The Day Google Erased Me From the Internet – Why I Want Microsoft to Be Competitive in Search
Update 2: Just making sure people know that I’m back in the index and Google was very helpful about it. All in all it was a good experience (if still shocking).
Update: Matt Cutts blogged and provided some insight into the process. I want to make sure people know I’m not angry with Google – I broke the rules. It was just a wakeup call for me that Google’s rules are the only ones I care about and I’ll give them whatever they want so I can play.
Yesterday was one of the scariest days I’ve had in a long time and it put in total perspective the power that Google wields. It also made me hope that every single company with an idea about how to improve search, including Microsoft, continues to try and beat Google. I was working on a blog post and was searching for something I’d written before so that I could reference it. Instead of using my blog’s search, I of course used Google’s site feature, like I always do. Only this time, I got nothing:
At first I thought it was just because I was in China and my blog had been blocked. But after asking my Twitter friends to check for me I realized that wasn’t the case. My blog had been completely removed from Google’s index. All of my blog posts were effectively gone to everyone that uses Google, which is basically everyone and especially technology-minded folks that I try to reach as an evangelist.
I was confused, angry, and I felt completely helpless. Everyone uses Google. It was a big referrer to my blog and when I posted tips and tricks for Flash/Flex/AIR I did so knowing that someone could Google the problem and find my blog. My name? No longer my own. The first result was now my blog on ZDNet, which is something I don’t fully control. The other sites which are related to me on the front page were Twitter, and Mike Downey’s Flickr stream – both sites that I have absolutely no control over. My online identity for anyone using Google was now in the hands of domains and brands beyond my reach. It was a scary feeling.
I calmed down, and did some research (using Google of course). I found a blog post that referenced a help@google.com email. After emailing that I got this auto-response:
Thank you for writing to Google. We’d like to assist you, but we only respond to messages submitted through our online contact form. Please visit http://www.google.com/support/ to submit your message, and we’ll get back to you soon. We apologize for any inconvenience, and we look forward to hearing from you.
This is where things get a little spooky and made me realize the full extent of my reliance on Google. I’m not some crazy privacy nut – I live my life very openly on the internet and I’m fine with Google’s business model. But because of how often I rely on Google and how important it is to so many people I’d started treating it like a utility. Just like I have water, electricity, and gas, I have Google. Not so.
Going to the Google Support site and searching led me to this page which says (emphasis mine):
If your site is blocked from our index because it violates our quality guidelines, we may alert you about this using our Webmaster Tools. Simply sign in to our Webmaster Tools, add your site URL, and verify site ownership. The Overview page provides information about the indexing of your site.
I understand that being included in Google’s index is a privilege, not a right. But in order to apply to get my my site re-listed I have to both have a Google account (which conveniently allows me to access all of Google’s wonderful services) and associate my URL with that account. Interesting. So doing all that I was finally able to see what the problem was. I’d been hacked. I had a bunch of spam links that were only showing up to the Google bot.
I have no idea how long they’d been there. I had been fighting spam for a long time but this was worse. I’ve been traveling so I haven’t been able to make sure my blog is totally spam free. I removed the offending spam and applied for reinstatement. Unfortunately according to the message I need to allow several weeks for the request to go through.
Now I realize I should have had better control over my blog. WordPress should have been more secured, I should have been aware of vulnerabilities, and that the responsibility is mine. But I’m a blogger, web developer and evangelist. I don’t know the security side as well as I should and I don’t have time to make sure everything is rock solid. After this experience? Of course. I realize how important it is to conform to Google’s rules.
But I think that’s kind of the problem. I had no warning, no heads up. I like to think I’m a pretty good Netizen – not some SEO firm trying to game the system. My Page Rank is (was) supposedly a 9 for goodness sake (which of course makes me more attractive to spammers). And yet I got totally removed. I use Google because it DOES keep search results free of spam. That’s great. But I realized last night that Google is holding all the cards. They can do whatever the heck they want to. So Microsoft, keep going after search. Get us better results, give webmasters more options. Startups, keep trying to find the weak link. Make Google make itself better. Improve the search experience across the board for everyone – users and webmasters.
Posted in Rich Internet Applications
May 25th, 2008 at 5:32 am
A monopoly is never good for the customers (us), but being removed from googles index is a real pain
.
As far as the security is concerned you might try WP-Spamfree which handles botspam like a charm (a javascript and cookie comparison) paired with Akismet (email checking) for backup. In most cases a two level spamfiltering should be all you need to stop worrying.
Unfortunately Yahoo and Google are nowhere near googles 68% of market domination – and I’m araid this is not going to change soon
.
May 25th, 2008 at 5:38 am
Sorry – I meant “Yahoo & Microsoft are nowhere …”
May 25th, 2008 at 5:42 am
I had the exact same thing happen to me. It took about two weeks for things to normalize on Google. I also setup a shell script to scan my site regularly for the hidden div’s containing the spam links.
May 25th, 2008 at 6:25 am
My blog is a self-hosted WordPress blog. I have found that keeping WordPress up to date with security patches is critical. And let me rave for a minute about the latest and greatest way to do that: Subversion! If you’re not already set up to upgrade your blog with a single svn up command, then you’re in for a treat. More info.
May 25th, 2008 at 6:30 am
Thanks for that link Dave. HostMySite does blog hosting in kind of a weird way, but I should check on that.
David, did your page rank go back to normal? Do you know? That’s what worries me most. I’m a slave to my high page rank.
May 25th, 2008 at 6:53 am
Scary to say the least. While yes, having a PR9 does make you a target for spammers utilizing a tool like AskiSPAM plug-in for WP will help you out. (I’m sure you know this).
It’s unfortunate that Google can take actions on an automated basis like this without human review., More importantly your site is ranked highly in Google’s index, so you would think, seriously, you would they would keep an eye since you are in a very limited group of authority websites. Even if it were SPAM posts- they should have the technology to identify the difference.
I agree too, I hope the MSN & Yahoo! deal goes through, it’s time that others in the market gain a market share of Google’s empire for search results. Your not the first, nor that last that will be killed by Google circa Florida 2004, PaidLinks 2007, etc.
May 25th, 2008 at 7:33 am
I had the same issue not long ago. Fortunately for me someone emailed me telling me about all the hidden spam links to movie and download sex sites.
For me, I don’t think my site was hacked per say, I think I installed some downloaded skins for WordPress that were already compromised.
May 25th, 2008 at 7:49 am
[...] by smoothspan on May 25, 2008 Interesting article by Ryan Stewart on how he was “erased” from the Internet. In fact, it was just that Google quit [...]
May 25th, 2008 at 7:51 am
Ryan, good post. I wonder if you’re aware even Disney has had this problem? It wouldn’t be hard for Google to fix, but they’re so focused on fighting spammers they’ve forgotten to make the rest of us happy.
More on my blog:
http://smoothspan.wordpress.com/2008/05/25/if-nobody-can-find-you-do-you-exist-google-can-do-better/
Cheers,
BW
May 25th, 2008 at 12:24 pm
It seems you’re running a pretty standard install of WordPress, no esoteric plugins and custom template hacks, so maybe hosting your blog at wordpress.com or some other blogservice would be an option? Basically outsourcing the dreary but essential tasks like applying the latest security patches for your plugins or updating to the latest WP versions.
May 25th, 2008 at 1:54 pm
Hey Ryan:
First thing’s first, lock your WP down:
make an .htaccess file with this:
AuthType Basic
AuthUserFile /home/ryan/blog/wp-admin/.htpasswd
AuthName “Members Area”
require valid-user
and make an .htpasswd file with your password, or just use this page to make both:
http://www.clockwatchers.com/htaccess_tool.html
The only scripts that can write to your filesystem or blog posts are in the wp-admin folder, so you need to lock it down asap.
Also, check your RSS template, as there were ‘home mortgage’ links at the bottom of each of your posts.
This happened to me, though my blog is of little consequence, so google didn’t erase me. It’s taken about 4 months for google to remove the spam links (it was all sorts of nasty p*rn), but it shouldn’t take too long to get back on your feet.
May 25th, 2008 at 2:36 pm
Hey Ryan,
Now I check Google results.
I wrote Ryan Stewart and I see on first position you site (http://blog.digitalbackcountry.com).
But when I wrote site:blog.digitalbackcountry.com I see only 4 results.
May 25th, 2008 at 4:20 pm
Same thing happened to me, but after applying for reconsideration and writting a nice letter, I was back again after 2 days.
I was penalized for selling links and reviews, which you are not, but maybe the same steps can be used to get your site back in the index.
My post about it:
http://mixedmarketarts.com/2008/04/05/getting-your-pagerank-back-in-2-days/
May 25th, 2008 at 4:49 pm
Hi Ryan
Have you been using this WordPress theme for a while?
It seems the theme developer wasn’t too worried about leaving his domain to expire.
I would suggest removing the link.
May 25th, 2008 at 5:14 pm
Hi Ryan,
I’m another one who was, at one time, dropped from Google. My situation was a bit different thought–it happened when Google bought Blogger and put nofollow codes in blogs that weren’t converted to new templates. It was meant to combat blog spam–I saw it as penalizing me for wanting to continue to tinker with my HTML.
Oddly, at the same time, a friend who has a WordPress blog also found himself to have been dropped from Google, similar to your experience, and with no clear idea why he was dropped.
We both rely on our blogs for our online reputations–his as a writer, mine as a consultant. He re-submitted his blog to Google, which helped, although it did take a couple of weeks to get things up to speed again. I had to re-submit and remove the nofollows from the template’s HTML.
It’s a pretty scary thing when it happens, but, rest assured, if you re-submit, you’ll get back in there and your reputation won’t suffer.
May 25th, 2008 at 5:45 pm
Thanks for the links Bob and Collin – great posts.
Andy, that’s a very, very good call. I should have done that a long time ago.
Dusty, that’s a huge help, so thank you very much. I’m not as smart as I should be when it comes to the .htaccess stuff. This is a perfect tool.
May 25th, 2008 at 5:53 pm
[...] in search or find their own “Big Hairy Audacious Goal.” Into that discussion came a post by Ryan Stewart about being removed from Google’s index. It turns out that Ryan’s blog had been hacked, [...]
May 25th, 2008 at 5:56 pm
Ryan, I did a quick post describing things a bit from a search engine perspective: http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/helping-hacked-sites/
You’ve also got my email if you need it from this comment — feel free to drop me a note. I’ll be away from the computer for a few hours, but back on email later tonight.
Regards,
Matt Cutts
May 25th, 2008 at 7:25 pm
While I would have been a bit frightened and frustrated had I been in your shoes, you have to understand that Google was actually trying to protect you and your site, though it might not seem like it right now.
Because Google has such a large share of the market, they are offering tools like Webmaster Tools to give site owners more control and visibility. The other search engines don’t offer anything close to what Google does, so if you happen to get excluded from them for some reason, you’re really out of luck.
If I remember correctly, I believe that Matt Cutts, the head of goggle’s anti-spam team, once indicated that their system does try its best to obtain an email address for the webmaster and notify them in the case of a hacked site, but sometimes it isn’t able to find an address from registrar records or a contact page.
Expecting a human to be involved in this process is asking a bit much, considering the number of sites Google indexes.
May 25th, 2008 at 8:01 pm
Google is one of the best search engine out there, but the market domination by it has done more harm then good.
As what always happen in Monopolie, power gets into the head ad quality suffers.
I hope like you microsoft and yahoo catches up.
May 25th, 2008 at 8:30 pm
Hi Ryan -
Good grief I feel your pain! I had the same thing happen to me.
Some hacker inserted a single randomly named php and new .htaccess file in every directory on my Movable Type blog. We’re talking thousands.
The .htaccess file was amazingly clever. It sprung into action on 404 errors, and only from search engine referrers. I originally thought it was Google’s problem, because I couldn’t make the pages appear by typing them in.
By the time I’d begun the cleanup, Google thought I had over 330,000 pages (actually around 16k) on my site. My most cited keywords had to do with porn and game cracks.
The hack left all .html files in a single directory. My real pages are all php, making it easier to eliminate the scourge from search engines. It took a long time.
Since cleaning up my act in January, my traffic is down by 2/3! MSN Live is referring more traffic my way than Google. I am still a PR4, but with little to show for that. That’s one reason I’ve cited my site on this comment and hope it’s not ‘nofollowed’ out. I’m hoping for some Google love.
My biggest complaint is, Google is not answerable to anyone. You can fill out forms, and beg (and I begged), but Google will neither tell you what you did wrong or how to rehabilitate yourself. I had to find those out on my own.
They have gone beyond a simple search engine. If you’re not on Google, you don’t exist!
May 25th, 2008 at 8:45 pm
“Web developer” and “don’t know the security side” are mutually exclusive.
Also, it seems that Google did try to contact you.
Some time ago, a friend sent out thousands of notices to sites he had found hacked on his own nickel and his own time, so few replied or took action so as to make the whole effort a waste of time.
Why consume resources if the effort is just going to be ignored?
One thing that I think should be the watch-words for webmasters regarding Google, especially Search and AdSense, either do your job or Google will do it for you but if Google has to do it, you are guaranteed to not like it.
May 25th, 2008 at 8:48 pm
How is your Blog a PR9 and it seems you dont know nothing about SEO. I wouldnt say you deserve it. And when i checked your site index status using site:yoursite.com nothing showed and i refreshed it and it had all sites . now .
May 25th, 2008 at 9:54 pm
Like writing a web browser or writing an operating system, it takes significant effort to set up and run a top notch search engine. If done in a centralised commercial fashion, at best only a handful will compete. That’s only marginally better than the current situation.
What we want, in the long term, is a way for individual users to specify their own search algorithm and have it applied to data that is cached in a decentralised fashion.
May 25th, 2008 at 10:22 pm
Any search engine that cannot filter spam is not being ‘competitive’. Google removed you because you were hacked.
> I’d been hacked. I had a bunch of spam links that were only showing up to the Google bot.
Therefore you are an idiot. You were removed because you were hacked, and I know you ackknowlede that, but you still want to ‘hit out’.
So you ‘encourage Microsoft’. This is your way of saying google was wrong.
Saying you don’t have time to secure wordpress is moronic. Obviously this blog isn’t very important to you.
You’ve just been taking the benefit of a free ride for too long, and got bitten.
I am not saying you are ‘blaming google’ openly in words, you make pains to say it is your fault, but you are blaming google because of the suggestion: Not, google did the right thing, I’ve learned my lesson, take heed and be sure you don’t get spammed. But: Microsoft, you do something better, because I hate getting burned when I get hacked.
> And yet I got totally removed. I use Google because it DOES keep search results free of spam. That’s great. But I realized last night that Google is holding all the cards. They can do whatever the heck they want to.
And they are not ‘google’s rules’. They are the search engines rules. If you could be hacked, and it wouldn’t reduce the google users experience, google would have no, NONE, ZERO, fiscal motivation to remove you from the results.
INTERESTING FACT, LET ME SHOW YOU IT: Removing shit from the google results is the single most expensive thing the company does, even more expensive than the organic oatmeal cookies it serves.
Now, collectively, the Internet would like to thank you for giving back, for allowing a 9 pagerank site to get hacked and possibly reduce the google performance for all of us. That is, reduce the fucking signal entropy on the web.
May 25th, 2008 at 11:00 pm
Sorry for blowing past the point of your post, but you got to go to China? You’re a lucky guy
May 26th, 2008 at 12:07 am
Geoff Fox, it looks like we revoked the hacked site penalty on your site in February, so any traffic drop on your site is independent of your site getting hacked.
Bob Warfield, in your post on Smoothspan you say that this problem has happened to Disney, but the site you pointed to is thedisneyblog.com. According to the about page on that site, “The Disney Blog is not affiliated with The Walt Disney Company in any way.” Also, we did send an email to the owner of thedisneyblog.com about the hidden text on their site when we removed their site.
At any rate: Ryan, it looks like your blog is back in Google’s index now. Thanks for commenting on my post; I’ll reply to those comments over on my blog.
May 26th, 2008 at 12:07 am
@URC: I would say a website owner with PR 9 and no knowledge of SEO jolly well DOES deserve it (much more than the SEO guy). He should actually be rewarded an PR 10
May 26th, 2008 at 12:09 am
The site is in the index again. (quite quick that was)
May 26th, 2008 at 3:24 am
Cool to see Matt Cutts himself respond
I personally think that if you cant isolate spam.. google needs to take measures.
Sorry to hear you had to go through this though, must have been horrible.
May 26th, 2008 at 4:59 am
Similar thing happened to Flashmagazine some time ago. I got slapped for displaying Text Link Ads that apparently leached on the Page Rank. I didn’t realize this was against policy until Google reduced my PR. When I went through the complaint procedure, my Page Rank was back the next day.
Getting back into the search results may apparently take some time but eventually it’ll get there as well, so no worries. Google may be almighty, but they play a reasonably fair game.
J
May 26th, 2008 at 5:34 am
Hi Ryan,
This morning, in France, Google displays 3050 pages for your blog
http://www.google.fr/search?q=site%3Ablog.digitalbackcountry.com&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:fr:official&client=firefox-a
So, it seems to be resolved
Like Jensa, for one of my site, I got slapped for displaying Text Link Ads few months ago. It’s a strange think when you work hard to publish relevant contents. But I think the problem is different. For more of us, we know the Google rules, so, it’s necessary to respect them.
Thanks for your relevant contents and a long life in Google for your blog.
May 26th, 2008 at 6:25 am
I am sorry to hear about the whole Issue Ryan. But I left my insight over Matts blog. I think you should make things a bit more secure at your blog and over the server. But your blog seems to be popular around the net and people are trying to do things to get your traffic and other things..
hope nothing was lost..
May 26th, 2008 at 8:00 am
[...] Often the answer is not immediately apparent, we got lucky because we got a “your site is a malware site” warning. Others not so, like Ryan Stewart. But I think that’s kind of the problem. I had no warning, no heads up. I like to think I’m a pretty good Netizen – not some SEO firm trying to game the system. My Page Rank is (was) supposedly a 9 for goodness sake (which of course makes me more attractive to spammers). And yet I got totally removed. I use Google because it DOES keep search results free of spam. That’s great. But I realized last night that Google is holding all the cards. They can do whatever the heck they want to. So Microsoft, keep going after search. Get us better results, give webmasters more options. Startups, keep trying to find the weak link. Make Google make itself better. Improve the search experience across the board for everyone – users and webmasters. Source: Ryan Stewart [...]
May 26th, 2008 at 10:53 am
First off, I’m glad you admitted that security and upgrades were your responsibility and that WordPress was not entirely to blame. First off, which version of WordPress were you using when this occurred? I see you are running the latest version as we speak.
Secondly, this issue of sites being removed from indexes such as Technorati was posted on WeblogToolsCollection.com http://weblogtoolscollection.com/archives/2008/04/08/vulnerable-wordpress-blogs-not-being-indexed/ back on April 8th 2008. The posts from this site end up in your WordPress dashboard in the news section. Also, the blame wasn’t entirely put on to WordPress itself as a number of people discovered that they had installed some funky themes and the code within those themes is what made their site vulnerable.
May 26th, 2008 at 1:14 pm
[...] sites receives most of the traffic from search engines (especially from Google). Ryan Stewart’s blog has been delisted from Google and he describes the consequences. Yesterday was one of the scariest [...]
May 26th, 2008 at 5:27 pm
This is an extremely interesting post and comment thread. I’m a bit torn. On the one hand, I tend to agree with you (and a few of the commenters) that some measure of responsibility for at least basic and/or minimal upgrades to W/P on a more frequent basis would have eliminated this problem before it began.
On the other hand, perhaps it is just as scary that we (incl. me) rely so much on the other Matt (Mullenweg of W/P) to keep us from getting into security issues and getting spanked by the first Matt (Cutts of Google). Ha ha. The two Matts are controlling our very online existence… so much for internet freedom!
Seriously, while we all heart WordPress and Google both, that is a bit creepy. You would think that blogs with PR’s of 8 or higher would get a second review or something before they get yanked. I’m only a puny 4 (although I used to be a 5 – wah!), but I gotta believe that if TechCrunch or something got hacked, despite there being a good deal of responsibility on their part, that Google (and other SE’s) would have some kind of built-in flag to give the offending site 3 days warning or something.
Granted Google is a private company and can do what they want, and I’m sure 99% of the ones they remove from the search index are well-deserving of that removal, but there is a little “gestapo” feel about the whole thing that leaves everyone sort of looking over their shoulders. I think we all get that “traffic ticket” mentality where it’s now up to us to *prove* that we are innocent. Again, if Ryan (who I never heard of before until reading about this on the Google Operating System blog) had a PR 9 that’s an amazing feat. One that shouldn’t be wiped away by some ‘bot’ in the backroom of Googleland. Oh, well… his PR is back now anyway, so unlike us po’ folks with a PR 4, at least he got situated back right away.
On the other hand, a blogger who doesn’t have a Google account? Wha? How is that even possible? I can see you not using Gmail, but no GCal, Google Reader, GDocs, or Webmaster Tools? That’s an amazing story in and of itself. Now that I’m a subscriber to your blog, maybe you can create a post called “How I made it to 2008 without a Google account”. That’s the most intriguing part of the whole mess.
Note: Total coolness factor to Cutts for personally sticking his nose into this one.
Final Score: Ryan Stewart (0), Google (-1), Matt Cutts (+1)
May 26th, 2008 at 6:45 pm
Matt Cutts Says:
May 26th, 2008 at 12:07 am
Visit Matt Cutts
Geoff Fox, it looks like we revoked the hacked site penalty on your site in February, so any traffic drop on your site is independent of your site getting hacked.
—–
Well, maybe yes and maybe no.
After the hack, and while back in Google’s good graces, Google viewed my site as one dominated by hacking related words. I’m no Google expert, but I assume that reduces my implied expertise in anything else.
In fact, two weeks ago, the hack words remained as my top keywords on webmaster tools. The hacked pages were gone in January.
Since the hack placed on my site created dynamically generated pages based on search engine hits, it was Google’s recommendation to patrons that spawned more and more and more bogus pages – over 300,000 by the time we were through (based on Google’s webmaster tools).
Even when I eliminated all the pages, it took months for the undone damage to be reflected on Google’s results.
I am willing to show my Google Analytics pages to Matt or anyone. My traffic plummeted when I was removed from Google and has barely recovered. The vast majority of my content is unchanged – things have only been added.
This is not my living. AdSense never brought me more than a few doolars a day. But what happened to me happens to people’s livelihoods.
I take responsibility in being hacked. I fixed it.
Maybe I’m an idiot, but I think Google has some responsibility too. How fast is fast enough to undo bogus info in Google’s index, and undo its ongoing effect?
I’m not sure if Matt is still seeing this. He lists no email address on his site.
May 26th, 2008 at 7:03 pm
Google can, and it should block malware hacked websites, but with other search engines getting better with more popularity, maybe Google will be forced to threat customers better. Today we need to guess what happened, email google and hope someone reads our email.
I love Google products but internet need stronger competition in search business.
May 26th, 2008 at 8:19 pm
Geoff, I’ll drop you an email.
May 26th, 2008 at 9:20 pm
Hi Ryan,
Back in February I wrote about my blog stats and briefly mentioned how Google could easily remove me from the Internet as well since they so completely dominate my search stats. Clearly, this post illustrates the worst case is real. Perhaps fortunately for you you’re profile as a writer may give you an advantage in getting reinstated and certainly attracting Matt’s attention can’t hurt.
Best of luck!
May 27th, 2008 at 12:25 am
Thanks.
May 27th, 2008 at 1:31 am
Hi Ryan, I have check again your site in google and i saw 3,090 from blog.digitalbackcountry.com. What happen here? Is google erase your site index by accident? Or you have asked Google to index again your site?
May 27th, 2008 at 1:31 am
[...] had delisted .info TLDs and blogspot.com results from its index for about 5 hours. Recently, Ryan Stewart’s blog was also dislisted from [...]
May 27th, 2008 at 1:43 am
Sorry to hear your WordPress got hacked. Happened to me last year:
http://www.itwriting.com/blog/?p=453
I wondered: did you discover how the bad guys got in? In my case it was apparently a combination of a couple of problems.
Tim
May 27th, 2008 at 3:20 am
[...] Ryan Stewart: The Day Google Erased Me From the Internet – Why I Want Microsoft to Be Competitive in Search [...]
May 27th, 2008 at 3:33 am
[...] [EN] Ryan Stewart : “Le jour où Google m’a effacé d’Internet – Pourquoi je souha… Un bel exemple de ce qui peut arriver lorsqu’on ne fait confiance qu’à un seul moteur de recherche… (tags: Google Search) [...]
May 27th, 2008 at 1:28 pm
Hey guys, thanks for all the comments. It was a very, very interesting discussion and you guys have a lot of good insight. Matt, thanks again for chiming in.
I apologize to those of you whose comments got caught up in the queue and weren’t approved until now. In the process of trying to lock things down I messed something up and couldn’t access my admin console and then I had to fly home.
I’ve been reindexed and learned a very, very valuable lesson.
May 27th, 2008 at 3:21 pm
[...] The Day Google Erased Me From the Internet – Why I Want Microsoft to Be Competitive in Search, Ryan Stewart [...]
May 28th, 2008 at 6:05 am
[...] for his lack of acrophobia but also for his Google PageRank of 9/10) complained that Google had wiped his blog from the index. Turns out the removal occurred for security reasons shortly after Ryan’s site was [...]
May 28th, 2008 at 3:48 pm
@David Colletta, I changed my wordpress blog to use SVN for updates. Thanks! It’s great!
@Ryan, Love the blog. Did you know that a comment from April 1 was the first clue about your site being hacked?
@Hello Idiot, Can you take it down a few notches, please? Unlike spam, you do have a point to your comments but it makes people want to dismiss what you have to say when you deliver it like such. WordPress made the programming error that allowed hackers to get around the login. They fixed their code and, yes, users of their software should be quick to update.
May 28th, 2008 at 5:16 pm
@Jamie, yup, I’d tracked that problem down to WordPress plugins, so I thought I had that one under control. I even had them do a complete wipe and reinstall of WordPress for me. The hack I got nailed for was something different. Though I’m sure semi-related.
May 29th, 2008 at 6:12 am
[...] some cases identities of people have been wiped out when google decided to erase their site from the [...]
May 29th, 2008 at 7:52 am
Hey Ryan do you have any pointers about the fix and things we can do to prevent anything happening to our sites?
One more thing, I was checking out the new JavaOne event video about JavaFX, it’s kinda of like adobe air but it’s suppose to let you run the app on the web site and drag that app from the web site to your desktop the funny thing was they couldnt get the demo to work properly, lol, I felt bad for the girl giving the demo but it was pretty funny. You can can check it out here: http://news.zdnet.com/2422-13568_22-200366.html?tag=nl.e539
May 29th, 2008 at 6:33 pm
[...] in search or find their own “Big Hairy Audacious Goal.” Into that discussion came a post by Ryan Stewart about being removed from Google’s index. It turns out that Ryan’s blog had been hacked, [...]
May 31st, 2008 at 12:38 am
[...] in search or find their own “Big Hairy Audacious Goal.” Into that discussion came a post by Ryan Stewart about being removed from Google’s index. It turns out that Ryan’s blog had been hacked, [...]
June 2nd, 2008 at 3:38 am
[...] While we tried really hard to stay away from Twitter and FriendFeed they did pop up occasionally while we talked about things from what does Web 2.0 owe us and services dealing with capacity overload right through to getting wiped out of the Google index. [...]
June 2nd, 2008 at 4:56 pm
[...] The Day Google Erased Me From the Internet – Why I Want Microsoft to Be Competitive in Search, Ryan Stewart [...]
June 4th, 2008 at 2:27 am
[...] and “Laying Off” Features Social-networking sites work to turn users into profits The Day Google Erased Me From the Internet – Why I Want Microsoft to Be Competitive in Search Facebook Violates Privacy [...]
June 5th, 2008 at 8:31 am
The same thing happened to uFlash.org, but instead of being removed, when you clicked on a search entry for it it would bring up a google page indicating the site was bad-ware and not allowing you to follow the link.
After getting reinstated I wrote a nice post about the pain it is to update wordpress every month or two. Sure would be nice if they could do that for you.