Google De-indexes Talk.Origins, Won't Say Why UPDATED

Google - policy revealed? - Been reading The Search which covers Google a little.

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| Google De-indexes Talk.Origins, Won't Say Why UPDATED |
| from the honest-webmasters-go-fish dept. |
| posted by kdawson on Sunday December 03, @23:21 (Google) |
| http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/12/03/2049202 |
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[0]J. J. Ramsey writes "[1]Talk.Origins is an archive with thousands of
pages exposing creationist pseudoscience. Rather mysteriously, Google
pulled the plug on its search engine, giving only the vague reason: 'No
pages from your site are currently included in Google's index due to
violations of the webmaster guidelines.' This was apparently triggered by
a recent cracking of the site that added 'hidden links to non-topical
sites,' but Google won't say just what the violations were. Talk.Origins
webmaster Wesley R. Elsberry believes that [2]this Google policy harms
honest webmasters." From the article: "My mission, whether I liked it or
not, was to find and fix whatever problem the [Talk.Origins Archive]
might have, with no guidance as to what the problem was and nothing at
all about where to start looking... I was extremely lucky. The damage to
my site was limited and in the first place that I happened to look. Other
honest webmasters might not be so lucky. They may have to undertake an
arduous process of vetting pages, essentially having to second-guess the
mind of the cracker in trying to locate a problem that Google knows the
exact location of." Thanks to an alert reader who sent in [3]Matt's blog
posting about how Google handles hacked sites.

Discuss this story at:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=06/12/03/2049202

Links:
0. mailto:jjramsey@pobox.com
1. http://www.talkorigins.org/
2. http://austringer.net/wp/?p=443
3. http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/how-google-handles-hacked-sites/