GoonBlog.com: Benched, Traded or Just Lacing Back Up?

The history of our website, Goonblog.com, is a long and sordid yarn.

Also “storied“, possibly “alcohol-fueled“. And I have to assume a lot of material hasn’t “aged well“.

(Laughing as I write this because I just imagined Bennett Brauer reading those first sentences).

Admittedly… it’s been inconsistent.

So – let’s address the fact we’ve obviously lost some posting momentum this season.

And run through our history. And nobody has a gun to your head if you’d rather be watching Slapshot.

A History of Hostility

Back in the site’s 2009-2011 heyday, we were hammered with (relevant/transactional) traffic on a daily basis. Major publications linked to us regularly. Google adored us, and we even got to the point where there was a trickle of advertising, t-shirt and affiliate revenue. Almost enough for a cup of coffee every month. Top of the world, ma.

We were doing a hockey podcast, remote hockey podcasts form Boston Garden, getting into fights at Boston Garden during remote hockey podcasts, interviewing NHL enforcers in person due to a growing perception of “rink cred” – and everything was ticking along nicely. But then, something happened.

Some of us had children, some of us moved away from North Station. And after the Bruins’ Stanley Cup win in 2011, that article about the rioting in Vancouver which was picked up by a dozen big outlets, the delightful smiting of the Sedin Sisters, and that torrid tale of Tim Thomas – some of us may have even thought, “Our work is done here“.

There was never a decision, it was never discussed, but we definitely did not pick things back up in 2012.

For the next 13 years, while we did keep renewing the domain name in hopes of a “someday” kinda comeback, the site was left unattended, un-updated, and was even significantly hacked by some little prick in Malaysia.

Now, I’ve been to Malaysia. They’re good people, Kota Kinabalu is beautiful beyond words, and Beef Rendang is one of the best things I’ve ever tasted. But he made the mistake of sending me an email once, asking for money to release the site from his clutches, and I got his IP address out of the header. So, yeah, a confirmed little Malaysian prick.

Said little prick kept the site up, but anyone who came through via a Google search was first served an advertising popup window, for fucking raincoats or something, and eventually Google caught on and banished Goonblog from their results, entirely.

In that sense, the slimy little beef rendang-eating bastard shot himself in the foot, which was fun to watch. But once we decided to reboot the site, it became our (almost) insurmountable problem.

A Return to Glory? Not Quite

After finally recovering control ahead of the 2023 season (at great effort and greater expense), we were reinvigorated. Back to form in terms of strategy and content creation. If you ever have to unfuck your site, I’ve got a guy.

Again – just a labor of love we all simultaneously realized we wanted back in our lives. Now that life’s dust had settled. A bit. There is always dust.

Out of the gate there was no shortage of things to discuss. While we lost our initial excitement about Milan’s return to Beantown, we gained the ridiculous rookie season of the Rempire State Building. Then year-over-year fight frequency was on the upswing, and I even finished my best hockey movies post which had been in various stages of production since 2008.

Throughout the 2023 and 2024 season, we published nearly 40 new posts. And they were good. Relevant, original, and sticking to our collective GoonBlog credo of: write what we’d want to read. But, despite our best efforts, we stayed working in a “vacuum”, and that tends to take the piss, Schlitz and vinegar out of anyone.

Get Over It, Google

More about the vacuum: Google couldn’t get past the fact we’d once been hacked (granted, for nearly a decade). As a result, to call our organic traffic a “trickle” after 24 months and so many gleaming posts on the new and improved, unhacked, site… would be an insult to trickles, everywhere.

We have Goonbloggers who have been involved in digital marketing, SEO, and getting traffic to sites for 40 years combined. The competency was enviable in that respect. But nothing we did made a difference. And it’s reasonable to say that stubborn vacuum led to this year’s lapse in enthusiasm and output.

It was a diabolical Dyson of a disadvantage (see what I did there?).

But then, one day in early December, after none of us had touched the site in 3 months, there was what can only be described as an algorithmic search engine sea change. We got an email from the hosting company telling us our monthly bandwidth limit had been exceeded.

It was like an angel singing “Return of the Mack” in our ear.

As said, GoonBlog has always been a labor of love. For a rotating cast of 2-4 high school friends, from the mean streets of Concord, Massachusetts. And we do love it. Still.

But a month previous there had been texts around whether to keep ‘er going – or throw in the towel for good. Google finally deciding to stop being a dickhole has been a blazing North Star in terms of the future of the site.

Let’s Go With “Lacing Back Up”

The recent realization that traffic levels are suddenly back up to (and some days exceeding) our 2011 heyday is looking like the kick in a pair of discouraged pants we desperately needed.

Considering all the first time visitors now coming through the doors, a status update after a few months off was needed. The proof will be in the pudding, but Goonblog is back (again), baby.