenne, we’d be the Pepper Siblings™. As such, 12 year old me was like “COOL, I’ll make my username have cayenne in it”. However, I still had to set up an email at the time and those also gave you random generated additions if your name was taken. Thus Cayenne went to Cayanna_y42 which gave me my original neopets handle ((which was rudely deactivated a few years back when they did that mass purge of unused accounts)) and various other media accounts. Unfortunately, when it finally came time to spread my wings and make a YouTube channel back in ohhh I dunno, 2007? Somewhere around there- the user “cayanna” and “cayanna_y42” were taken. And, being the dork I was and the fan of them classic animes and cartoons like Digimon from Disney XD, I was like “I like “Gatomon”…lets just…merge things. Thus “Cayannamon” became my handle for everything up until today. Tho, my original YT was deactivated from those old classic AMV’s and copyright claims. *weeps*

18. Following: 1,068 blogs currently *coughs* 19. Followers: 503 currently; while I try and block the spam/porn bots, there’s probably around 15? or so that are bots. 20. Favourite colours: My list of fave to least fave goes: Purple, Black/White, Green, Red, Orange, Pink, Yellow, Blue. ((sorry all you blue lovers, there’s just very rare times I actually enjoy that color)) 21. Average hours of sleep: 5-8, depends on if I’m in school or not. 22. Lucky number: 8 ((It’s my lucky number, birthday number, favorite number, it’s even, and it’s a lemniscate. I love it. )) 23. Instruments: Clarinet mainly. Though I have dabbled with pianos, ukuleles, guitars, saxophones, flutes, and drums. Still wanna get my hands on a harp and violin tho like gosh 24. What am I wearing: Purple short shorts and a black tank top, aka my usual. 25. How many blankets do I sleep with: Anywhere from one to three, depending on the weather. But I gotta at least have one on me.   26. Dream job: Oh gosh, uhm, probably something that no one else has done like….animal art traveling scientist teacher thing. I dunno. I’ve got a lot of dreams y’all. I’m getting two bachelors right now because I’m so bad at deciding. 27. Dream trip: Anywhere, honestly. I’ve never left America and I’ve only visited like 4 states. France, Japan, England, South America, Antarctica; just take me.   28. Favourite food: I love…a lot…of foods….but for this one… I’ll go with… pumpkin pie.   29: Nationality: American 30: Favourite song right now: Don’t really have one single song but… “Outbreak (feat. Mylk) by Feint” is pretty chill.

Tagging: @trucbiduleschouettes @grayscaleeternity @hauntedspacekiwi @sierra-mist-14 and anyone who wants to do it. ♥

[hitodama89]

Thank you for the tag, @niuniente! <3 It has been ages since I've done one of these and I've really missed them.

Why did you choose your url?

Well kids, back in the good old days of approximately 2004 it was a widely used custom to use your birth year as an extension of your username if the actual username was already used by someone else, which is where the 89 comes from. hitodama I picked because I just wanted some other mythical creature to use aside of my number one pick, dragon, as every variation of that was naturally already registered everywhere I went. On the other hand the reason of why did I start writing the name with a lower-case h has been lost to the pages of history (=I don't remember it) but it has become so integral part of it that I take mental damage every time I see someone write it with an upper-case H. =')

Any side blogs?

So far only @hitodama89reblogs. I have sometimes toyed with the idea of making some other blogs, but so far I've never actually ended up doing it.

How long have you been on Tumblr?

My blog says the first post was made 7 years ago. Somehow it feels like it has been way longer than that, but I guess not then.

Do you have a queue tag?

I don't think I have queued a single post in my life?

Why did you start your blog in the first place?

This was supposed to be an ask blog for my characters and for a while it was, but as time went on the culture of sending funny little asks started to slowly die and most of my friends also stopped using Tumblr so I didn't really get any more asks to answer. That's why for the vast majority of time the blog has been just a "post whatever the heck I want" blog instead.

Why did you choose your icon?

It's something I originally drew to be used in my website's graphics and it just... Stuck. I don't tend to change my avatar images unless I have to; so far the one to be in use for the longest time is likely my icon in dA that has been in place for 12 years.

Why did you choose your header?

It's also part of the website graphics, so the story is the same as for the avatar.

What’s your post with the most notes?

According to that tool that lets you check it out it's this silly screenshot. The second best is this doodle from the start of this year. (Also according to that tool my blog contains 1336 posts, which is quite a bunch considering almost all of them are original posts and not reblogs.)

How many mutuals do you have?

Apparently 24 and something around 10 of those are actually active nowadays.

How many followers do you have?

194. It isn't a lot, but at least there aren't any obvious bots among them, as I check all of my new followers out and block those very blatant sex bot accounts whenever I see them (which is still at least once a week, which is pretty hilarious considering the sex ban).

How many people do you follow?

214 and according to a quick count around 70 of them are completely inactive... I should likely clean the list a little bit.

Have you ever made a shitpost?

Eeeeh, hmmh, I have no idea what ACTUALLY counts as a shitpost, so idk?

How often do you use Tumblr each day?

I check it a few times a day. I like to keep my watch list short enough that I get to see every post that comes through my dash without a huge struggle.

Did you have a fight/argument with another blog once?

I dooooon't think so? I've disagreed with people, but I don't remember it ever escalating into a fight or even a proper argument.

How do you feel about “you need to reblog this” posts?

I really dislike them and tend to avoid reblogging them just because of that guilt-tripping, no matter how good the actual subject is.

Do you like tag games?

Yes, I love them! <3

Do you like ask games?

I do, even though I miss those days when people weren't so hesitant on actually sending those asks to each other.

Which of your Tumblr mutuals do you think is Tumblr famous?

I'm pretty sure @niuniente at least has the most followers!

Do you have a crush on a mutual?

Okay it would be really funny if I said yes and then those 24 mutuals of mine managed to contact each other and then they'd have to cook up a convoluted plan to find out which one it is. I'd watch an anime like that!

[regressionuncensored]

Why I Left Agere...

I’m submitting this on anonymous because I do not feel comfortable giving out my new URL– especially with this controversial opinion I’m about to give. I don’t think age regression is healthy. My therapist did not think my age regression was healthy. Over the three years I’ve been in this community I have not improved mentally by any margin– and here is my story. TW: grooming mentions, swearing, pedophilia mentions, mental illness mentions, possible sexual assault mentions. Read with caution if you’re triggered by any of these things. I will jump right into this without making introductory small talk. I have OCD. I have the delusion of being dirty by even thinking of sexuality in any form. The forced sexualization of agere (even if it’s claimed to be “nonsexual”) is too much for me to handle, and it’s very clear that it overlaps with kink in many areas even if you don’t want it to, or say it doesn’t for you. Somehow, saying your regression isn’t sexual has wrapped around and become sexual again– read in between the lines of any cg / little post and you’ll see what I mean. Anyway, daddy / mommy / caregiver– rather we like it or not– are terms associated with kink and they have been for several years, even before agere. The only time it isn’t is when actual, real children use it as a nickname for a parental figure, or if a person is giving care to someone who is physically unable to help themselves for a medical reason. This is the only time the term is not sexualized because people don’t know about age regression and they more than likely never will. Secondly, the amount of minor and adult relationships in cglre are ridiculous (you all know very well who I’m talking about)– but as an added example, remember the eighteen year old being groomed by a twenty eight year old and none of you said anything about it because it was “not sexual”? Yeah. “BUT SHE WAS EIGHTEEN WAAAHHHHH” I don’t give a fuck, that’s no excuse for a twenty eight year old to be interested in someone of that age and if you disagree you need to rethink your life. Cglre is grossly predatory from my experiences and the things I have witnessed there have made me report multiple blogs to NCMEC because that’s how disgusting it is, and every single cg needs to think hard about their interactions towards minors (THAT INCLUDES EIGHTEEN YEAR OLDS). Adults (AKA people in their late twenties and early thirties in this case) in this community should be absolutely ashamed for interacting with minors– and I’ll be watching the notes of this post, too! I’ll report you if I have to! Not to mention when Tumblr blocked the tag for adult content it was for a reason. “C” “G” “L”. Caregiver/little. Aka a kink with a power exchange. You can’t slap “regression” on the end and expect it to magically become safe for work… look at your tag for fuck sakes. People are constantly cross tagging it with kink tags. It was a mistake right from the beginning and everyone refuses to acknowledge it because it’s inconvenient for them to– just like me having this opinion is also inconvenient for them. As for chire, it fell apart way back when mod wolf got called out for being a pedophile and Donut got called out for being a mega jerk. The new chire community is empty and is filled with recycled ideas from 2017. It’s dying, and I think it should stay that way, but I have to applaud them for actually trying to keep kink out of their coping mechanism by not using the word CGL– other than that, it’s the same community as cglre, but it’s more successful for being safe for minors, where cglre is not (and still is not) and has failed miserably at doing so, despite the many block lists the community has created. Let’s not even mention their allowing of truscum and transmeds and how they did absolutely nothing to keep their trans members safe– I see you, cglre mods! Averting your eyes has been the death of your community, and the reason for this entire letter. Don’t even try to tell anyone in cglre this, though. They’ll just act like literal children… but, like, accurately for once, unlike the cheap baby talk they always use. They just plug their ears and go “Nwooooooo it’s not bwecause it’s rwegression and you’re just a bwig fwat mweanie head :((((((( I’ll tell my dwaddy on you.” The cringe writes itself and I don’t even support cringe culture. That’s not even a healthy way to think, by the way. You just decided it was to go along with the majority’s opinion. Regression is so harmful, especially for people like me who already have issues becoming adults due to my BPD. I am leaving this entire community utterly upset for what it’s done to me– and to see minors regressing to a younger age WHEN THEY’RE ALREADY MINORS is absolutely ridiculous. There are better, healthier coping mechanisms than sticking a pacifier in your mouth and calling your musky-husky-two-month-old-boyfriend “daddy”. Take a walk. Learn to knit. Bake cookies. Practice mindfulness and thought correction. Do CBT and DBT. Literally any of those are better than regressing– any good, licensed therapist will tell you this. Mine did. If yours didn’t, find a better one. You are only hurting yourself by regressing. You are only hurting yourself by refusing to grow up and be an actual, functioning adult in society– and if you can do that and regress? Good for you. The fourteen year olds in your communities can't– and they especially can’t have caregivers (especially when none of you can take care of yourselves at that age already), otherwise you may need to report that to the authorities. I know no one in this community will, though, because the last person who did that was chased out of your community. I saw it with my own two eyes. There is also a reason porn bots and daddy dom blogs follow you against your will. It’s because, rather you like it or not, are participating in age play at the end of the day. Not all age play is sexual but it is most definitely a kink and I highly recommend the Wikipedia article on it, as it provides accurate information to what everyone is really participating in (look, I’ll even tell you if you’re lazy or angry at me to click: Ageplay or age play is a form of roleplaying in which an individual acts or treats another as if they were a different age… wow, sounds very familiar, eh?). It’s really all regression is– age play made out to be therapeutic, but in reality, holds people back from accepting their problems and permanently harms their state of mind. Is it really any surprise that people who act like children will also do so when shown the cold, hard facts? Amazing, really. And to be honest- this is just my opinion– there’s nothing normal or therapeutic about a thirty four year old wearing a diaper and sucking on a pacifier claiming their healing from past trauma. I won’t believe you for a single second if you told me that. It’s not healthy. I don’t see any of that stuff outside Tumblr (except a poorly written and unsourced Wikipedia article) unless it’s attached to age play or ABDL– and that’s the facts. Not to mention the original age regression article specifically fucking states that it’s a hypnosis technique used in therapy, but is incredibly controversial as it provides negative results most of the time. Do your research– I know you won’t, though, or else you’ll get five page call out and get suicide baited off your blog (way to go, cglre. Suicide bait the people who don’t need it unlike, you know, TERFs or MAPs). Anyway I’m going to wrap this lengthy ramble up here and watch all the anons come in and attack me. Worst case scenario they’ll poorly dissect my letter without textbook psychology sources and think that they won– the equivalent to the pigeon shitting all over the chessboard quote. Sorry for the oncoming shitstorm in your inbox… remember to block if you have to. I know I have.

Love, A very hurt and tired former member of the agere community.

_______________________________________________________ I agree with some of what you said but I think there are some main things I need to point out.

1. I think your mental illness is changing how you perceive things. I have ocd and I am scared of animals cus I think they are contaminated but I decide to examine why I am having these fears and challenge myself because I could not live well if I didn’t. 

2. I regressed when I was younger like an actual kid. From guess what? Trauma!!! Yeah I was stuck at a younger age and guess what I am now! I have been in therapy since I was four but regression does actually help me. I don’t think regression on it’s own fixes anything but along with therapy (I currently do DBT) I think it’s fine!  3. Just cus you think it’s weird does not make it bad. Maybe a grown adult never had any trauma resolved (or just thinks it’s fun) and it relaxes them. Then WHO CARES if they don’t think it’s kink and they are not being sexual in anyway then WHO CARES. I am sorry but by saying regression is ageplay (even nonsexual) is sexualizeing people who regress. 

4. Kink is not bad and even if it is it’s not your job to tell them. I mean people are drug addicts and that’s bad but I don’t make it my job to tell them that it is. I mean there are people who use drugs (like drugs and alcohol) and are fine! Even if you think drugs are gross if people are not addicted then it does not matter. Like with anything weather pain or smoking weed if you are doing it for the wrong reasons. (not mentally stable, a minor etc) then yeah it’s bad but the average person who has a few drinks a week or even one drink a day is not actually in harm's way and does not need your input. (for anyone who didn’t follow drugs are kink I know bad analogy cus kink is even less harmful but whatever.)

Yes I think we need to protect minors and maybe even age gate it a bit (like I see 11 year olds here and like I was not mature enough to be here at 14 soo) but I think what everyone here is tired of is being told we are gross. That we are sick, crazy, stupid, sexual etc by everyone. Look I don’t like agere either i’m going to kink as soon as I can cus that’s what fits me better but making people feel gross fixes nothing it just sorta makes you annoying. CGLRE (you have a clear bias for chire even though I know you have issues with them too) has worked hard to be a safe place. I know kinksters and miseducated regressors might use the wrong tags but the issue is them not cglre and people can be non comm if cglre is not for them. Why not educate I mean I write stuff on this blog hopefully to show and honest side of agere and I want to educate not shame. Also it’s kinda hard to have a nonsexual kink that you do alone (most of the time) with no power exchange......well i’ve rambled enough but I think you get my point. There is nuance to this issue and people need to know both sides. My side has points and so does yours but people need to hear both and I really don’t suggest shame as your vehicle to get your point across-Lyra

[evanstheodoredqe]

7 SEO Fails Seen in the Wild (And How You Can Avoid Them)

7 SEO Fails Seen in the Wild (And How You Can Avoid Them) was originally published on BruceClay.com, home of expert search engine optimization tips.

We often get questions from people wondering why their site isn’t ranking, or why it isn’t indexed by the search engines.

Recently, I’ve come across several sites with major errors that could be easily fixed, if only the owners knew to look. While some SEO mistakes are quite complex, here are a few of the often overlooked “head slamming” errors.

So check out these SEO blunders — and how you can avoid making them yourself.

SEO Fail #1: Robots.txt Problems

The robots.txt file has a lot of power. It instructs search engine bots what to exclude from their indexes.

In the past, I’ve seen sites forget to remove one single line of code from that file after a site redesign, and sink their entire site in the search results.

So when a flower site highlighted a problem, I started with one of the first checks I always do on a site — look at the robots.txt file.

I wanted to know whether the site’s robots.txt was blocking the search engines from indexing their content. But instead of the expected text file, I saw a page offering to deliver flowers to Robots.Txt.

The site had no robots.txt, which is the first thing a bot looks for when crawling a site. That was their first mistake. But to take that file as a destination … really?

SEO Fail #2: Autogeneration Gone Wild

Secondly, the site was automatically generating nonsense content. It would probably deliver to Santa Claus or whatever text I put in the URL.

I ran a Check Server Page tool to see what status the autogenerated page was showing. If it was a 404 (not found), then bots would ignore the page as they should. However, the page’s server header gave a 200 (OK) status. As a result, the fake pages were giving the search engines a green light to be indexed.

Search engines want to see unique and meaningful content per page. So indexing these non-pages could hurt their SEO.

SEO Fail #3: Canonical Errors

Next, I checked to see what the search engines thought of this site. Could they crawl and index the pages?

Looking at the source code of various pages, I noticed another major error.

Every single page had a canonical link element pointing back to the homepage:

<link rel=”canonical” href=”https://www.domain.com/” />

In other words, search engines were being told that every page was actually a copy of the homepage. Based on this tag, the bots should ignore the rest of the pages on that domain.

Fortunately, Google is smart enough to figure out when these tags are likely used in error. So it was still indexing some of the site’s pages. But that universal canonical request was not helping the site’s SEO.

How to Avoid These SEO Fails For the flower site’s multiple mistakes, here are the fixes:

Have a valid robots.txt file to tell search engines how to crawl and index the site. Even if it’s a blank file, it should exist at the root of your domain.

Generate a proper canonical link element for each page. And don’t point away from a page you want indexed.

Display a custom 404 page when a page URL doesn’t exist. Make sure it returns a 404 server code to give the search engines a clear message.

Be careful with autogenerated pages. Avoid producing nonsense or duplicate pages for search engines and users.

Even if you’re not experiencing a site problem, these are good points to review periodically, just to be on the safe side.

Oh, and never put a canonical tag on your 404 page, especially pointing to your homepage … just don’t.

SEO Fail #4: Overnight Rankings Freefall

Sometimes a simple change can be a costly mistake. This story comes from an experience with one of our SEO clients.

When the .org extension of their domain name became available, they scooped it up. So far, so good. But their next move led to disaster.

They immediately set up a 301 redirect pointing the newly acquired .org to their main .com website. Their reasoning made sense — to capture wayward visitors who might type in the wrong extension.

But the next day, they called us, frantic. Their site traffic was nonexistent. They had no idea why.

A few quick checks revealed that their search rankings had disappeared from Google overnight. It didn’t take too much Q&A to figure out what had happened.

They put the redirect in place without considering the risk. We did some digging and discovered that the .org had a sordid past.

The previous owner of the .org site had used it for spam. With the redirect, Google was assigning all of that poison to the company’s main site! It took us only two days to restore the site’s standing in Google.

How to Avoid This SEO Fail Always research the link profile and history of any domain name you register.

A qualified SEO consultant can do this. There are also tools you can run to see what skeletons may be lying in the site’s closet.

Whenever I pick up a new domain, I like to let it lie dormant for six months to a year at least before trying to make anything of it. I want the search engines to clearly differentiate my site’s new incarnation from its past life. It’s an extra precaution to protect your investment.

SEO Fail #5: Pages That Won’t Go Away

Sometimes sites can have a different problem — too many pages in the search index.

Search engines sometimes retain pages that are no longer valid. If people land on error pages when they come from the search results, it’s a bad user experience.

Some site owners, out of frustration, list the individual URLs in the robots.txt file. They’re hoping that Google will take the hint and stop indexing them.

But this approach fails! If Google respects the robots.txt, it won’t crawl those pages. So Google will never see the 404 status and won’t find out that the pages are invalid.

How to Avoid This SEO Mistake The first part of the fix is to not disallow these URLs in robots.txt. You WANT the bots to crawl around and know what URLs should be dropped from the search index.

After that, set up a 301 redirect on the old URL. Send the visitor (and search engines) to the closest replacement page on the site. This takes care of your visitors whether they come from search or from a direct link.

SEO Fail #6: Missed Link Equity

I followed a link from a university website and was greeted with a 404 (not found) error.

This is not uncommon, except that the link was to /home.html — the site’s former homepage URL.

At some point, they must have changed their website architecture and deleted the old-style /home.html, losing the redirect in the shuffle.

Ironically, their 404 page says you can start over from the homepage, which is what I was trying to reach in the first place.

It’s a pretty safe bet that this site would love to have a nice link from a respected university going to their homepage. And accomplishing this is entirely within their control. They don’t even have to contact the linking site.

How to Fix This Fail To fix this link, they just need to put a 301 redirect pointing /home.html to the current homepage. (See our article on how to set up a 301 redirect for instructions.)

For extra credit, go to Google Search Console and review the Index Coverage Status Report. Look at all of the pages that are reported as returning a 404 error, and work on fixing as many errors here as possible.

SEO Fail #7: The Copy/Paste Fail

The site redesign launches, the canonical tags are in place, and the new Google Tag Manager is installed. Yet there are still ranking problems. In fact, one new landing page isn’t showing any visitors in Google Analytics.

The development team responds that they’ve done everything by the book and have followed the examples to the letter.

They are exactly right. They followed the examples — including leaving in the example code! After copying and pasting, the developers forgot to enter their own target site information.

Here are three examples our analysts have run across in website code:

<link rel=”canonical” href=”http://example.com/”>

‘analyticsAccountNumber’: ‘UA-123456-1’

_gaq.push([‘_setAccount’, ‘UA-000000-1’]);

How to Avoid This SEO Fail When things don’t work right, look beyond just “is this element in the source code?” It may be that the proper validation codes, account numbers and URLs were never specified in your HTML code.

Mistakes happen. People are only human. I hope that these examples will help you avoid similar SEO blunders of your own.

But some SEO issues are more complex than you think. If you have indexing problems, then we are here to help. Call us or fill out our request form and we’ll get in touch.

Like this post? Please subscribe to our blog to have new posts delivered to your inbox.

https://ift.tt/2Tvm7iF

[samiaedithg]

7 SEO Fails Seen in the Wild (And How You Can Avoid Them)

7 SEO Fails Seen in the Wild (And How You Can Avoid Them) was originally published on BruceClay.com, home of expert search engine optimization tips.

We often get questions from people wondering why their site isn’t ranking, or why it isn’t indexed by the search engines.

Recently, I’ve come across several sites with major errors that could be easily fixed, if only the owners knew to look. While some SEO mistakes are quite complex, here are a few of the often overlooked “head slamming” errors.

So check out these SEO blunders — and how you can avoid making them yourself.

SEO Fail #1: Robots.txt Problems

The robots.txt file has a lot of power. It instructs search engine bots what to exclude from their indexes.

In the past, I’ve seen sites forget to remove one single line of code from that file after a site redesign, and sink their entire site in the search results.

So when a flower site highlighted a problem, I started with one of the first checks I always do on a site — look at the robots.txt file.

I wanted to know whether the site’s robots.txt was blocking the search engines from indexing their content. But instead of the expected text file, I saw a page offering to deliver flowers to Robots.Txt.

The site had no robots.txt, which is the first thing a bot looks for when crawling a site. That was their first mistake. But to take that file as a destination … really?

SEO Fail #2: Autogeneration Gone Wild

Secondly, the site was automatically generating nonsense content. It would probably deliver to Santa Claus or whatever text I put in the URL.

I ran a Check Server Page tool to see what status the autogenerated page was showing. If it was a 404 (not found), then bots would ignore the page as they should. However, the page’s server header gave a 200 (OK) status. As a result, the fake pages were giving the search engines a green light to be indexed.

Search engines want to see unique and meaningful content per page. So indexing these non-pages could hurt their SEO.

SEO Fail #3: Canonical Errors

Next, I checked to see what the search engines thought of this site. Could they crawl and index the pages?

Looking at the source code of various pages, I noticed another major error.

Every single page had a canonical link element pointing back to the homepage:

<link rel=”canonical” href=”https://www.domain.com/” />

In other words, search engines were being told that every page was actually a copy of the homepage. Based on this tag, the bots should ignore the rest of the pages on that domain.

Fortunately, Google is smart enough to figure out when these tags are likely used in error. So it was still indexing some of the site’s pages. But that universal canonical request was not helping the site’s SEO.

How to Avoid These SEO Fails For the flower site’s multiple mistakes, here are the fixes:

Have a valid robots.txt file to tell search engines how to crawl and index the site. Even if it’s a blank file, it should exist at the root of your domain.

Generate a proper canonical link element for each page. And don’t point away from a page you want indexed.

Display a custom 404 page when a page URL doesn’t exist. Make sure it returns a 404 server code to give the search engines a clear message.

Be careful with autogenerated pages. Avoid producing nonsense or duplicate pages for search engines and users.

Even if you’re not experiencing a site problem, these are good points to review periodically, just to be on the safe side.

Oh, and never put a canonical tag on your 404 page, especially pointing to your homepage … just don’t.

SEO Fail #4: Overnight Rankings Freefall

Sometimes a simple change can be a costly mistake. This story comes from an experience with one of our SEO clients.

When the .org extension of their domain name became available, they scooped it up. So far, so good. But their next move led to disaster.

They immediately set up a 301 redirect pointing the newly acquired .org to their main .com website. Their reasoning made sense — to capture wayward visitors who might type in the wrong extension.

But the next day, they called us, frantic. Their site traffic was nonexistent. They had no idea why.

A few quick checks revealed that their search rankings had disappeared from Google overnight. It didn’t take too much Q&A to figure out what had happened.

They put the redirect in place without considering the risk. We did some digging and discovered that the .org had a sordid past.

The previous owner of the .org site had used it for spam. With the redirect, Google was assigning all of that poison to the company’s main site! It took us only two days to restore the site’s standing in Google.

How to Avoid This SEO Fail Always research the link profile and history of any domain name you register.

A qualified SEO consultant can do this. There are also tools you can run to see what skeletons may be lying in the site’s closet.

Whenever I pick up a new domain, I like to let it lie dormant for six months to a year at least before trying to make anything of it. I want the search engines to clearly differentiate my site’s new incarnation from its past life. It’s an extra precaution to protect your investment.

SEO Fail #5: Pages That Won’t Go Away

Sometimes sites can have a different problem — too many pages in the search index.

Search engines sometimes retain pages that are no longer valid. If people land on error pages when they come from the search results, it’s a bad user experience.

Some site owners, out of frustration, list the individual URLs in the robots.txt file. They’re hoping that Google will take the hint and stop indexing them.

But this approach fails! If Google respects the robots.txt, it won’t crawl those pages. So Google will never see the 404 status and won’t find out that the pages are invalid.

How to Avoid This SEO Mistake The first part of the fix is to not disallow these URLs in robots.txt. You WANT the bots to crawl around and know what URLs should be dropped from the search index.

After that, set up a 301 redirect on the old URL. Send the visitor (and search engines) to the closest replacement page on the site. This takes care of your visitors whether they come from search or from a direct link.

SEO Fail #6: Missed Link Equity

I followed a link from a university website and was greeted with a 404 (not found) error.

This is not uncommon, except that the link was to /home.html — the site’s former homepage URL.

At some point, they must have changed their website architecture and deleted the old-style /home.html, losing the redirect in the shuffle.

Ironically, their 404 page says you can start over from the homepage, which is what I was trying to reach in the first place.

It’s a pretty safe bet that this site would love to have a nice link from a respected university going to their homepage. And accomplishing this is entirely within their control. They don’t even have to contact the linking site.

How to Fix This Fail To fix this link, they just need to put a 301 redirect pointing /home.html to the current homepage. (See our article on how to set up a 301 redirect for instructions.)

For extra credit, go to Google Search Console and review the Index Coverage Status Report. Look at all of the pages that are reported as returning a 404 error, and work on fixing as many errors here as possible.

SEO Fail #7: The Copy/Paste Fail

The site redesign launches, the canonical tags are in place, and the new Google Tag Manager is installed. Yet there are still ranking problems. In fact, one new landing page isn’t showing any visitors in Google Analytics.

The development team responds that they’ve done everything by the book and have followed the examples to the letter.

They are exactly right. They followed the examples — including leaving in the example code! After copying and pasting, the developers forgot to enter their own target site information.

Here are three examples our analysts have run across in website code:

<link rel=”canonical” href=”http://example.com/”>

‘analyticsAccountNumber’: ‘UA-123456-1’

_gaq.push([‘_setAccount’, ‘UA-000000-1’]);

How to Avoid This SEO Fail When things don’t work right, look beyond just “is this element in the source code?” It may be that the proper validation codes, account numbers and URLs were never specified in your HTML code.

Mistakes happen. People are only human. I hope that these examples will help you avoid similar SEO blunders of your own.

But some SEO issues are more complex than you think. If you have indexing problems, then we are here to help. Call us or fill out our request form and we’ll get in touch.

Like this post? Please subscribe to our blog to have new posts delivered to your inbox.

https://ift.tt/2Tvm7iF

[rodriguezthas]

7 SEO Fails Seen in the Wild (And How You Can Avoid Them)

7 SEO Fails Seen in the Wild (And How You Can Avoid Them) was originally published on BruceClay.com, home of expert search engine optimization tips.

We often get questions from people wondering why their site isn’t ranking, or why it isn’t indexed by the search engines.

Recently, I’ve come across several sites with major errors that could be easily fixed, if only the owners knew to look. While some SEO mistakes are quite complex, here are a few of the often overlooked “head slamming” errors.

So check out these SEO blunders — and how you can avoid making them yourself.

SEO Fail #1: Robots.txt Problems

The robots.txt file has a lot of power. It instructs search engine bots what to exclude from their indexes.

In the past, I’ve seen sites forget to remove one single line of code from that file after a site redesign, and sink their entire site in the search results.

So when a flower site highlighted a problem, I started with one of the first checks I always do on a site — look at the robots.txt file.

I wanted to know whether the site’s robots.txt was blocking the search engines from indexing their content. But instead of the expected text file, I saw a page offering to deliver flowers to Robots.Txt.

The site had no robots.txt, which is the first thing a bot looks for when crawling a site. That was their first mistake. But to take that file as a destination … really?

SEO Fail #2: Autogeneration Gone Wild

Secondly, the site was automatically generating nonsense content. It would probably deliver to Santa Claus or whatever text I put in the URL.

I ran a Check Server Page tool to see what status the autogenerated page was showing. If it was a 404 (not found), then bots would ignore the page as they should. However, the page’s server header gave a 200 (OK) status. As a result, the fake pages were giving the search engines a green light to be indexed.

Search engines want to see unique and meaningful content per page. So indexing these non-pages could hurt their SEO.

SEO Fail #3: Canonical Errors

Next, I checked to see what the search engines thought of this site. Could they crawl and index the pages?

Looking at the source code of various pages, I noticed another major error.

Every single page had a canonical link element pointing back to the homepage:

<link rel=”canonical” href=”https://www.domain.com/” />

In other words, search engines were being told that every page was actually a copy of the homepage. Based on this tag, the bots should ignore the rest of the pages on that domain.

Fortunately, Google is smart enough to figure out when these tags are likely used in error. So it was still indexing some of the site’s pages. But that universal canonical request was not helping the site’s SEO.

How to Avoid These SEO Fails For the flower site’s multiple mistakes, here are the fixes:

Have a valid robots.txt file to tell search engines how to crawl and index the site. Even if it’s a blank file, it should exist at the root of your domain.

Generate a proper canonical link element for each page. And don’t point away from a page you want indexed.

Display a custom 404 page when a page URL doesn’t exist. Make sure it returns a 404 server code to give the search engines a clear message.

Be careful with autogenerated pages. Avoid producing nonsense or duplicate pages for search engines and users.

Even if you’re not experiencing a site problem, these are good points to review periodically, just to be on the safe side.

Oh, and never put a canonical tag on your 404 page, especially pointing to your homepage … just don’t.

SEO Fail #4: Overnight Rankings Freefall

Sometimes a simple change can be a costly mistake. This story comes from an experience with one of our SEO clients.

When the .org extension of their domain name became available, they scooped it up. So far, so good. But their next move led to disaster.

They immediately set up a 301 redirect pointing the newly acquired .org to their main .com website. Their reasoning made sense — to capture wayward visitors who might type in the wrong extension.

But the next day, they called us, frantic. Their site traffic was nonexistent. They had no idea why.

A few quick checks revealed that their search rankings had disappeared from Google overnight. It didn’t take too much Q&A to figure out what had happened.

They put the redirect in place without considering the risk. We did some digging and discovered that the .org had a sordid past.

The previous owner of the .org site had used it for spam. With the redirect, Google was assigning all of that poison to the company’s main site! It took us only two days to restore the site’s standing in Google.

How to Avoid This SEO Fail Always research the link profile and history of any domain name you register.

A qualified SEO consultant can do this. There are also tools you can run to see what skeletons may be lying in the site’s closet.

Whenever I pick up a new domain, I like to let it lie dormant for six months to a year at least before trying to make anything of it. I want the search engines to clearly differentiate my site’s new incarnation from its past life. It’s an extra precaution to protect your investment.

SEO Fail #5: Pages That Won’t Go Away

Sometimes sites can have a different problem — too many pages in the search index.

Search engines sometimes retain pages that are no longer valid. If people land on error pages when they come from the search results, it’s a bad user experience.

Some site owners, out of frustration, list the individual URLs in the robots.txt file. They’re hoping that Google will take the hint and stop indexing them.

But this approach fails! If Google respects the robots.txt, it won’t crawl those pages. So Google will never see the 404 status and won’t find out that the pages are invalid.

How to Avoid This SEO Mistake The first part of the fix is to not disallow these URLs in robots.txt. You WANT the bots to crawl around and know what URLs should be dropped from the search index.

After that, set up a 301 redirect on the old URL. Send the visitor (and search engines) to the closest replacement page on the site. This takes care of your visitors whether they come from search or from a direct link.

SEO Fail #6: Missed Link Equity

I followed a link from a university website and was greeted with a 404 (not found) error.

This is not uncommon, except that the link was to /home.html — the site’s former homepage URL.

At some point, they must have changed their website architecture and deleted the old-style /home.html, losing the redirect in the shuffle.

Ironically, their 404 page says you can start over from the homepage, which is what I was trying to reach in the first place.

It’s a pretty safe bet that this site would love to have a nice link from a respected university going to their homepage. And accomplishing this is entirely within their control. They don’t even have to contact the linking site.

How to Fix This Fail To fix this link, they just need to put a 301 redirect pointing /home.html to the current homepage. (See our article on how to set up a 301 redirect for instructions.)

For extra credit, go to Google Search Console and review the Index Coverage Status Report. Look at all of the pages that are reported as returning a 404 error, and work on fixing as many errors here as possible.

SEO Fail #7: The Copy/Paste Fail

The site redesign launches, the canonical tags are in place, and the new Google Tag Manager is installed. Yet there are still ranking problems. In fact, one new landing page isn’t showing any visitors in Google Analytics.

The development team responds that they’ve done everything by the book and have followed the examples to the letter.

They are exactly right. They followed the examples — including leaving in the example code! After copying and pasting, the developers forgot to enter their own target site information.

Here are three examples our analysts have run across in website code:

<link rel=”canonical” href=”http://example.com/”>

‘analyticsAccountNumber’: ‘UA-123456-1’

_gaq.push([‘_setAccount’, ‘UA-000000-1’]);

How to Avoid This SEO Fail When things don’t work right, look beyond just “is this element in the source code?” It may be that the proper validation codes, account numbers and URLs were never specified in your HTML code.

Mistakes happen. People are only human. I hope that these examples will help you avoid similar SEO blunders of your own.

But some SEO issues are more complex than you think. If you have indexing problems, then we are here to help. Call us or fill out our request form and we’ll get in touch.

Like this post? Please subscribe to our blog to have new posts delivered to your inbox.

https://ift.tt/2Tvm7iF

[elenaturnerge]

7 SEO Fails Seen in the Wild (And How You Can Avoid Them)

7 SEO Fails Seen in the Wild (And How You Can Avoid Them) was originally published on BruceClay.com, home of expert search engine optimization tips.

We often get questions from people wondering why their site isn’t ranking, or why it isn’t indexed by the search engines.

Recently, I’ve come across several sites with major errors that could be easily fixed, if only the owners knew to look. While some SEO mistakes are quite complex, here are a few of the often overlooked “head slamming” errors.

So check out these SEO blunders — and how you can avoid making them yourself.

SEO Fail #1: Robots.txt Problems

The robots.txt file has a lot of power. It instructs search engine bots what to exclude from their indexes.

In the past, I’ve seen sites forget to remove one single line of code from that file after a site redesign, and sink their entire site in the search results.

So when a flower site highlighted a problem, I started with one of the first checks I always do on a site — look at the robots.txt file.

I wanted to know whether the site’s robots.txt was blocking the search engines from indexing their content. But instead of the expected text file, I saw a page offering to deliver flowers to Robots.Txt.

The site had no robots.txt, which is the first thing a bot looks for when crawling a site. That was their first mistake. But to take that file as a destination … really?

SEO Fail #2: Autogeneration Gone Wild

Secondly, the site was automatically generating nonsense content. It would probably deliver to Santa Claus or whatever text I put in the URL.

I ran a Check Server Page tool to see what status the autogenerated page was showing. If it was a 404 (not found), then bots would ignore the page as they should. However, the page’s server header gave a 200 (OK) status. As a result, the fake pages were giving the search engines a green light to be indexed.

Search engines want to see unique and meaningful content per page. So indexing these non-pages could hurt their SEO.

SEO Fail #3: Canonical Errors

Next, I checked to see what the search engines thought of this site. Could they crawl and index the pages?

Looking at the source code of various pages, I noticed another major error.

Every single page had a canonical link element pointing back to the homepage:

<link rel=”canonical” href=”https://www.domain.com/” />

In other words, search engines were being told that every page was actually a copy of the homepage. Based on this tag, the bots should ignore the rest of the pages on that domain.

Fortunately, Google is smart enough to figure out when these tags are likely used in error. So it was still indexing some of the site’s pages. But that universal canonical request was not helping the site’s SEO.

How to Avoid These SEO Fails For the flower site’s multiple mistakes, here are the fixes:

Have a valid robots.txt file to tell search engines how to crawl and index the site. Even if it’s a blank file, it should exist at the root of your domain.

Generate a proper canonical link element for each page. And don’t point away from a page you want indexed.

Display a custom 404 page when a page URL doesn’t exist. Make sure it returns a 404 server code to give the search engines a clear message.

Be careful with autogenerated pages. Avoid producing nonsense or duplicate pages for search engines and users.

Even if you’re not experiencing a site problem, these are good points to review periodically, just to be on the safe side.

Oh, and never put a canonical tag on your 404 page, especially pointing to your homepage … just don’t.

SEO Fail #4: Overnight Rankings Freefall

Sometimes a simple change can be a costly mistake. This story comes from an experience with one of our SEO clients.

When the .org extension of their domain name became available, they scooped it up. So far, so good. But their next move led to disaster.

They immediately set up a 301 redirect pointing the newly acquired .org to their main .com website. Their reasoning made sense — to capture wayward visitors who might type in the wrong extension.

But the next day, they called us, frantic. Their site traffic was nonexistent. They had no idea why.

A few quick checks revealed that their search rankings had disappeared from Google overnight. It didn’t take too much Q&A to figure out what had happened.

They put the redirect in place without considering the risk. We did some digging and discovered that the .org had a sordid past.

The previous owner of the .org site had used it for spam. With the redirect, Google was assigning all of that poison to the company’s main site! It took us only two days to restore the site’s standing in Google.

How to Avoid This SEO Fail Always research the link profile and history of any domain name you register.

A qualified SEO consultant can do this. There are also tools you can run to see what skeletons may be lying in the site’s closet.

Whenever I pick up a new domain, I like to let it lie dormant for six months to a year at least before trying to make anything of it. I want the search engines to clearly differentiate my site’s new incarnation from its past life. It’s an extra precaution to protect your investment.

SEO Fail #5: Pages That Won’t Go Away

Sometimes sites can have a different problem — too many pages in the search index.

Search engines sometimes retain pages that are no longer valid. If people land on error pages when they come from the search results, it’s a bad user experience.

Some site owners, out of frustration, list the individual URLs in the robots.txt file. They’re hoping that Google will take the hint and stop indexing them.

But this approach fails! If Google respects the robots.txt, it won’t crawl those pages. So Google will never see the 404 status and won’t find out that the pages are invalid.

How to Avoid This SEO Mistake The first part of the fix is to not disallow these URLs in robots.txt. You WANT the bots to crawl around and know what URLs should be dropped from the search index.

After that, set up a 301 redirect on the old URL. Send the visitor (and search engines) to the closest replacement page on the site. This takes care of your visitors whether they come from search or from a direct link.

SEO Fail #6: Missed Link Equity

I followed a link from a university website and was greeted with a 404 (not found) error.

This is not uncommon, except that the link was to /home.html — the site’s former homepage URL.

At some point, they must have changed their website architecture and deleted the old-style /home.html, losing the redirect in the shuffle.

Ironically, their 404 page says you can start over from the homepage, which is what I was trying to reach in the first place.

It’s a pretty safe bet that this site would love to have a nice link from a respected university going to their homepage. And accomplishing this is entirely within their control. They don’t even have to contact the linking site.

How to Fix This Fail To fix this link, they just need to put a 301 redirect pointing /home.html to the current homepage. (See our article on how to set up a 301 redirect for instructions.)

For extra credit, go to Google Search Console and review the Index Coverage Status Report. Look at all of the pages that are reported as returning a 404 error, and work on fixing as many errors here as possible.

SEO Fail #7: The Copy/Paste Fail

The site redesign launches, the canonical tags are in place, and the new Google Tag Manager is installed. Yet there are still ranking problems. In fact, one new landing page isn’t showing any visitors in Google Analytics.

The development team responds that they’ve done everything by the book and have followed the examples to the letter.

They are exactly right. They followed the examples — including leaving in the example code! After copying and pasting, the developers forgot to enter their own target site information.

Here are three examples our analysts have run across in website code:

<link rel=”canonical” href=”http://example.com/”>

‘analyticsAccountNumber’: ‘UA-123456-1’

_gaq.push([‘_setAccount’, ‘UA-000000-1’]);

How to Avoid This SEO Fail When things don’t work right, look beyond just “is this element in the source code?” It may be that the proper validation codes, account numbers and URLs were never specified in your HTML code.

Mistakes happen. People are only human. I hope that these examples will help you avoid similar SEO blunders of your own.

But some SEO issues are more complex than you think. If you have indexing problems, then we are here to help. Call us or fill out our request form and we’ll get in touch.

Like this post? Please subscribe to our blog to have new posts delivered to your inbox.

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[mariathaterh]

7 SEO Fails Seen in the Wild (And How You Can Avoid Them)

7 SEO Fails Seen in the Wild (And How You Can Avoid Them) was originally published on BruceClay.com, home of expert search engine optimization tips.

We often get questions from people wondering why their site isn’t ranking, or why it isn’t indexed by the search engines.

Recently, I’ve come across several sites with major errors that could be easily fixed, if only the owners knew to look. While some SEO mistakes are quite complex, here are a few of the often overlooked “head slamming” errors.

So check out these SEO blunders — and how you can avoid making them yourself.

SEO Fail #1: Robots.txt Problems

The robots.txt file has a lot of power. It instructs search engine bots what to exclude from their indexes.

In the past, I’ve seen sites forget to remove one single line of code from that file after a site redesign, and sink their entire site in the search results.

So when a flower site highlighted a problem, I started with one of the first checks I always do on a site — look at the robots.txt file.

I wanted to know whether the site’s robots.txt was blocking the search engines from indexing their content. But instead of the expected text file, I saw a page offering to deliver flowers to Robots.Txt.

The site had no robots.txt, which is the first thing a bot looks for when crawling a site. That was their first mistake. But to take that file as a destination … really?

SEO Fail #2: Autogeneration Gone Wild

Secondly, the site was automatically generating nonsense content. It would probably deliver to Santa Claus or whatever text I put in the URL.

I ran a Check Server Page tool to see what status the autogenerated page was showing. If it was a 404 (not found), then bots would ignore the page as they should. However, the page’s server header gave a 200 (OK) status. As a result, the fake pages were giving the search engines a green light to be indexed.

Search engines want to see unique and meaningful content per page. So indexing these non-pages could hurt their SEO.

SEO Fail #3: Canonical Errors

Next, I checked to see what the search engines thought of this site. Could they crawl and index the pages?

Looking at the source code of various pages, I noticed another major error.

Every single page had a canonical link element pointing back to the homepage:

<link rel=”canonical” href=”https://www.domain.com/” />

In other words, search engines were being told that every page was actually a copy of the homepage. Based on this tag, the bots should ignore the rest of the pages on that domain.

Fortunately, Google is smart enough to figure out when these tags are likely used in error. So it was still indexing some of the site’s pages. But that universal canonical request was not helping the site’s SEO.

How to Avoid These SEO Fails For the flower site’s multiple mistakes, here are the fixes:

Have a valid robots.txt file to tell search engines how to crawl and index the site. Even if it’s a blank file, it should exist at the root of your domain.

Generate a proper canonical link element for each page. And don’t point away from a page you want indexed.

Display a custom 404 page when a page URL doesn’t exist. Make sure it returns a 404 server code to give the search engines a clear message.

Be careful with autogenerated pages. Avoid producing nonsense or duplicate pages for search engines and users.

Even if you’re not experiencing a site problem, these are good points to review periodically, just to be on the safe side.

Oh, and never put a canonical tag on your 404 page, especially pointing to your homepage … just don’t.

SEO Fail #4: Overnight Rankings Freefall

Sometimes a simple change can be a costly mistake. This story comes from an experience with one of our SEO clients.

When the .org extension of their domain name became available, they scooped it up. So far, so good. But their next move led to disaster.

They immediately set up a 301 redirect pointing the newly acquired .org to their main .com website. Their reasoning made sense — to capture wayward visitors who might type in the wrong extension.

But the next day, they called us, frantic. Their site traffic was nonexistent. They had no idea why.

A few quick checks revealed that their search rankings had disappeared from Google overnight. It didn’t take too much Q&A to figure out what had happened.

They put the redirect in place without considering the risk. We did some digging and discovered that the .org had a sordid past.

The previous owner of the .org site had used it for spam. With the redirect, Google was assigning all of that poison to the company’s main site! It took us only two days to restore the site’s standing in Google.

How to Avoid This SEO Fail Always research the link profile and history of any domain name you register.

A qualified SEO consultant can do this. There are also tools you can run to see what skeletons may be lying in the site’s closet.

Whenever I pick up a new domain, I like to let it lie dormant for six months to a year at least before trying to make anything of it. I want the search engines to clearly differentiate my site’s new incarnation from its past life. It’s an extra precaution to protect your investment.

SEO Fail #5: Pages That Won’t Go Away

Sometimes sites can have a different problem — too many pages in the search index.

Search engines sometimes retain pages that are no longer valid. If people land on error pages when they come from the search results, it’s a bad user experience.

Some site owners, out of frustration, list the individual URLs in the robots.txt file. They’re hoping that Google will take the hint and stop indexing them.

But this approach fails! If Google respects the robots.txt, it won’t crawl those pages. So Google will never see the 404 status and won’t find out that the pages are invalid.

How to Avoid This SEO Mistake The first part of the fix is to not disallow these URLs in robots.txt. You WANT the bots to crawl around and know what URLs should be dropped from the search index.

After that, set up a 301 redirect on the old URL. Send the visitor (and search engines) to the closest replacement page on the site. This takes care of your visitors whether they come from search or from a direct link.

SEO Fail #6: Missed Link Equity

I followed a link from a university website and was greeted with a 404 (not found) error.

This is not uncommon, except that the link was to /home.html — the site’s former homepage URL.

At some point, they must have changed their website architecture and deleted the old-style /home.html, losing the redirect in the shuffle.

Ironically, their 404 page says you can start over from the homepage, which is what I was trying to reach in the first place.

It’s a pretty safe bet that this site would love to have a nice link from a respected university going to their homepage. And accomplishing this is entirely within their control. They don’t even have to contact the linking site.

How to Fix This Fail To fix this link, they just need to put a 301 redirect pointing /home.html to the current homepage. (See our article on how to set up a 301 redirect for instructions.)

For extra credit, go to Google Search Console and review the Index Coverage Status Report. Look at all of the pages that are reported as returning a 404 error, and work on fixing as many errors here as possible.

SEO Fail #7: The Copy/Paste Fail

The site redesign launches, the canonical tags are in place, and the new Google Tag Manager is installed. Yet there are still ranking problems. In fact, one new landing page isn’t showing any visitors in Google Analytics.

The development team responds that they’ve done everything by the book and have followed the examples to the letter.

They are exactly right. They followed the examples — including leaving in the example code! After copying and pasting, the developers forgot to enter their own target site information.

Here are three examples our analysts have run across in website code:

<link rel=”canonical” href=”http://example.com/”>

‘analyticsAccountNumber’: ‘UA-123456-1’

_gaq.push([‘_setAccount’, ‘UA-000000-1’]);

How to Avoid This SEO Fail When things don’t work right, look beyond just “is this element in the source code?” It may be that the proper validation codes, account numbers and URLs were never specified in your HTML code.

Mistakes happen. People are only human. I hope that these examples will help you avoid similar SEO blunders of your own.

But some SEO issues are more complex than you think. If you have indexing problems, then we are here to help. Call us or fill out our request form and we’ll get in touch.

Like this post? Please subscribe to our blog to have new posts delivered to your inbox.

https://ift.tt/2Tvm7iF