Bill Cammack

Giving credit where it’s due, “Google Search Quality” has restored BillCammack.com by July 22, 2008, less than four (4) days after I cleaned up the infected section of my site and sent in my “reconsideration request”.

Actually, this is four days spanning a weekend, so, technically, two BUSINESS days. I applied for reconsideration on Friday, and billcammack.com appears in Google’s search results as of Tuesday morning. Rather commendable, IMO. :D I don’t know the way any of this works, but this may be the first spider crawl of my site since I sent in the request, informing them that I had removed the text that got my site removed in the first place. That’s exactly how I think it should be done. Not some kind of immediate reinstatement process, just “Please check again on your next crawl. I’ve fixed the problem. Thanks”.

Before I went to sleep last night, I had noticed I started getting hits from Google, but my site itself wasn’t available. Hopping out of bed just now, I noticed lots more Google hits and checked “Bill Cammack” and “Bill”, and I was back in position.

As far as I can tell, the “Google Search Quality” system worked fairly and swiftly in this situation, and I really couldn’t ask for more. :)

Having said that, living without my > 1,000 pages being searchable on Google for ~ 4 days, when being indexed in Google has been “a part of my life” every day for the last two years has prompted me to consider some new things when it comes to “site promotion” and “viewer/reader awareness”.

The first thing I’m going to do is start a mailing list. My Cousin Richard has wanted to start up a RealFans.TV mailing list for the longest, but I felt that we were doing enough with our community site and our Facebook Group. During this “Google search blackout” for my site, I supplemented my usual traffic by informing people directly via social media outlets when I posted something new. I figured that instead of sending random updates to places, I’d do like Chris Brogan and Jason Calacanis and create my own email list. This way, searchable or not, I have a way to quickly inform people who are interested about what’s new with the site, what’s “old” that I’d like to bring back to people’s attention or what’s coming up in the future.

I also need to build a static section to my site which is representative of more than my video editing work. While it was good to have my resume and my Flickr set still available, it really was a vastly incomplete representation of my internet presence.

Anyway… I’m satisfied (not that that’s important :) ) with my Google disappearance/reappearance experience. I think the process worked fairly and efficiently, and I’m REALLY GLAD it didn’t take WEEKS, as they mentioned in their correspondence. Not because I NEED to be indexed in Google, but because I’m used to it, and it was a strange feeling for the last couple of days, posting stuff that I knew wasn’t going to be indexed.

Well… On With The Show! :D

back story: 1) “What if YOU get removed from Google?”
back story: 2) “Whose Fault Is This?”