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You’ve been directed to this page instead of the page that Google found because I’m conducting a little boycott of Google’s search engine. Why? In essence, they are trying to reduce the relative importance of blog content within their search results, even when that content is every bit as valid as the more “legitimate” content sources. I therefore no longer allow their bot to crawl my site, and all sites that are referred by them are directed here.
You are welcome to dig through the site manually and find what you were searching for, or you can try a different search engine… Yahoo generally provides the same links as Google, and it’s not redirected. Or, copy the search link out of the Google search page and paste it in a different browser window if you like.
I’m not trying to keep you from the information, I’m just trying to tell Google that I think they’re wrong. I’m sure they’re not listening to one little blog owner, but it makes me feel better.
Enjoy your stay, I hope you find what you’re looking for!
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Noticed an interesting entry in Jeremy’s blog today, entitled PageRank is Dead, discussing Google’s recent tweaks that have resulted in an apparent lessening of importance of blog content. Well, looks like they’ve come up with a pretty fine way to me. My blog now has a PageRank of 0. Those of you with the Google Toolbar in Internet Explorer can see that right in the Toolbar. Zilch! That’s zero, as unimportant as it gets. I started off as a “2″:http://coldforged.org/archives/2003/01/31/google_says.html, moved up to a stellar 5 a short while ago, and now dropped off the face of the earth.
Now that I think about it, I actually have noticed a marked decrease in Google hits… it doesn’t take a genius to notice it. Go to my “referrers page”:http://www.coldforged.org/refer. Notice that you can get what appears to be two and a half days worth of referrers in that one group of 50. Click on the “next 50″ thing a couple of times, and you’ll note a startlingly different pattern: currently, at the “start 150″:http://www.coldforged.org/refer/index.php?start=150 mark, it can only fit from 9:57AM to 5:17PM from one day in that same amount. 50 referrals in less than 12 hours then compared with 50 referrals in around 60 hours. Get the drift?
You can argue all day whether blog content is as important as “regular” content, whatever that is. Let’s take my most common searches as examples and see whether people are well-served by being directed to my (unimportant) blog.
- The infamous “Splinter Cell Demo Walkthrough”:http://coldforged.org/archives/2002/11/06/splinter_cell_demo_walkthrough.html and various misspellings account for roughly 40% of all searches to my site. Interestingly enough, that’s exactly what I provide. Now, whether my walkthrough is as pertinent as, say, GameSpot’s walkthrough is the question. I guess it’s not.
- X-Men porn. Okay, they got me on this one. I actually have not a single piece of porn on the entire site. Not one. Searchers should obviously be sent elsewhere.
- “Matrix iMAX”:http://coldforged.org/archives/2003/04/24/matrix_imax.html is getting to be a popular search. I have some decent information there, so one could argue that people would not be misled by coming here.
- My ever-popular “DIY subwoofer”:http://coldforged.org/speakernew.html, while ugly, arguably still has some merit.
- “Free market economy”:http://coldforged.org/archives/2003/02/19/free_market_economy.html. Don’t know how I’d characterize this one. I doubt this is what people would intend.
- “Smacktard”:http://coldforged.org/archives/2002/10/25/i_am_smacktard.html is as good as any out there, I suppose
- “Sony Clie SJ33″:http://coldforged.org/archives/2003/03/11/sony_clie_sj33_first_impressions.html is valid, I’d say.
So, all in all, I’d have to say that for the searches that actually reach me, I have a decent signal-to-noise ratio. What does this mean? Not a damned thing, really. Google will do what Google thinks is best for their bottom line. If they decide that their customers are not well-served by being directed to so-called “blogs”, then that’s what they’ll do.
So, ColdForged will do what he thinks is best for his overall happiness. And I came to a realization… I don’t necessarily want Google visitors. I thought I did when I first started this… I mean, I did everything I could for “Googlejuice”, and really ached over hits. But let’s think about it a little bit more. Do I really care whether a single other person reads my walkthrough? All those slackjawed morons did was leave “juvenile comments”:http://coldforged.org/archives/2003/03/14/youth_of_america.html such that I disabled them for that single entry. Sure, I’d like for people to see the subwoofer, learn how to “deal with sugar ants”:http://coldforged.org/archives/2003/04/14/hating_flik.html, install their own “scalloped wall shelving”:http://coldforged.org/archives/2003/04/04/scallopbased_wall_shelving.html (#7 on the search list) and whatnot. But, those people aren’t going to come back. The fact is search visitors aren’t a readership. They’re lite snackers or leechers, but not a readership. If you’re looking for blogs, you don’t Google for them, you look for other bloggers that you read and see what they read. I bet I don’t have a single return reader from a search.
So, Google has spent it’s last time here… the Googlebot goes in the .htaccess. And, just to be even more small-minded, all referrals from Google will come to this post (Hi!)… go ahead, try it! If you’re here from Google, welcome. You’re more tenacious than I would have figured. You should be able to find links to what you’re interested in somewhere on this page, so enjoy.
I’ll thank “Mark”:http://diveintomark.org/archives/2003/02/26/how_to_block_spambots_ban_spybots_and_tell_unwanted_robots_to_go_to_hell.html once again for his introductory .htaccess file diddling. For those of you who want to join in my silent Google protest, here are the rules that I used in my .htaccess. Bear in mind that I am not the .htaccess stud that Mark is, so this is probably far from the best method. Here’s the lines to redirect all search queries to a particular page. Obviously you’ll want to point to a page on your own site… or maybe not! I won’t give two spits if you link to my page. Though if you do, you’re welcome to leave out the second RewriteCond since it won’t be necessary.
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Rewritecond %{REQUEST_URI} !/archives/2003/05/26/google_not_in_my_blog.html$ [NC]
RewriteRule .*\.(html|cgi)$ http://coldforged.org/archives/2003/05/26/google_not_in_my_blog.html [R,NC]
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And, of course, the old standby: no more Googlebot spidering.
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RewriteRule .* - [F,L]
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Update: Updated the mod-rewrite code slightly, since it didn’t work as intended for my application. The “HTTP_REFERER” check was slightly too broad, taking any occurence of the letters “google” in the referrer string as disallowed. This of course meant that my trying to leave this page is disallowed, since it’s got “google” in the title :). Idiot.
This is just about one of the best articles about this subject that I’ve been able to find. Great work Jason. It’s so true about what he was saying of how the internet seems to be changing so very rapidly.
Come on.. blog noise is killing google. I am glad that google has a -removebloggers feature now. Your being upset is understandable, but its better for everyone this way.
joining the club seems like i’m not the only one who isn’t too interested in visitors to my blog from google search hits….
PageRank Is Dead I like that attitude. The validation for your blog should first and foremost be personal…