Google Forgot About Me
Oct. 28, 2005 by Jason
I used to get a ton of hits from Google searches. People found this site while searching for things like hung like a horse, Prothro injury pic, cock blog, taking a shit, etc. Yes they’re strange search strings, but at least they led potential new readers to The Churning.
Then a couple of days ago, Google stopped sending people in our direction. I don’t know what happened. It’s like I’ve fallen off the face of the internet. I did a little digging around and was baffled.
This page used to be ranked number one when searching for The Churning. But now it’s buried beneath hundreds of other results. I think it’s safe to say that my site should be number one for that string, considering that’s the title and 137 other sites link to this page.
I tried a few other searches that used to give me hits and got similar results. Searching for Jack E Brown dancing, Napoleon Dynamite Utah State Fair, or The Rawker no longer leads you to this site. Now I’m starting to feel a little paranoid.
I know the page is still listed, because it shows up when you search for “The Churning” or “www.thechurning.com.” My only thought is that Google may think I’ve cheated. I do link to myself a lot, in the sidebar and within posts that reference older posts. Maybe I’ve been banned.
Any ideas?
October 28th, 2005
Perhaps it’s part of Google’s campaign to unseat Bill Gates as owner and operator of the entire world. Maybe they’re afraid of you as the competition.
Hey! It could happen. I personally believe that’s why I’m not rich…that and never playing the lottery.
October 28th, 2005
It’s probably becaue of the updates in Google’s algorithms. There have been a lot of changes in search engine rankings. Read more at these sites:
http://blog.outer-court.com/archive/2005-10-28-n77.html
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/jagger-2-update-info/
October 28th, 2005
Poobah:
Well I am striving for world domination…
Ranting:
Thanks for the help! I’ll check out those links.
October 28th, 2005
Careful with the world domination thingie…you don’t want it when you’ve got it…believe me :pp
As for Google there are loads of changes going on not just with the search engine, but with the whole concept as it seems.
Search engines have always been a pain in the butt though…that’s nothing new.
October 28th, 2005
Have you checked your results on Yahoo?
On Yahoo I’m rated number 1 for Rockchild, number 2 for Grandma Stinks, and number 9 for Beaver Face, since my friend Alice makes beaver faces that makes her really look like a Beaver, but she doesn’t chew wood, I think.
I’m not obsessed beaver faces like you said in your October 24 post, just my friend Alice makes them, and it’s freaky! Thanks for writting bout my blog!
I hope you have a nice weekend, JJ, with lots of Pumpkin pie, but not in the face!
October 28th, 2005
My husband is always complaining about his lisings on Google. I think they are a complete pain in the arse.
October 28th, 2005
Christa:
I had no idea Google was planning these changes. I guess I’m just out of the technological loop. I should’ve been paying attention.
Rockchild:
Thanks for stopping by. I love your site. Shrimp sucks.
TS:
I usually don’t worry too much about it, because I’ve always been pretty highly ranked for certain keywords. But after this, I’m kind of freaking out about it.
October 28th, 2005
That is weird. I’ve been getting a ton of hits on an old post from google by users searching “Faliure, I’m feeling lucky”, that I did not get till recently. Maybe due to the changes as well. I was getting crazy hits from vagina searches landing on my post “The Vagina Game”. Dirty vagina, big vagina, you name it they got to me but they haven’t come in lately. Hmmm
October 28th, 2005
http://www.searchengines.com/
More advice than you want.
October 29th, 2005
Google’s been rumbling of removing the blogs from the main page and putting them in their own area. Trying to limit google bombs (miserable failure, etc.) sourced blogs. Did they just implement this feature? You try searching for some of your other fav blogs from the main google page?
The churning still ranks pretty high here on their beta blogsearch for your results:
http://www.google.com/blogsearch
Some still seem to rank high:
Napoleon Dynamite Utah State Fair
Who knows. Maybe the Rawker had some friends at google and got your site lowered in their index for payback.
October 29th, 2005
Just found this for some more info:
http://www.google.com/help/about_blogsearch.html
October 29th, 2005
CC:
Looks like it may have affected you as well. Hmmm….
Diane:
Thanks!
JO:
Yep. Thanks for the tip. That’s exactly what they did. All my shit is indexed on the blogsearch feature. Google.com says bye bye to The Churning.
October 29th, 2005
Sigh.. WHY does Google have to do this?!
October 29th, 2005
Recently the googlebot has been hitting my site but not picking up the latest entries, in fact the most recent entry it has is for the 21st. And that is ranked below the one for the 12th. Googlebot gets lazy I guess (and I’m talking about blogsearch, on it puts my flickr account first and then me. With that old entry.)
October 31st, 2005
Try resubmitting your site to Google. My site was dumped in Google’s rankings at one point and I resubmitted it. sure enough it rose agian a few weeks later. Could just have been coincidence of course…..
Here on a Battle of the Blogs. Looking good….
October 31st, 2005
Ranting:
Those robots are jerks.
Nicky:
That sucks. They should definitely give some level of priority to recent entries.
Aardvark:
Thanks for the advice. I tried that and the Google Webmasters help page says it should take 2-3 weeks to be indexed again (if I haven’t been banned).