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Wow am I ever off to a late start today. It's 8.30 and I'm only just starting today's column. At least I've made it to the office but it's such a lovely day outside actually getting started on anything that's work related has been a bit hard.

Perhaps some of the biggest news of the last few days has been the complaints by a whole bunch of TGP owners who got whacked by Google. Overnight their top search engine listings disappeared and they couldn't understand why. It seems that adult webmaster boards have been full of posts about the changes and a few of those who got penalized even took their problems over to Google's help forums to try and find an answer. It's even been mentioned on a few mainstream boards and SEO news sites as well.

Of course losing those top listings has meant that most of those who have been affected have seen a drop in revenue too and that has got to hurt. Obviously it has been that pain that has caused the people who have been affected to run around in every decreasing circles while they try to discover what had caused that drop in rankings.

As you would expect, those who went over to the Google help forums didn't get much sympathy from those fine upstanding mainstream webmasters who are more pure than the driven snow. You know the type ... they would never admit to looking at porn but you can almost guarantee that they do. The Google help forum experts didn't seem to be much help either because what advice they did give seemed to revolve around the penalized sites having an unnatural linking profiles.

Ultimately though all that worrying, running in ever decreasing circles and all that 'good' advice about linking came to nothing. Today those sites that had been penalized have started to regain their top rankings and the revenue is flowing again. And right there are two major lessons for everyone who relies on search engine traffic for their income.

Don't rely totally on the search engines for your income
The first lesson 'don't' lesson is simple ... and it should have been learned long ago because these shifts in rankings happen often ... just don't! Don't ever put all your eggs in the one basket ... don't ever rely on search engine traffic for your income because a minor change in one search engine's algorithm could see your sites go into free fall from the first page of the search results.

There are just no guarantees that you will always stay there on the first page for Google, Bing or Yahoo! so don't rely on that search engine traffic. Diversify your income streams so that you are not totally reliant on the search engines.

Build a linking profile that is based on traffic rather than any perception of page rank. Reach out beyond whatever industry or niche you might be in and look for links out there in the wider world.

Be prepared to engage in some PPC marketing too. Even if you don't do it just yet learn the basics, gain an understanding of how it works and keep a little financial reserve aside for that day when your organic listings begin to slide.

Look for other ways of advertising your websites or your products too. I've talked about print advertising before and that's not such a dumb idea ... even for adult products. There are still hard-copy magazines out there that cater for the adult market and they include advertising so look around to see which ones cater for the niches you're working in.

Above all, diversify and don't let the search engines have total control of whether you succeed or fail.

Don't panic
The second 'don't' lesson to be learned from what has just happened is don't panic! Google is continually updating its algorithm and fluctuations in search engine ranking are very common. Even major changes in rankings are quite common and sites can disappear into the depths of the search results for days ... but in many cases they come back after a week or two.

Now I know that when your revenue takes a dive because your sites have disappeared the very first thing you want to do is find out why and then make wholesale changes to fix the problem but that's the worst thing to do. There's a very good chance that your sites will come back to the top of the search engine rankings if you just leave them alone.

If you go looking for what you might think has caused the problem and then try to correct the situation by fiddling with your pages they may never come back. So when your sites sink out of sight take a deep breath ... take a cold shower ... take a holiday for a day or two ... and just stay calm.

Give the search engines some time to correct whatever the hiccup was that the algorithm changes might have caused. If you're site's rankings don't come back then it's time to make some changes but be methodical about making those changes ... don't do it in a blind panic.

If you can learn those two 'don't' lessons from what has happened in the last few days you're going to be well on your way to staying in control of your business rather than being one of those who meekly hands control of their business to the search engines and suffer because of minor changes.