Messin' with Google is Bad for your (website's) Health

I wouldn't say that it has allways proven to be bad for your website to stand up against Google in public. I have done that as well as many other SEOs and "industry people" such as Danny Sullivan. Many of us have never seen any direct damage from that and I doubt we will. Sure, one of my (spammy) sites can get booted, and off course I have tried that testing the limits but that has nothing to do with what I have said, and do say, about Google and their services in public.

Having said that, I fully understand why Google remove a website from it's index that describe how to hack the very same index. That should be logic to anyone. As you said, Nick, you would remove a post here too if it described how to hack your site - and so you should, off course! But from that to a general conclusion that "Messin' with Google is Bad for your (website's) Health" is to take it too far, in my opinion. I have messed a lot and so have others but we still have great ranking sites - even sites that promote our very own, and public, names.

[site:gregduffy.com] returns 582 results for me. I think you're making some assumptions here, Nick?

Not half an hour ago it didn't GG (maybe an hour) I tested it, the guys at K5 tested it, the guy who pinged me about it tested it...

Glad to see it back in the index :-)

If i've been told wrong on this, and reported it wrong, i'll change the story...

Lemme look at it

Here's the reason they think he's banned, and ive gotta say, it sure looks iffy..

1. Search for his site - Search for Threadwatch
2. Apparently, he was no.1 for his name, then dropped off the scope after the article went out: Search for Greg Duffy

What led me to assume they were right, was the first bullet point there. Usually the sign of a banned site right?

To me, it looks like the site was banned, though the pages remain in the index which is why a site:http://www.gregduffy.com still returns figures...

Correct me if im wrong of course...

For starters, "GregDuffy.com has now been removed from the Google index entirely" is false. We can take this discussion offline; I don't want to use the L word in public. ;)

Changed the wording, i'll email you..

Thread opened again, sorry about that - just closed it while i had my wrist slapped for being a bad blogger heh :-)

Have updated the original post. For the record, GoogleGuy was right in saying that I can't state that the site has been removed from the index. The language in the post now reflects that.

Phew, what a mess eh? Apparently this one will be looked into later in the day when GG gets to the office.

I'm happy to take a crawl/indexing question about a site and try to hunt down more info. I just don't want people beginning from an assumption like "it must have been removed!" or something like that.

Okay, I think I'll have energy to spare for biking into Google now..

Nick, the Google cloaking was a big catch - you've made it everywhere ... including "mainline" news sites. But, sorry mate, you screwed up on this one. Just take it offline, there doesn't seem to be any news here ;-)

With blogs and rss though, once it's out there, it's out there - the best you can do is post a correction - which i've done, aswell as take it off the homepage :)

Thanks Yes

If nothing else, it shows you that GG (whoever he may be!) reads the TW RSS feed first thing in the morning. One wonders if he did that a few weeks ago!

No doubt you had a chat with him about old times, how the wife and family were geting on in Denmark, and expressed the hope that we could benefit from his posts on a more regular basis in the future.

A stitch in time saves nine, and all that.

I talked to someone from our crawl group. Here's what he said:

"His site has been unreachable from time to time. The most common case
appears to be failure to resolve DNS for his site. The last time we
tried to crawl his homepage (and many other pages on his site) was on
the 6th of March and were unable to get access on multiple
tries. Since we are unable to get his homepage, we were unable to
determine outgoing links and gradually lost coverage.

We have had the homepage in the index in the past (as recent as Feb
24th)."

I didn't see this thread up on the main page anymore; I'm fine leaving it at that for now..

GG you have maintained, as far as I can recall, that you are acting as an unofficial voice for Google, in your spare time.

Without being privy to your private conversation with Nick, it would appear that you were acting in an official capacity in this thread.

See the confusion that the company approach engenders? The clarifation on the status of your posts that has been asked for, by among others Danny Sullivan, would appear to be "helpful"

Greg Duffy here. Please read my responses at my site. Also, please remember that I'm not out to defame Google here, I still respect them for their technological prowess. :) That's probably the only reason I began exploring this product in the first place.

Thanks

The man of the moment heh...

Welcome to Threadwatch, do introduce yourself...

Its worth reading Gregs site where he responds to Google. First up in his reference to TW, he has no idea who GG is - dangers of the GG position not being official. The geeks know who GG is, but the world does not.

And the nub of Gregs defence is:-

Greg is not too worried about being removed from Google's index (if indeed he has been), but he is looking for a job, and this is his Resumee is anybody is looking for a bright lad to hire.

I checked his IP :)

Thanks, I'll introduce myself soon ...