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Google De-indexes Talk.Origins, Won't Say Why UPDATED
J. J. Ramsey writes "Talk.Origins is an archive with thousands of pages exposing creationist pseudoscience. Rather mysteriously, Google pulled the plug on its search engine, giving only the vague reason: 'No pages from your site are currently included in Google's index due to violations of the webmaster guidelines.' This was apparently triggered by a recent cracking of the site that added 'hidden links to non-topical sites,' but Google won't say just what the violations were. Talk.Origins webmaster Wesley R. Elsberry believes that this Google policy harms honest webmasters." From the article: "My mission, whether I liked it or not, was to find and fix whatever problem the [Talk.Origins Archive] might have, with no guidance as to what the problem was and nothing at all about where to start looking... I was extremely lucky. The damage to my site was limited and in the first place that I happened to look. Other honest webmasters might not be so lucky. They may have to undertake an arduous process of vetting pages, essentially having to second-guess the mind of the cracker in trying to locate a problem that Google knows the exact location of." Thanks to an alert reader who sent in Matt's blog posting about how Google handles hacked sites.
That's the Google Groups archive of the talk.origins newsgroup, which is a different animal (an ancestral form, one might say) from the Talk.Origins Archive web site. It was the site that was delisted.
And indeed, as of right now (10:35 PM CST) a Google search for "talk.origins" doesn't show any links at all to the Talk.Origins Archive. In fact, the first link that comes up is to a young-Earth creationist site which claims to offer "intellectually honest responses to the claims of evolutionism's proponents, including--but not limited to--the 'Talk.Origins' newsgroup and the 'Talk.Origins Archive' website."
Conclusions about species competing in crowded niches are left as an exercise to the reader.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Except, of course, that "creationist" does not equal "Christian". Talk.origins exposes *all* creationist pseudoscience, from *all* sources.
www.kitchengeek.com -- Nosh for
Google have a set of http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/ tools for webmasters. essencially it give out every diagnostic needed to fix your site for Google. Additionaly you have statistics for searches and how GoogleBot see your site. So, you shouldn't blame until you googled for the answer! Searching for "Google index tool" shows up "Google Webmaster Central"...
This is a google cache of talkorgins.org showing the porn spam links.
However, I checked on deepx.com and it is *not* a porn site.
From DeepX.com's about page:
XML provides an open and flexible language for the creation, management and exchange of electronic content. Founded in 2000, deepX has an experienced team of consultants and developers, who specialise in the design and development of solutions using XML and the emerging technologies related to XML.
Also, another link shows www.theoi.com and it is *not* a porn site, either:
Here's how THEOI used to look via the Wayback machine.
Theoi.com has been banned by Google (no reason given) and forced to close down as a result. There are no plans to re-establish this site in the future.
wu.edu.gh is Valley View University is a Seventh Day Adventist college in Ghana.
Both deepx.com and wu.edu.gh redirect to porn sites.
Unsurprisingly, wu.edu.gh, theoi.com and deepx.com have been de-indexed by google.
I speculate that all these sites that have been de-indexed were tagged by automated processes.
These companies were all given special monopoly privileges by the force of government. They can run wires, pipes, and other items through your property without your consent, by law. They are required to provide service to all persons in their scope of operation by law. No such law exists regarding Google Inc. and they are not a utility.
This sig has not been evaluated by the FDA. It is not designed to diagnose, treat, prevent, or cure any disease.
If you dig deeper, it turns out that Google emailed talkorigins.org to alert the site that it had been hacked and was stuffed with rape and animal porn spam. Google's head of webspam has posted a full write-up.