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When Your Site Ceases To Exist
El Lobo writes with a sobering account of how Javalobby dropped off the face of Google last month. The site had been attacked by forum spammers and Google indexed some of their spew before the Javalobby guys could remove it. According to a post in Rich Skrenta's blog, Google is now the de-facto front page for the Internet, accounting for anywhere from 70% to 78% of the search market. The power this conveys is hard to overstate. From the Javalobby saga: "We had completely disappeared from Google's main index! If you run a website, then you know how serious a problem this is. On any given day over 10,000 visitors arrive at Javalobby as a result of Google searches, and suddenly they stopped coming! ... Suddenly we no longer existed in the eyes of Google."
Remember the days when one got word out on a web site based on sharing word of mouth, etc? Back to them.
Of course, the anti-spam crowd will say it is a good thing this disappeared because they weren't fast enough to do something about it. Kinda like Googles Real Time Black Hole.
(I don't share that opinion.)
It's as bad as concentration of wealth. I know a bunch of geeks that think Google is all sweetness and light (probably because EA returns their resumes unscanned.) Maybe they'll wake up from their narcosis now; they're worse than Apple fanboys.
And maybe you should drop the AC and admit your affiliation to javalobby, a garbage site of little value.
GP is correct.