Last week, my haiku site, tinywords, appeared as the 30th-40th result on a search for haiku on Google. This week, it’s not in the top 500. What happened?
I think Google is punishing me for mentioning the word “haiku” too many times in a previous post, which I admit I did in a fit of pique. Is this a permanent banishment, or have I just been sent to purgatory? Who knows? There’s no way I can find out, and the Great Oz is silent on the matter.
Sigh. You just can’t win with Google, folks.
UPDATE 3/30/06: It seems tinywords is back at #38 or 39. The disappearance was temporary. Thank goodness! I take back all the bad things I said about you, Google. I still like you.
5/30/2006 at 5:28 pm
Thane pointed this out to me, and you seem to be at about the 35th result when I conduct that search, even from your link there. I guess it was a temporary glitch or something.
Oh, but if Thane asks, tell him I fixed it for you — I’m trying to convince him that I have godlike powers over the internet… 🙂
5/30/2006 at 10:15 pm
I see you around 30th or 40th place for [haiku], so I wouldn’t assume that you’d been blacklisted by Google. To be fair, that’s a pretty general term (lots of people have things like haiku generators, DeCSS in haiku form, and it’s evidently the name of an operating system too).
For the search [daily haiku], I see you at #2, which is pretty good. You’re behind dailyhaiku.com, but just ahead of USA Today’s daily haiku. In my professional opinion as a Google engineer, I’d say your site is probably doing okay.
5/30/2006 at 11:19 pm
Hey, Matt, thanks for the professional opinion — I really appreciate that. And Tom, go ahead and take credit. Your godlike powers are clearly at work. Subject to the approval of actual Google engineers, of course.
5/31/2006 at 10:38 am
In defense of Tom’s godlike powers, he helped me bring the rank of our church’s new website above our church’s old web site. Whew!