Google De-indexes Talk.Origins, Won't Say Why UPDATED 575
J. J. Ramsey writes "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 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 Matt's blog posting about how Google handles hacked sites.
Re:Hmm (Score:3, Interesting)
Its sad to see a great resource like that hacked and delisted; I wish them a speedy recovery.
Same thing happened to the first wiki (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Words are Meaningless - Public Utility (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:ahhh i love it (Score:3, Interesting)
Christians, Muslims and Jews believe in (some interpretations vary) creationism as do countless other religions. I don't want to say that a certain interpretation of the creationistic account is the incorrect or correct one but in my humble opinion a certain interpretation of it has as much validity as the FSM interpretation or the evolutionist interpretation.
Re:Words are Meaningless - Public Utility (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Words are Meaningless - Public Utility (Score:1, Interesting)
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/ [google.com]
A similar thing happened to our site, google de-listed us although we used to rank first in our category and first in Google's results, but once we got de-listed a little investigation on the webmasters tools clearly showed that google was perceiving us as a porn site and a phishing site -- among other things (things that I probably can't say here because of
It listed the offending keywords and the ranking for those keywords, with those keywords and some careful search -- we were able to find the problem pages. In some cases, it even listed the paths to folders and files that had been uploaded to our site. This is not to say we weren't pissed by the de-listing, we were, we were really pissed, and it took us may be 8 months for google to relist us and completely push us back to the top of the search results, but the situation is not as desperate and as dire as it may seem.
Re:Whine, Whine, Whine (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Words are Meaningless - Public Utility (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Words are Meaningless (Score:3, Interesting)
Instead he explodes with a "OMGosh, Google is dishonest, you guys won't communicate with us, why are you haters!" Well, okay, that's not a direct quote, but...
Yea, in fact it's not a quote at all, and you just felt it's better to completely make it up and make conclusions based on a situation you just imagined yourself.
That makes sense.
Re:Words are Meaningless - Public Utility (Score:3, Interesting)
Google should whitelist certain sites if they meet a few criteria.
First off, it should be a valid site listed on Google for a "reasonable" period of time. Second, it should come up as a valid result for a "large" number of searches on relevant terms. Please note terms in quotations which Google could set to arbitrary values in order to make the whitelist manageable.
If there are other useful tests that can easily be automated or found by DB query insert them here.
Last someone at Google should be informed that a site has met the automatic criteria for whitelisting. A human should check it out, and if it appears to be a valid site etc etc. It is whitelisted probationally. 6 month human review... then a review only if there are complaints or if there is a problem leading to technical disqualification. These human reviews should be spread around the company so that employees that sit at a desk with net access might be asked to check out a site or two. Sort of like moderating on
There are a lot of sites that Google could readily whitelist, like CNN, Yahoo, Google itself, Microsoft, Apple, Wikipedia... you get the point. A site like Talk Origins should fall into this category pretty quickly.
This is a relatively safe practice because spammers would have to post sites that had a long life on Google's index, attracted users searching for it, and passed two human checks. This is manageable because a very small percentage of sites fall into this category. Many if not all of these would be more profitable as legitmate sites than link farms.
First stab at the issue with just a few seconds of thought. I'll let the people getting paid figure out the sordid details. (You know like how do you verify adult sites for inclusion in the listings at work?)
Comment removed (Score:1, Interesting)
happens all the time (Score:2, Interesting)
I used to work on a site that had this happen. It ends up that past practices from the company led to the penalty and delisting. Unfortunately, google will not tell you exactly what you are doing wrong.
It pretty much led to the demise of the company. Sales plummeted so far that the investor pulled the plug. We did actually end up fixing the issue and relisted but the damage was done. (amongst other problems the company had...wasn't only google that did them in)
There really should be a tool provided by google that tests your site and tells you if and what it finds wrong. You would think this would be easy considering the code already exists.
Perhaps it could even just be a tool provided only to advertisers.
Re:Synopsis (Score:4, Interesting)
Science is based on a single "article of faith", ie: I belive the real world exists as I and others who inhabit said "real world" collectively percieve it. I can only prove with certainty that I exist and furthermore can only prove it to myself. If I do not have faith in the real world then "others" must be a figment of my imagination, a troublesome state of affairs since the imaginary/real others will declare me a psychopath [google.com] and lock me up in a real/imaginary padded room.
Since I and "others" can observe and agree on things in and about the real world we can create testable theories that can be refined to better fit our observations and accurately predict outcomes. ie: We can practice the scientific method and refine our theories until we reach a (possibly non-existant) point where the only "assumption" is that the real world exists, or as I like to put it the Universe "just is".
So regarding a belief in evolution - The only faith required is the faith that the real world exists.
As for religion, it is based on blind faith, blind since I and "others" cannot percieve the same observations, these observations and associated theories fail the "real world" test because they cannot be demonstrated to "others" using their own perceptions. This does not mean religion is pointless or even psuedoscience, it simply means religion is not comprable to science (apples vs oranges). In my mind making such comparisons entirely misses the point of both endevours.
Psuedoscience, litteraly "fake science" is blind faith dressed in a lab coat. Sure creationism is a theory but it's NOT a scientific one, claiming otherwise is by definition, psudoscience.
Finally the lack of a strong scientific theory for the origin of life does not validate creationisim, nor does it invalidate the theory of evolution.
Bias: I suppose you could argue on some deep philosophical level that faith in the "real world" makes me biased toward...um...the real world, I can only wonder if that automatically means psychopath are unbiased? What does "science is a religion" prove? - I'm biased because science has a demonstratably superior track record of explaining and predicting the real world's behaviour whereas blind faith performs no better than random chance. Is that the kind of "bias" we are talking about here? - Because if it is, I am wondering how a non-phycopath can go to bed confident they will awake on the same planet the next morning?
Short cut to scientific enlightenment: Carl Sagan's book "A demon haunted world". It's also serves as an outstanding example of what a skeptic should be.
Re:Synopsis (Score:5, Interesting)
1. Everything that begins to exist has a cause
2. The universe began to exist
3. Therefore, the universe has a cause
What came before the big bang? That question is meaningless, as time did not exist. So you have a few options, only one of them feasible. The first is that the universe is infinitely old and had no beginning. Once a view of atheists, this is no longer scientifically plausible. The second answer is that the universe came into existence from nothing - absolutely nothing. The third, and most reasonable, is that something else caused the universe to be created. This cause must itself be timeless, and spaceless, as time and space began to exist with the big bang.
So the atheist must either claim the absurdity that the universe came from nothing, or he(/she) must acknowledge that there was something that created it. And that *something* is inaccessible from scientific analysis. It is not, however, too far from the reach of philosophy and logic. We can draw reasonable conclusions about this entity.
Re:Synopsis (Score:3, Interesting)
Science admits it's failures anywhere "god divided by zero", including "the other side" of the big bang. What it asserts is that the big bang is the most complete explaination that fits what we currently percieve as "the Universe".
I would say it's a safe bet that the ability of science to provide answers to the jigsaw of life will continue to improve but will remain incomplete and ultimately subservient to brute force laced with ignorance and dogma.
Also there is a very good reason why faith in god must be blind [thinkexist.com].
Re:Google Webmaster Tools (Score:4, Interesting)
The sick thing is that I have Google Adwords on that site so each day that Google don't list me, THEY are losing money. I estimate I get 10x the click through business from MSN search than I do from Google. I'd probably make 3x the profit (as would Google) if they'd index.
Re:Synopsis (Score:4, Interesting)
What I really find worrying (hello, 1500's are calling) is the method of reasoning by creationists, like yourself.
A: There was a big bang.
B: We currently don't know what was the cause of this.
C: There must be 'some higher being' that created the universe.
Now A and B do not lead to C, no matter how you reason. If you want to have a drop of credibility, you'll have to support your claims. However, you can not, thus your logic is flawed. What created the 'entity' you speak of? What came before it? Why did it create the universe? If you want to play the science game, you should be answering those questions. Science allows questions to be left open, but tries to answer as many as possible by using facts. Creationism is not, and is unlikely to ever be, scientific or logical. You are allowed to believe in the toothfairy for all I care, but unless you have evidence that a mystical entity is willing to pay for your teeth: keep your belief to yourself.