Monday, March 13, 2006

Evil after all- UPDATE

Google has become everyone's favorite tool. I would be lying if I said I wasn't enamored of google, gmail, google talk etc. Because I am.

And when google went to China and began it's censorship, supporting the regime there I tried to be optimistic, at least now the chinese have access to some information, if not all of it. And google might as well get into this market. I googled "Google Censorship" and I yahooed it too, I found some information about government related censorship, like the unavailablility of abu ghraib photos via the image search, or other sites that have been censored at government request. Fine, government, I get it.

But, I'd really really like to know the reasoning behind censoring a random blog. The People's Cube has been removed from google's cache, completely. See their post here.

They have a number of ideas as to why. But have not gotten a response from google with their reasons.

So now my trust in you google is gone. I once relied on your lovely searches, enjoyed your clever graphics and funny responses to the ocasional query. But if I can't rely on you to present an unbiased uncensored view of the internet, then I'm just going to have to cheat on you. That's right, you betrayed my trust, and now I'm going to betray yours, I'll be with Jeeves if you feel like apologizing!

Update: Brendan Nyhan, also Missing from Google- I yahooed it and found This bboard post with a possible explaination from Wail:

This is a known phenomena right now. Sites are blipping in and out of
Google's index. If you know you've kept your nose clean and haven't been
spamming then I would sit tight.You do show the symptoms of this; no 'site:'
search information but a 'cache:' result. There have been seo forums and seo
companies effected by this and therefore drama. I would wait a week and see what
happens. I certainly wouldn't panic yet.


Commentor DeanT at Nyhan's blog said:

The Peoples Cube web site recently complained of a similar problem.
In their
case the issue was hidden spam text. Not spam that a user would notice, but spam
that would normally fool the google robot into giving the site more links than
the visible text justified. (see the link below for
details)
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/seo-advice-check-your-own-site/

So maybe it is their own fault after all. Oh sweet google, I am so happy to have evidence of your nonevilitude, but our relationship will just never be the same.

3 comments:

Kav said...

Except its not Jeeves any more. They ditched him. he wasn't their style anymore. Sad.

Shinobi said...

I know! I think the confused the fact that their search engine sucks with the whole "mascot" thing as being the reason for the lack of appeal.

Kav said...

The funniest thing is that even after it has been explained to them they refuse to see it as their own fault. Google is still the bad guy and their supporters who did acknowledge that it was probably their own fault 'easily gave in'. Fight the truth, no matter what!

LOL

Also its funny to read in one of the updates how they characterise some of the bigger right-wing orientated sites as: "well-visited anti-left sites like Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler, or Little Green Footballs".

Not, I note, as pro-right but anti-left. A veritable window into the thinking process. Sad. Very sad.