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When Your Site Ceases To Exist

Posted by kdawson on from the without-a-trace dept.

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."

3 of 191 comments (clear)

  1. Never heard of them before, so nothings' changed by tomhudson · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Javalobby? Another slashvertisement ...

  2. It's their own fault... by Codename46 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If they could have implemented one layer of security or verification to prevent spambots from registering (similar to phpBB or vBulletin), they would have prevented all this. But they didn't. There is no image verification on their forum registration page. All it takes is a spammer with a source of disposable e-mails such as dodgeit.com to spam your page to hell.

  3. Re:Maybe... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Maybe you should RTFA - they're not relying on Google for "advertising"
    Maybe you should RTFA - they DO actively monitor their forums. They deleted the messages very quickly - but too late, because Googlebot beat them to it.
    Maybe you should RTFA - they DO have a site that people care about and frequently visit. But they want people searching for solutions that appear in their FORUMS to find those postings via search engines.