And if I am, who else is? It's amazing how much we take for granted that our search results are accurate and unfiltered. If search mechanics and result filtering (or censorship, perhaps) interest you, then read on...
This is the peculiar thing that happened: I noticed that my Google search referrals disappeared this week. So, I went to www.google.com and entered "christine.net" in the search form. Up until last week, this search returned not only all of my blog posts, but also all of the other blogs and sites that refer to www.christine.net. Today, this search comes back completely empty. Considering that I have been publishing content to this domain (and have been linked to) for over 10 years, this is puzzling.
Another try: I searched on "christine" this time. Typically, Christine.net will come back in the top 20 results for this search. Again, the site isn't in the search results.
My last try: I searched on "christine herron" - and interestingly, the home page for my blog does show up, but with a twist: The only listing is for spacejockeys.blogs.com, which is the home base for my Typepad account. Most of my blog posts are not published to this domain, however. (I use domain mapping, and have mapped www.christine.net to my Typepad account. This means that all of my posts publish under a www.christine.net URL.)
This odd search behavior has resulted in some fun speculation in our cube farm. Am I being blacklisted because I preferred FreeFind for my blog search? Am I being censored in China? Or has something gone wrong behind the Google curtain? (Note: Just in case it's the latter, I did go back onto Google this morming and re-submit my site for indexing.)
Anyone else have this problem? Please do comment on how you resolved it. Or perhaps share your own conspiracy theories, since those are more fun. It's certainly entertaining to think that I'm so outrageous that I have been banned by Google. I'll also add commentary if I learn anything interesting, or if the results mysteriously come back.
ADDENDUM AS OF 4/21: Mysteriously, this site is now appearing in search results again, in all the same places as before. More notes below in the commentary. It's nice that some cure was supplied, but it's still disturbing that a site's results presence could so radically disappear. I'd have been frantic if this blog was my livelihood, if I was running a political campaign, or the like.
Tags: christine herron christine.net space jockeys google freefind technology
