It’s been a little over a week since I was dropped from the Google index; I foolishly installed some compsci student’s code without reading the fine print over at the Google Terms of Service which mandate that if you write code that uses their index, you must invariably include the Google logo.  Incredibly enough, the above mentioned blogger hasn’t revised his code to include said logo, he only has a disclaimer posted saying to do so, and of course by the time I realized I needed the Google logo it was too late.  There is the saying “caveat emptor”, but I still believe his code was posted with wreckless abandon.  His site states “I (David Cumps) cannot be held responsible for any damage what-so-ever that might come from this blog.”, but to me that’s the equivalent of saying “I cannot be held responsible for any moronic people I kill before I’ve had my morning coffee”…in other words, please do your research first.  If this had been a site I make money off of, the results would have been pretty severe; hell I’m mad enough having been dropped from the index period (I still have not been reindexed, even after half a dozen emails to Google letting them know that I goofed and that I’ve removed the offending code (and of course hearing absolutely nothing back)…I’ve done everything short of Phil’s recommendation of sacrificing a goat, but not for lack of trying to find one roaming the streets of Charlotte).

I’m also a little peeved with Google; there are already some camps out there comparing their search monopoly to Microsoft…i.e. they can seemingly do whatever they want whenever they want with the firm belief that whomever they piss off in their wake will invariably have to come back to Google if they want to have any kind of recognition in the search realm.  It’s been 9 days since I sent the first email to them and have heard nothing.  Even the so called “evil empire” in Redmond has emailed me back the few times I’ve had to contact them…I even received a reply to an open letter I sent to Steve Ballmer, albeit just a “thanks” and it was probably typed up by one of his (probable) legions of assistants.  Regardless, I feel a bit abused…a warning would have been nice, or even better just a clear channel to reconcile the issue, i.e. “Google, I fucked up…here’s what I’ve done to fix it, please reindex me”.  But it would appear I will have to wait until their next round of indexing before I start getting some traffic around here (averaging 25 uniques a day, as opposed to 400+ when I was indexed…not a ton, but at least I was getting some interesting comments). 

It’s like a bad relationship where the sex is really good, inevitably you keep going back until something better comes along.  Cheers.