More Sky Is Falling RSS Feed Stuff (Google Blogsearch)--
--Which is rather amusing, given that right now I'm busy mucking about with three feeds from outside LJ and all but shouting "Work, dammit, WORK!" (Technically the three I mention in this post are spitting out headlines like good little feeds, but they're also registering posting errors, so since I am not a feed goddess and the Syndication FAQs don't give me enough info on why this would be happening, I've opened a Support request. Stay tuned and stuff! *G*)
Ok, so apparently the new Google Blogsearch is freaking everybody out (something I didn't know, as I was at work when it all went down, ha).
Never fear, you lot. According to msilverstar, Google is aware of and in the process of fixing the problem.
Now here's the important bit (which you can get from msilverstar's post) -- Google has a long history (IMHO) of being very good about respecting "noindex, noarchive, nofollow" commands, so this is a slipup from the testing phase, before it went public, not an all out "screw-the-bloggers!" sort of thing. They're big, so it's a bit like piloting an ocean liner. It takes a while to turn the beast around, but once it's chugging in the right direction...
They're going to remove the blogs that have had the "noindex, nofollow, noarchive" commands in place ASAP. Frankly, unless you're a LJer that's interested in being indexed by search engines, you should have the "Block Robots/Spiders from indexing your journal" option in your Personal Info checked already. (It's about halfway down under "Privacy Options" if you're looking for it.) The blogs that have that already checked will be removed from their database. As far as I know, if you did not have it checked and you change it now, you may need to wait until they do their next pass through to be removed. Still, Google is slow but does actually follow through. Remember the ocean liner analogy. *G*
msilverstar has this to say about finding out whether you're in the database or not--
To tell whether or not your journal is in the index, use the "inurl:" syntax, for example:
http://blogsearch.google.com/blogsearch?q=inurl:billyviggo (OK because my billyviggo comm is public).
Replace that name with your journal name to find out.
If you've got an odd blog username like mine, you can do a search for it as well, but be warned, that'll additionally bring up references to your blog in other journals, and/or possibly other blogs with the same name on other systems, etc.
Alrighty? We're all good now. Sky remains above, computers with blogging software below. ^_~
Ok, so apparently the new Google Blogsearch is freaking everybody out (something I didn't know, as I was at work when it all went down, ha).
Never fear, you lot. According to msilverstar, Google is aware of and in the process of fixing the problem.
Now here's the important bit (which you can get from msilverstar's post) -- Google has a long history (IMHO) of being very good about respecting "noindex, noarchive, nofollow" commands, so this is a slipup from the testing phase, before it went public, not an all out "screw-the-bloggers!" sort of thing. They're big, so it's a bit like piloting an ocean liner. It takes a while to turn the beast around, but once it's chugging in the right direction...
They're going to remove the blogs that have had the "noindex, nofollow, noarchive" commands in place ASAP. Frankly, unless you're a LJer that's interested in being indexed by search engines, you should have the "Block Robots/Spiders from indexing your journal" option in your Personal Info checked already. (It's about halfway down under "Privacy Options" if you're looking for it.) The blogs that have that already checked will be removed from their database. As far as I know, if you did not have it checked and you change it now, you may need to wait until they do their next pass through to be removed. Still, Google is slow but does actually follow through. Remember the ocean liner analogy. *G*
msilverstar has this to say about finding out whether you're in the database or not--
To tell whether or not your journal is in the index, use the "inurl:" syntax, for example:
http://blogsearch.google.com/blogsearch?q=inurl:billyviggo (OK because my billyviggo comm is public).
Replace that name with your journal name to find out.
If you've got an odd blog username like mine, you can do a search for it as well, but be warned, that'll additionally bring up references to your blog in other journals, and/or possibly other blogs with the same name on other systems, etc.
Alrighty? We're all good now. Sky remains above, computers with blogging software below. ^_~