The Web seems to be in some sort of an to search results. The so-called "war on content farms", is really just business as usual, though. It is not the first time that , and it won't be the last.

Trust me. I have been a slave to the searches for about eight years now. Ever since I began writing as the About.com guide for Internet and Network Security, I have been compensated at least in part based on the amount of traffic generated by my writing. And, at least once a year during those eight years there has been some sort of change or update to the Google algorithm which has led to plummeting traffic...at least for a while.

There didn't seem to be nearly the backlash or outcry a couple months ago when Google tweaked the algorithm to . Apparently, it is OK to filter out businesses that try to game the system with negative feedback, but it is not OK to filter out websites that try to game the system with repetitive content that doesn't provide any unique value for Google users.

In the last quarter of last year, my traffic plunged to a fraction of what it had been. My PCWorld posts--which generally get indexed by Google News and garner at least some attention on the --were virtually non-existent to Google. Various parties worked diligently to try and identify the root cause and make corrections, but nothing seemed to work.

It got to the point where I began to craft conspiracy theories that Google had somehow black-balled me because I . Thankfully, an issue was finally identified and resolved before I graduated to full-on tinfoil hat status. Now my posts are no longer invisible to Google.