Wow, this is really surprising as Big Mouth trade on their ethical practices. It's also slightly embarrassing as I've recommended them to clients. I hope that this is only a temporary glitch for them as it's pretty fatal for a business like that to have a long term Google ban. I think Steve would do well to post a response here as soon as possible.

On 10:26:25 21 February 2006 jonbovard wrote:

I was a client of BigMouthMedia (i have sinced change employers) and i found them to be very abov- board and reputable in their practice and advice. I am very suprised.

I have emailed Steve Leach (MD) directly and asked him to respond to this

jon

On 13:34:29 20 February 2006 Ashley wrote:

Blimey, the plot thickens...

It would appear from those I've talked to that Oyster Web don't actually do any SEO consultancy - they just sell leads for cash and (backward) links. Which would explain their high rankings and lack of apparent clients. I guess that's fair enough - they're a lead generation business rather than a consultancy. They do talk about their tender system on the site - http://www.oyster-web.co.uk/contact.htm

In the meantime, it appears that Bigmouthmedia have disappeared out of Google completely: no rankings, no back links showing, no pages indexed on a ‘site:’ search, even a search for bigmouthmedia doesn’t show them.

Never a dull day in search...

Ashley Friedlein
CEO, E-consultancy.com

Google have been recently rolling out there Big Daddy updates across its Data Centres this could have been responsible for the glitch in results.

There is an heavy reliance on todays web sites on search engines especially Google, surely it should be the target of every web site owner to build traffic from other sources than just search engines!  This way when rankings do drop the business does not suffer as much.  Focussing on links that will benefit your site in terms of traffic is more important than focussing on links just to boost your search engine ranking!  Easy said than done, but much more reward for your effort.

As for the article on Indicium I do not see a problem with reprinting it (was it originally available for syndication/reprint?), however they have been a little mischievous in not giving you a link but instead a written comment.

I just think its important to note that noone should rely on search engine traffic for their survival, and if they do look at other ways to support your business!!

Stephen Dean
SEO Marketing Solutions

On 20:51:50 21 February 2006 jonbovard wrote:

It looks like normal programming has resumed

http://www.google.co.uk/search?sourceid=navclient-ff&ie=UTF-8&rls=GGGL,GGGL:2005-09,GGGL:en&q=bigmouthmedia

I've spoken to Steve Leach at Bigmouthmedia and there will be a statement in due course. 

In the meantime, what do people feel Google should offer by way of mechanisms, processes or services for re-indexing should you be removed from their index?

From a legal point of view I believe Google have no obligation to do anything at all - to index you in the first place, to notify you of removal, to consider re-indexation etc. This is quite scary, well a lot scary actually, for so many businesses (including ours) which rely to some degree on search traffic. With such power, does there come a responsibility to develop means by which companies can get re-indexed?

How might this work in practice?

For starters, Google Sitemaps could be used as a tool to allow Google to let site owners know why they may have been removed from the index. I don't see why this cannot be automated and should be free to site owners. After all, by submitting their sites to Sitemaps it should improve the quality and depth of Google's index. 

Perhaps there could be another 'appeal' level, requiring human intervention from Google, whereby they agree to "hear your case" and investigate. I think it would be fair that Google charge for this in the first instance, and should it transpire that it was Google's 'fault' then the payment would be refunded.

Any other ideas / thoughts?

Ashley Friedlein
CEO, E-consultancy.com

Ashley

That was exactly what I outlined in my post that vanished yesterday?

Basically SiteMaps doesn't make much sense as a URL inclusion mechanism becuase if a spider can't access the URL in the frst place how is it going to factor in all the important external link value that is part of the ranking process. But it does make much more sense as a feedback tool for webmasters, even if it only gives a crude outline of the problem.

I had suggested to Matt who heads up the spam team at Google why not update Sitemaps to include:
1) Notification of what penalties a site/page has
2) When the penalty ends
3) ‘Fixed it’ feedback option with an offer of reduced penalty for good behaviour, and so your spam team knows when and which sites/pages to recheck

Edward Cowell (Teddie)
Technical Director

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