Have you done any vanity searches on Google lately? If you have a blog, you may be familiar with the value Google's search engine assigns to weblogs. A search for Brian Bailey over the past six months would reliably return this blog as either the first or second result (curse you, Brian Bailey Photography!). A search for Leave It Behind produced similar results.
Alas, those days appear to be over. My site no longer appears in the first four pages of both searches! Google has clearly made substantial changes to its search calculations.
Read this piece for more information and some great comments speculating on what it means.
In the past I've thought that Google overvalued weblogs in its rankings, but this drastic change is surprising. I'll be interested to see how much the results are tweaked over the coming weeks.
Other engines have not followed along so far; LeaveItBehind.com is #1 on Yahoo and #4 on MSN Search.
More than likely you've been dropped from the google index b/c you don't have the Google logo on the "SiteSearch Google" code on your site. This violates their terms of service...and the only reason I know this is that it happened to me as well. See my posts about it here:
http://zerotrilogy.gotdns.com/jaysonblog/archive/2005/01/18/795.aspx
http://zerotrilogy.gotdns.com/jaysonblog/archive/2005/01/26/881.aspx
Spread the word. The good news is that once you are again compliant w/ their terms, you'll be reindexed within a couple of weeks. It also doesn't hurt to email Google explaining that you've fixed everything. Let me know how it goes. You'll be number one again in no time.
Posted by: Jayson Knight | February 16, 2005 at 09:04 PM
Now that's some seriously helpful information! Thanks a lot, Jayson. I added the Google logo (though I moved the search down the page so it wouldn't dominate the header) and will drop them an email. I'll be interested to see the results.
Great tip - we definitely need to spread the news on this one. Your comment was the first I'd heard of it.
Posted by: Brian Bailey | February 16, 2005 at 11:11 PM
No problem...maddening though, eh?
I was thinking about it; this only explains your site (I didn't see anything on the sites you linked to that would explain why they got dropped). I'm not much for conspiracy theories, but I got inspired and decided to post about it (latest post on my site), would be curious to hear your thoughts. I also am curious about who else has been dropped as of late...if this is indeed an initiative by Google, it's incomprehensible and needs to be addressed by the blogging community as a whole. I doubt Google would do that, but if so it needs to be nipped in the bud.
Posted by: jayson knight | February 17, 2005 at 12:07 AM
Googles perplexes me. I can type in my name (Joshua Blankenship) and my blog shows up #1. I can type in my design site (HRTWRK) and i'm #1-7 or so. My blog is a year older and gets 4 times the traffic. The search engine is a strange and wonderful place that I don't fully understand.
Posted by: shua | February 17, 2005 at 07:54 AM
When i searched for leave it behind without quotes, you were result three, with quotes ("Leave it Behind"), you were there at number one.
Posted by: ko | February 17, 2005 at 06:04 PM
Has Google changed how they rank blogs again? My low traffic blog is getting very high search results on things that it really should not...like 80's hit songs!
http://jpowell.blogs.com/jason_powell_church_it/2005/03/google_and_blog.html
Posted by: Jason Powell | March 22, 2005 at 11:32 PM