There is now a comment on this blog entry purporting to be from someone on the Google web search team claiming that the site was removed because it had been hacked and that Google had attempted to contact the author.
Curious, the search <a href="http://www.google.com/search?q=roughtype.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.google.com/search?q=roughtype.com</a><p>Brings up all sorts of URL's that contain the string roughtype.com but are not the site itself.<p>It's frightening, especially since we have no way of knowing what else is being filtered out and for whom.<p>I would tend to give the big G the benefit of the doubt; it's a mistake or he got on the wrong side of the algorithm, or his site was infected with malware. (that last one does happen see <a href="http://blog.oddhead.com/2009/06/22/un-hacking-my-blog/" rel="nofollow">http://blog.oddhead.com/2009/06/22/un-hacking-my-blog/</a> )<p>But still, it is the reputational equivalent of logging in to your brokerage account to find out it's empty.
Wow! This is crazy. A similar thing happened to my friend Matt Harrison a while back. Here are the relevant links:
- <a href="http://panela.blog-city.com/burninated_by_google.htm" rel="nofollow">http://panela.blog-city.com/burninated_by_google.htm</a>
- <a href="http://panela.blog-city.com/back_in_google.htm" rel="nofollow">http://panela.blog-city.com/back_in_google.htm</a>
- <a href="http://panela.blog-city.com/google_hates_me.htm" rel="nofollow">http://panela.blog-city.com/google_hates_me.htm</a><p>As Matt explains, he was re-added to the index with no explanation. Perhaps Nick Carr will have a similar redemption.