Quiz Question:
What do “Animal Farm” by George Orwell, the Bible, 2 Live Crew, “The Communist Manifesto” by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, DDT, Frank Zappa’s single “I Don’t Wanna Get Drafted.”, The Weavers and pribek.net have in common?
Answer:
They have all been banned or censored.
Some have been banned by governments or censored by institutions or media outlets. Me, this website, banned by Google.
Here’s an article from Pandia that explains this called, appropriately, “Banned By Google”.
There are those that wake up one morning and find that all of their web pages has disappeared from the Google index. Others find that Google has removed one page at the time, finally ending up with the home page, and then: none at all.
A Google ban can also be more subtle. The pages remain in the Google database, but they end up at page 722 for all relevant search queries.
If they had good rankings before, this is more likely than not caused by the wrath of the world’s mightiest search engine.
Yep, that’s what happened. It’s funny because, about a month ago my traffic had started to increase dramatically. The increase was coming from search traffic and, primarily Google. Then, ten days ago, it went in the tank. It dropped to a third of what it had been. I noticed that the regulars seemed to be still hanging around so, I tried an experiment. I did Google searches using the keywords, Pribek, Jack Pribek and pribek.net. Now, I don’t optimize very well on a lot of key words or phrases but those three right there…I usually have that turf pretty well sowed up.
Give it a try, use Pribek, Jack Pribek and pribek.net on a Google search then, try the same search at another engine.
Why does this happen? Well, from what I understand, there could be legit tech reasons but, check this out.
However, more likely than not you have done something that is in violation with Google’s written or un-written anti-spam regulations. That is: There is something about your site that leads Google to believe that you are trying to unduly influence your search engine rankings.
“Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings. A good rule of thumb is whether you’d feel comfortable explaining what you’ve done to a website that competes with you. Another useful test is to ask, ‘Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn’t exist?’”
What website am I competing with?
Here’s something I know about the highly touted Google algorithms that are the cutting edge of technology; they don’t work for this site. Last year, I tried the Google ads on this site.
Here’s how it’s supposed to work; I write a blog post and an ad pops up next to it that is relevant to what I wrote about thus, delighting the reader so much that they click on the ad and buy some crap.
Here’s how it worked; If I mentioned say, Adolf Hitler one day then, three days later I wrote about a fried catfish recipe, there would be “find Hitler items at eBay” next to the fish recipe. That’s not going to work. The ads were consistently three days behind on “relevancy”. Since I write about whatever goes through my mind or interests me temporarily, at any given moment, the topics and content outrun the mother of all algorithms.
I just looked it up; during the time I ran AdSense I had…
8,127 Impressions
5 clicks
Earned $0.89
Now, I’m pretty sure that if I wrote about tulips every day, the ads would be relevant. But, then you wouldn’t need the algorithm.
So, if this is the same cutting edge stuff that’s in play here, that is leading Google to believe that I’m “trying to unduly influence my search engine rankings” then, so be it.
The world keeps on turning, you know?
So, to the GoogleBot that I know is looking at this page, as you are reading it, right now; I got a message for you Bot, Live From The Winnebago…
I’ll keep you posted, if there are any developments.
Related posts
Tags: communist manifesto, Google, Googlebot, Jack Pribek, pribek.net, Winnebago
Pat Darnell and Friends wrote,
Say… Jack, where do you get your nails done?
Link | June 30th, 2008 at 3:02 pm
Pribek wrote,
Thanks so much for noticing, PD. Actually, I do them myself. The middle finger or, googlebird finger, is one that I use the most with my bastardized picking technique and thus, the one that requires the most care. I recommend the classic Jonel brand nail file with the pink plastic handle.
Link | June 30th, 2008 at 3:12 pm
J wrote,
Looks like the fingernail of a classical guitarist. He’s probably got one of those custom guitarists’ manicure sets.
http://www.spectraintl.com/xsp/KT3015.html
J’s last blog post..For The Birds
Link | June 30th, 2008 at 3:15 pm
Pribek wrote,
Well, I know what’s going on my Santa list, J.
Link | June 30th, 2008 at 3:20 pm
J wrote,
LOL…sorry man, I couldn’t resist!
;-)
J’s last blog post..For The Birds
Link | June 30th, 2008 at 3:23 pm
Pribek wrote,
I’ll make sure to have the eye shadow on for the next one.
Link | June 30th, 2008 at 3:45 pm
Pat Darnell And Friends wrote,
Dr J — Hey, me too !! That bumps the train set off the list. Thanks guys.
[no eye shadow... What ? You're not wearing any, Adolph? ..coulda sworn, Ooops, we bad. Well you look like butter -- with or without.]
Pat Darnell And Friends’s last blog post..Buying Dogfood in Bags can be a real Crap Shoot…
Link | June 30th, 2008 at 10:27 pm
Ovidiu - GuitarFlame.com wrote,
I am sorry to hear this, Jack. Did you make any changes to your website lately? Over-optimization? Any change that may lead to this? If so, remove what you have done and get back to them with an email. It is not a pleasant things. I have websites that live because of Google and when such things happen it is disastrous in some cases.
Ovidiu - GuitarFlame.com’s last blog post..Freestyle wedding music, or damn it, woman, count!
Link | June 30th, 2008 at 11:57 pm
Pribek wrote,
No, I haven’t made any changes, Ovidiu.
It’s strange, and all I can do is guess about what’s going on. I didn’t do any tricks to optimize. It is almost two years since I’ve started writing.
So, there is a lot of content on here and it’s varied. Maybe they think I’m just spouting gibberish to try and throw a bunch of keywords out there.
Link | July 1st, 2008 at 12:25 am
Jayne d'Arcy wrote,
Well, I was gonna mention what a nicely manicured nail you had there, but seems everyone beat me to it. Webmistress here: no optimization, no changes whatsoever. Although, it’s possible that something LinkSky (pribek.net host) did a couple days ago might be the culprit. Not sure. Jack, try emailing google honchos and if they reply, see what they say. I’ll ask LinkSky if what they did could have had an effect.
Link | July 1st, 2008 at 2:04 am
axe victim wrote,
Google ads? Pha! I tired that and it was a waste of time. So is al lof that analytics junk. I can’t figure any of it anyway. Scew ‘em!
Link | July 1st, 2008 at 5:24 am
Gary wrote,
fingernails? See this post at my place: http://thumbrella.blogspot.com/2008/06/guitarists-fingernails.html
See! That’s how to hijack a thread and drive loads of traffic to my site! :-)
Gary’s last blog post..8 good reasons to be a lousy musician
Link | July 1st, 2008 at 5:31 am
Kenski wrote,
I noticed a while back that your site seemed to have issues when being read by Google reader, as in it would never show new stuff. Perhaps it’s something related?
Kenski’s last blog post..The Beginning Of The End
Link | July 1st, 2008 at 6:52 am
Pribek wrote,
Gary-watch out Brother, they’ll be coming after you next.
Kenski-I’m assuming you are talking about a problem with the RSS feeds that occurred several months ago. To my knowledge that has been fixed and also, doesn’t have anything to do with this situation that has come up in the last ten days.
This was part of the reply from the web host.
Whatever is going on with Google, a “ban”, a “blacklist”, or they are just “shaking things up”, is out of my control. I never set out to manipulate the page ranks-I never wrote anything with that in mind. When I did start appearing fairly high in the rankings on some oddball subjects, I was amused but, happy about it because, people were visiting the site.
At the end of the day, I’m just going to keep doing what I’m doing. Really, Google is nothing but a glorified ad agency and it’s bogus as hell that an ad agency has such autonomous power over the web.
So, to that I’m with Axe, Screw ‘em.
Link | July 1st, 2008 at 8:37 am
Gary wrote,
if you keep on doing what you keep on doing, I’ll keep coming to read it.
Gary’s last blog post..8 good reasons to be a lousy musician
Link | July 1st, 2008 at 8:51 am
Pribek wrote,
It’s in me and it’s got to come out.
Link | July 1st, 2008 at 9:04 am
Pat Darnell and Friends wrote,
It has nothing to do with content, unless you want to scold Barack, then becomes a Grey zone… not black not white,,,, grey/or gray…
maybe a battleship gray with an enamel finish, or a hot humid gray.. depends on your sub-base and skin tones…
Errrr…. beside all that it is time to call in a few favors.. if you know what I mean?
Pat Darnell and Friends’s last blog post..Buying Dogfood in Bags can be a real Crap Shoot…
Link | July 1st, 2008 at 9:58 am
Pribek wrote,
“Errrr…. beside all that it is time to call in a few favors.. if you know what I mean?”
I’m not sure what you mean, some virtual version of the old fish in the safety deposit box, the old pennies jammed into the hotel door threshold, a hot foot or, calling the bent noses?
Link | July 1st, 2008 at 3:16 pm
Pat Darnell and Friends wrote,
shhhh… bent noses.
Link | July 1st, 2008 at 5:49 pm
Pribek wrote,
you know those guys?
Link | July 1st, 2008 at 6:15 pm
Ovidiu - GuitarFlame.com wrote,
Jack, take the time to read this article here since it may interest you. http://www.affiliatestuff.co.uk/wordpress/the-anatomy-of-a-google-wordpress-duplicate-content-penalty-and-how-to-fix-it/ I hope to fix your problem.
Ovidiu - GuitarFlame.com’s last blog post..Japanese musicians rock the house on traditional instruments!
Link | July 7th, 2008 at 8:28 am
Pribek wrote,
Thanks Ovidiu,I’m going to take a look at that. I noticed. late last week, that I’m starting to appear in the Google engine again but, not near the frequency and ranks that I was before. So, maybe some kind of temp. glitch, I don’t know.
Link | July 7th, 2008 at 11:18 am