One of the sadder parts of covering Google updates is to see the fallout it has on good, honest, family-oriented people.
A WebmasterWorld thread has member Saffron joining the conversation stating that he was incredibly close to suicide when his site was hit slowly by the various Google updates.
He spoke about how close he came to taking his own life but the reasons he did not:
I can say that what happened to me this year with Google came close to suicide. I faced financial ruin. The only thing stopping me was not wanting to dump all of this onto my partner and leave my children. But there were many times I just wished I was gone. I could not cope with the desperation of not being able to pay our bills. It was horrendous. I am sorry if that breaks yet more rules or is unpalatable, but it is how it was.
He still feels he did nothing wrong and provided a good service:
I honestly believe I was just collateral damage. I had never engaged in anything dodgy on my site. My competitors were wiped out too. They just turned up the dial on a couple of "brand" sites & the rest of us lost out. The consequences were devastating.
I believe him.
But he does offer a ray of hope. That after years and years of being in this dark place, he did find another job, all while his site began creeping up again and earning some more money.
One thing, he will never totally depend on Google organic results and AdSense for income. He said:
I am sorry to anybody else who has been hit. I can say that for me, there has been a light at the end of the tunnel, and Google seem to like me again. Not so much with my competitors though. I still see them nowhere.
This is not new. Google's Penguin update led many to the same suicidal thoughts and so did AdWords advertisers who wanted to get Google's attention.
Just so sad to see this come up so often.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
This post was written earlier this week and scheduled to be posted today.
Image credit to BigStockPhoto for poison bottle
