Slashdot Mirror
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."
Javalobby? Another slashvertisement ...
They're on the Slashdot front page, I don't think they'll mind being off Google for a little while.
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.
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.
Dude. Slashdot is the last place I'd want to advertise. Their site will be down in minutes (what with being on the front page, and the article unabbreviated).
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
If you would have tried doing even a little research, you would have found out that Google penalizes hacked sites and even makes an attempt to contact the webmaster to alert them to the problem. Not only that, they'll relist you if you remove the spam.
1. Fail to follow even basic internet precautions standard since 1998
2. Whine loudly on Slashdot when search engine behaves as advertised
3. Get lots of new traffic
4. Profit
Dekker Dreyer
I had a similar, but opposite experience. I started setting up Yet Another Job Site, but I never got around to making it useful (see Click. Hired!). Google decided that it sort of liked it for a while, sending some traffic my way. I went from making nothing on my google ads to a few bucks a day. It wasn't much money, but it was fun seeing the traffic come in. Then google decided it was the crappy site that it was and my traffic went back to its deserved trickle. I wrote an article about it with pretty graphs:
:)
What Google Giveth, Google Can Taketh Away
I should have submitted it for a slashvertisement.
Join the club, Alex Chiu has been blacklisted by Google for years.
http://www.alexchiu.com/spread.htm
A choice quote:
"Google controls 50% of the world's searches. This famous website is so controversial that it has been banned by the most popular search engine in the world 'Google'. That's right. You cannot find alexchiu.com in Google system. Some very important people don't want you to know about Alex Chiu. Alex Chiu is on more than 30 TV interviews, 250 radio interviews, and in business ever since 1996. Yet AlexChiu.com cannot show up on Google?"
How many days after a site has been transformed by hijackers/forum spammers/whoever into a pile of crap should it come off the top of googles search results? A day? A week?
60 days but you can request reinclusion sooner with Google Webmaster tools