BOYCOTT GOOGLE - Censoring Hippy.com!

Yes, we need to know which NEW search engines are replacing the once fair and balanced Google. It won't be hard for the first new engine that indexes like Google USED TO, before it went public and became such a money grubber, to become the next big thing!

Fuck google and it's $120 Billion capitalization. It's probably not even worth ONE BILLION. Cause tomorrow it could be obsolete. Anyone buying their stock now is insane. If I had money I'd be shorting google big time.

 

You really can't figure that out?

How about what a BIG PLAYGROUND this is for LEOs, who have nothing better to do, who can't get off their asses and find real criminals, they have to hang out here in one endless fishing trip (cops like to fish).

Plus if they censor this big free-speech site, they'll have a lot more ppl on their asses.

But hippy.com USED to bring half our new visitors to hipforums. Now it's bringing very few. So this site's traffic is down too.

It's also hurting our income, which is no doubt one of their objectives, as they're also censoring hipmarket.com.

 

Looks like Yahoo is guilty of an even worse free-speech offense. They helped the Chinese gov't jail an Internet writer expressing his human right to free speech.

This was the third time Yahoo has done this, resulting in prison terms of 4, 8 and 10 years!

Read this:
http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=internetNews&storyid=2006-04-19T153749Z_01_PEK23834_RTRUKOC_0_US-RIGHTS-CHINA-INTERNET.xml&rpc=22

 

Yes, but Google has always billed itself as an unbiased search engine. In fact it built its entire reputation and business on that. Once Yahoo and the others started putting up paid ads, and non-paying websites started disappearing from their listings, everyone moved to Google which scanned every page on the net, not just the homepage.

Now Google is looking more and more like every other search engine, with more and more paid ads pushing non-commercial sites further down the list. What makes google good anymore? NOTHING! What once made it stand out as a leader of the Internet has disappeared.

BOYCOTT GOOGLE!

 

Thanks for your advice, which is just a small part of what webmasters need to do to optimize their sites. But, nope that's not it at all. I know cause I do this for a living too. Our sites didn't get to be #1 cause I don't know how to optimize for search engines.

How do you explain that we are #1 on all other search engines that don't use google?

How do you explain that you can search entire titles of articles from hippy.com with "" around them, and STILL not come up with the article until the very end of the list?

Here's a few to try:
"Bush Ordered NSA to Spy on Americans" - This is an article appearing on hippy.com, but the hipforums thread with the same name appears ahead, and of course hippy.com is Dead Last!

"All About Absinthe, The Green Fairy" - This exact wording appears in every site google finds, all inward links pointing to our site, but Hippy.com again appears last in the list (save one other).

"hippies & drugs" - an article that appears in hippy.com with the exact title in the metatags, appears DEAD LAST, even behind hipplanet.com which has an article with that in a longer title. The ones that appear first don't have it in the title at all.

If that isn't repression, what is? And these were not keyword searches, which are 99% of all google searches, but actual title searches in quotes. Do you know the exact title of pages you're searching for? Never happens. So this isn't even a valid scenario, but it proves that hippy.com is being stuck in the very last seat on the bus.

I'll say it again, YES WE ARE IN THE INDEX. All the more frustrating that if the site appears at all, IT'S NEARLY ALWAYS LAST. Which means in fact that NO ONE WILL SEE IT. Whereas a few months ago any similar search, or even a keyword search with the word hippy or hippie brought us up #1 or very close.

We have NOT changed the site one-iota, so the fault lies with google.

BTW, the site has enough incoming links (in the hundreds), to earn it a Page Rank of 6, which is high these days, and should mean a lot more visibility in the Google index.

 

Thanks again for your advice, which is good. However, it would be nice if you actually performed the searches indicated instead of harping on the metatags, which are JUST FINE. You don't think the fact that our site is HIPPY.COM should register at all in a search for the word "hippy", esp. since said site has been online for 10 yrs and has been seen by over 20,000,000 people?

The listed order of the search results is EXACTLY the point I am making. Our site appears at the bottom in just about every search.

Changing the metatags WON'T make much difference when you've been censored. We have probably over 1000 pages, each with separate tags, by title & subject, yet ALL of these pages are being relegated to back of the line.

Yes, I know that very well, but google just RAISED our ranking to 6 from 5 where it had been stuck for over two years (it was 6 before). That is a SIDE point I made about google defying it's own ranking system to purposely censor our site.

And b4 you even say it, I know the Page Rank is never fresh, and based on old data (OK, I know google search engine inside & out - as much as you can without being given the actual filter algorithms themselves)

This was not meant to be an SEO thread, so let's can it.

I know there are THOUSANDS of good high quality content sites that have been sandboxed (apparently) by Google since the last update, most without good reason.

It's reached the point, as indicated by nivek1969's posts, that webmasters are now supposed to design their sites to conform with Google's idea of how pages should be setup, in order to get a good ranking. This is what led to google's index being spammed time and time again. Who is google to say what you should and shouldn't have on your page?

In the meantime Google's search results become less and less meaningful, as content-rich sites who do not conform to the letter of Google's dictates and censorship guidelines get shunted aside. While those sites whose goals are only to make money end up on top of most searches.

AGAIN, BOYCOTT GOOGLE!

 

One last shot: I do not feel it's my duty as a webmaster of popular sites to have to change code on all our pages everytime google releases a new update. In fact I've seen in the past where making massive changes to metatags, only gets you labeled a spammer, and sent to the sandbox.

Google has played with their ranking system SO MUCH, that everyone who's been victimized would just like to see them STOP doing it. Especially right before Xmas as is their history. Many a website has lost their xmas shopping traffic due to a change in google just before the holidays. In fact there are several class action lawsuits underway over that issue alone.

 

Yes, and Google has NO INHERENT RIGHT to index our content, cache it and display it as information on their OWN site (the subject of other copyright lawsuits against Google). So it works both ways. If they're going to pretend to be an information resource of the entire Internet (which they do claim). And they claim not to be keeping any websites from being purposely repressed in their index (in the US anyway), yet I can provide proof otherwise, why should ANYONE trust their results as being in anyway fair?

And you might not see their "unbiased" claim on their homepage, but believe me, they make it all the time, to everyone one of their advertisers, and to those who make claims of bias like me (and there are thousands of us).

 

I find it interesting that so many people (esp on this site) claim google is a "private corporation" like that excuses any kind of behavior. Esp. when Google exploits public information in a selective way that promotes some and disregards others. Then claims to treat all information equally.

In fact there are many reported instances of Google favoring big advertisers by restoring their listings when they were repressed in the listings due to Google updating their filters. They complained and got reinstated.

Google does have a reinclusion process (supposedly), which we have used time and again, to no avail. I guess since we don't advertise, we don't get special treatment (of course Google denies giving any advertisers special treatment - yeah right - since when is that a private company's prerogative?)

BOYCOTT GOOGLE!