NB: I wrote this post back in December 2006, but have released it today as it showcases another area (besides PR penalisation) where Google is being hypocritical. i.e. The area of content.

Now, before I get to the meat of this post, I better be very careful not to tread on any toes. I must avoid a legal wrangle with Goliath as I do not have $2Billion in spare change to settle with a slap on the wrist (and I most certainly do not want to spend any time in a Federal pound me in the ass prison.

This all started late last year as I was making a cynical private remark to one of the more respected members of the Info Vilesilencer Forum regarding search engine terms. I decided to reveal the top 10 search terms for the last 7 days of December for Info Vilesilencer (IVS). When I got to #10 I was suprised to find the keyword little-melissa sitting there. When I checked I found that IVS wasn’t even in the top 100 for that keyword. Yes, you are thinking what I am thinking. Some sicko’s have far too much time on their hands for what’s in their hands.

To allay any fears that I might be hosting any “inappropriate material”, the keyword little-melissa is present in a harmless joke in the Humour & Jokes forum. Nothing sordid or untoward there, just an appropriate, and semi-censored, use of the f-word.

Ok, so what’s so interesting about this keyword? Well clearly sicko’s are searching on it (present company excluded), and on Page 6 of Google as I was browsing through the listings trying to find exactly what number I had been posted at to get so much interest I noticed this juicy Google tidbit:

In response to a legal request submitted to Google, we have removed 1 result(s) from this page. If you wish, you may read more about the request at ChillingEffects.org.

You guessed it, Google had listed a site that contained Child Pornography (as the notice says) and the Internet Watch Foundation complained, Google was notified, and the listing was promptly removed. Clap, Clap! Does anyone else see a problem with this method of removing inappropriate content from the internet’s most used search engine?

A quick scan of “Other recent C&D’s” shows all 5 are Child Pornography, and all 5 relate to complaints made to Google. It’s been suggested in the past that the internet’s biggest directory, DMOZ, supports child pornography. I am not suggesting they do, however some very credible points are made in that thread, leading to the pertinent question - Why aren’t these giants of the internet stamping this inappropriate material out?

What I find unbelievably hypocritical about the whole thing is that people can have websites banned/penalised by Google for trivial SEO misdemeanours, whilst Google itself is hosting images that can only be described as absolutely pornographic. I’ve tried to join the dots on that, and it doesn’t meet up. Sorry, but wasting time banning someone that’s worked hard to try and get their site in some sort of position to be competitive, whilst others put up Child Pornography sites that dodge the radar is a misaligned focus methinks.

Back to the hypocrisy. Surely, by seeing that Google freely hosts pornographic images, people are encouraged to put up their own websites to make a buck from the countless searches they would get on that material? Why is there no age verification on standard adult material anyways?

p.s. On another datacenter, the jokes forum comes up on page 2 for the little-melissa keyword, that must be the listing that’s pulling all the interest (pardon the pun - heh!).

I had this blog post sitting in draft for most of this month, but after the second round of PR penalties and bloggers telling it like it is, I’ve been inspired to make it live - if for no other reason than my own amusement

This is Major Tom to Google ground control. We have a problem.

In the washup of penalising sites selling pagerank; penalising sites selling paid-text-links; and penalising sites for just linking (paid or not) Google seems to have missed the worst offenders. Themselves.

On any given day on the Info Vilesilencer site, the adsense ad-block above the fold, which exists in site-wide on every page except the home page, is advertising Guaranteed Top 10 Rankings & PR6 Links For Sale (see image above post), and just about every seriously outlawed type of paid link you can think of…

Hang On! I hear the crowd chant, wasn’t this penalisation supposed to stamp this stuff out?

Errr, It would seem not. Well not for Google anyways. Instead, many hardworking altruistic sites have been tagged with the Google-doesn’t-like-you-brush whilst those that spend money on Adwords, seem to have gotten off scot-free.

So what? Well, consider this for a moment. The paid text link penalties which were issued recently have never officially been sanctioned by Google (to my knowledge). Oh sure, Matt Cutts has made mention of the danger of paid-text-links both earlier this year and as far back as 2005. But, who reads Matt Cutts blog?

SEO’s do.

Sorry Matt, it’s true, no one gives a flying f**k how many steps your pedometer counted last week or what current “gadgets” you think are cool. It’s the SEO’s that read and comment on your blog, and its the same people that are being “bitchslapped” by G. Bear in mind that these are the very same people that generated the buzz on the web, which in turn lead to Google being crowned King in the first place. (you can almost hear the stock market boys yelling “Sell! Sell!”).

So. SEO’s are gonna get hit, who cares right? Ok. Well, what happens to the unoblivious Mom and Pop sites, who have never heard of Matt Cutts, don’t know what SEO is, and who use these paid-text-links to relevant sites within their network, to pay their bills such as webhosting?

Worse still, what happens to the ones who don’t currently engage in paid-link buying, but who see adsense ads, like those on Info Vilesilencer and probably thousands of other sites, which actively encourage paid text link and pagerank selling and buying and who are now seriously thinking about taking it up? Would it be ok to assume that more people will think it is ok to buy PR, than not, simply because more people will see adsense ads promoting it, than will read SEO websites saying you shouldn’t?

The bottom line is that Google has created a massive problem by penalising some and not all - in particular themselves, the worst offenders of the lot. There is now a massive divide, with some sites 3-and-more PR points below their peers. Until Google rewrites the disparity I believe that many will begin to move on from Google’s hypocrisy, its popularity as the current number 1 search engine will wane, and it will be our next Altavista.

Well first off you’re not alone…

Back on April 17th, 2006 I was running a routine keyword check on the Info Vilesilencer site in the MSN Search Engine, and was surprised to see the site nowhere on the first page. My immediate thought was What the ? before concluding that I must have mistyped the keyphrase. When I realised that wasn’t the case I dug a little deeper issuing a site: command and my suspicions were confirmed when only 1 result was returned. MSN had totally deindexed my site.

At first I couldn’t fathom what would trigger the dropping of the site so I decided to ask on an SEO Forum that I visit regularly and soon found that I wasn’t the only one who had sites dropping. Initial speculation was that MSN had database or technology issues, however this was debunked by several people who believe that MSN uses very up-to-date search engine technology.

The discussion veered off-topic a little as Google was mentioned as using old celeron technology for its engine, and this unearthed a very interesting article that delivers some inside information about how Google Search actually works.

Another theory was given that perhaps my site was removed because it had been down at some stage during the website redesign I had done recently. It has been alleged that MSN is very unforgiving if the bot crawls your site and finds it down, and the consensus is to remove the site from the index rather than waiting till it is back up. I pondered on this, and it was true that I had an apache problem that was causing the site excessive loading times (the site would not load inside 4 minutes - it was a rogue stats application running in the background queueing jobs).

After 2 weeks the site was still nowhere to be found in MSN. The site: command still returned the same 1 result (which incidentally was the SEO Friendly Free Directory List excel), and I was beginning to worry that this was going to be a permanent removal from the index.

On week 3, since the removal, I noticed that a few more pages were re-indexed and whilst I still hadn’t regained those #1 spots for keyphrases, it was heartening to know that this was indeed a temporary problem. So why was the site removed? I can only guess at the reason why the site was removed from the index. The fact that many people were experiencing the same thing, around the same time, leads me to believe that the good people at MSN have spent time reindexing the database in preparation for the Window’s Live Beta as this had been in its initial phase of release at around the same time. However, I have no actual evidence of this, and it could be merely coincidental.

By May 15th, the domain was again number 1 for the vilesilencer keyword and I deduced that I had been close to fully re-indexed and re-ranked by that stage. Two other participants in the thread also saw their sites reindexed over the same timeframe.

So what’s the best advice I can give if your site has been recently totally de-indexed from MSN?

Be patient.

Firstly check to make sure that nothing on your site has triggered a penalty of any sort (also check Yahoo and Google to ensure this penalty hasn’t been triggered elsewhere). If your site isn’t under penalty, then my suggestion would be to be patient and wait. If after 3 weeks the bot still isn’t crawling/indexing your site again you might have a more serious problem. Personally I don’t think it’s worth getting too worried about though until that 3-4 week timeframe has elapsed, because you might be getting yourself in a knot over nothing.

If your site has recently had pages dropped from Google, then this explanation about The madness of King Google may enlighten you as to why your site is no longer Google’s friend.

Jim Westergren has officially placed 2nd in the V7N V7ndotcom Elursrebmem SEO contest, and he’s done it in style, showcasing his savvy SEO skills. I congratulate Jim on his thoroughly deserved placing and look forward to seeing his continued upward climb through the world of SEO.

Info Vilesilencer began supporting Jim’s contest entry on 27th February, 2006 with a site-wide link from the heavily trafficked SEO Friendly Directories Forum. Jim did not ask for this link or buy it. I offered the free link to him because of his continued contribution to a resource other than his own, namely the Info Vilesilencer forum. Jim makes regular large posts on the forum to share directories and ideas, and is a valuable member of the SEO community. SEO is not just about building links to your site, it is also about forging friendships and sharing ideas, and Jim has been exceptional in this regard.

Jim ranked #1 for the V7ndotcom Elursrebmem term up until 12th May, 2006 and had a long run at the top. He took a large break midway through the competition that may have impacted on his final result. In a cruel twist of fate, 12 minutes after the official results were announced Jim had regained the #1 spot.

Jim has a number of sites that he runs and I feel that many of these would be interesting for Info Vilesilencer regulars. The sites are:

Jim’s v7ndotcom elursrebmem contest site
Jim’s SEO Company
Jim’s Text Link Advertising Site
Jim’s SEO Friendly Directory List

“A Long Island politician sued Google on Thursday claiming the search engine leader is profiting from illegal child pornography.

A Google spokesman denied the allegations and said the Californian-based company takes numerous steps to prevent access to child pornography.”

Click here to read more…

Whilst Google may have a major migraine on their hands attempting to remove inappropriate child pornographic content, they have stated that they have active filtration methods and will work to remove any content that is deemed unsuitable immediately from its search engine.

The most interesting portion of the article for me was the fact that both MSN and Yahoo are not subject to the same lawsuit. They might not have Google’s dominance but they still have major market shares and should have to comply with the same rules that Google itself does.