"SANDBOXED"/ BLACKLISTED BY GOOGLE

How does Atlas grow? Google search is one critically important way. People find Atlas when they do a word search in google ie "Obama birth certificate", "Obama odinga", "honor killings", "Obama campaign finance fraud"  - stories that I broke or did groundbreaking work on and Atlas is usually in the top five of the search results. That's how folks find my work and generally I keep 15-20% of them as return readers. Regular Atlas readers know the media refuses to cover these stories - building readership is the only way to boost awareness in this increasingly dangerous world.

A couple of days ago I was wiped off google search pages. Yes, if you google Pamela Geller or Atlas Shrugs, I come up, that is not the issue. My work is not there, it does not come up in google's search results. It is critical to building Atlas that I be searchable.Youtube searches are still intact as are images.

Further my google search box (left sidebar) which I use almost constantly to search my site for reasearch (as do my readers) has been dramtically affaected. Input any term, any word in my search box and the same thing comes up - FORBIDDEN.

I have had to hire a separate security/consulting firm to get me back online. It is costly.  I need your help. Anything you could contribute to help offset the cost - it's a lot of hours would be greatly appreciated.

You can paypal my email address writeatlas@aol.com - go here to paypal.

Or write me offline if you wish to send a check.

UPDATE: And my google ads, which used to throw off a few bucks a day, generate nothing now. Nada. Zilch. Zero.

I juat want to be Atlas again in the googlesphere

I earned it.

THE GOOGLE OBAMA CONNECTION:

Owen Thomas, editor of the Silicon Valley gossip blog Valleywag, has penned a reasoned argument as to how Google is winning political influence in the wake of this month's presidential election. In the column he wrote, he takes a sharp-tongued look at how CEO Eric Schmidt appears to be trying to win and use influence in the new Washington.

Schmidt is savvy enough to realize that YouTube's growing prominence as a media outlet could help the company become a larger political player -- which is why the site sponsored two campaign debates. Traffic? Come on. YouTube hardly needs the help.

Thomas concludes:

In that light, isn't there something that stinks about handing the president's weekly addresses to a single commercial outlet controlled by a political ally of the president? Obama's YouTube chats amount to a large, unspoken, behind-the-scenes government kickback. Every election has something dirty about it. And there's no question Google won this contest.

UPDATE: Google CEO Could Be Obama's Tech Advisor

Rumor has it that Google CEO Eric Schmidt will be occupying the newly-formed tech advisor position to the president of the United States. Barack Obama created this position just shortly before visiting the Google headquarters during his campaign, and some believe that the reason this happened was because the job was promised to Schmidt.

The head of Google endorsed the Democratic candidate throughout the elections, though the ads the company posted on various sites were mostly Republican. However, Google employees donated far more to Obama's campaign than they did for John McCain – about $487,355, and $20,600 respectively, as estimated by the Wall Street Journal.

Me thinks it was the birth certificate story .... I broke it. I have the forensics.

Remember this back in June? Atlas Shrugs: GOOGLE SHUTS DOWN ANTI-OBAMA SITES

UPDATE 2:23pm: Jan did a little investigating:

How is this one for lies?

Policies and Principles: Google and censorship

It is Google's policy not to censor search results. However, in response to local laws, regulations, or policies, we may do so. When we remove search results for these reasons, we display a notice on our search results pages. Please note: For some older removals (before March 2005), we may not show a notice at this time.

UPDATE: Mike in Texas pointed me to Google Ranking Diagnostics

Website Diagnostics panel
Helping you self-diagnose your website

Please note that this page is using NOINDEX, NOARCHIVE, NOFOLLOW to prevent it from being indexed.
Check URL: atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/ -
what to look for

Uh, please note I am indexed, and I am archived.

Banned from Google
Penalized by Google

UPDATE: From reader Mairi:

After checking the online support site, I found out there is NO WAY to access information on WHY a site has been deemed "Forbidden" or HOW to get the problem corrected.

     I phoned google again. The young "no named" woman stated that NO PERSON handles the problem, and NO ONE would take my call. When I told her I had been to the support site, and there was NO WAY to get info or support there, she stated that was my ONLY option.

     The rest of the conversation was something like this:
Me: Someone had to have made a conscious decision to label the info on the Atlas site "Forbidden"
She: I don't know who that person would be, I cannot release any "name" information, and if there is no support online, than there is no support, we don't do "tech" support, and there is no one I can transfer you to who does "tech" support.
Me: Someone made the decision to label the site info "Forbidden", who do I contact to straighten this out?
She: I cannot give you any other information. I don't have any one to transfer you to. Me: So if a site has been labeled "Forbidden", then that decision has been handed down, and there is nothing else that can be done?
She: I would guess so.
Me: google STINKS! Mairi

UPDATE: Have a look at my google earnings for November:

Totals	582,541	1,503			$262.67
Date	Page impressions	Clicks	Page CTR	Page eCPM [?]	Earnings
Saturday, November 1, 2008	25,411	60	0.24%	$0.81	$20.59
Sunday, November 2, 2008	28,109	57	0.20%	$0.53	$14.79
Monday, November 3, 2008	41,367	90	0.22%	$0.67	$27.80
Tuesday, November 4, 2008	42,606	52	0.12%	$0.26	$11.25
Wednesday, November 5, 2008	47,634	47	0.10%	$0.27	$12.96
Thursday, November 6, 2008	36,408	53	0.15%	$0.32	$11.63
Friday, November 7, 2008	32,684	49	0.15%	$0.34	$11.03
Saturday, November 8, 2008	27,604	33	0.12%	$0.35	$9.65
Sunday, November 9, 2008	30,147	66	0.22%	$0.43	$13.10
Monday, November 10, 2008	36,732	103	0.28%	$0.36	$13.24
Tuesday, November 11, 2008	31,011	129	0.42%	$0.58	$17.95
Wednesday, November 12, 2008	28,618	118	0.41%	$0.68	$19.38
Thursday, November 13, 2008	34,782	139	0.40%	$0.36	$12.65
Friday, November 14, 2008	30,009	128	0.43%	$0.51	$15.41
Saturday, November 15, 2008	20,087	93	0.46%	$0.49	$9.79
Sunday, November 16, 2008	20,132	91	0.45%	$0.44	$8.91
Monday, November 17, 2008	25,438	76	0.30%	$0.48	$12.23
Tuesday, November 18, 2008	25,990	74	0.28%	$0.29	$7.54
Wednesday, November 19, 2008	17,692	45	0.25%	$0.72	$12.75
Thursday, November 20, 2008	13	0	0.00%	$0.03	$0.00
Friday, November 21, 2008	17	0	0.00%	$0.00	$0.00
Saturday, November 22, 2008	16	0	0.00%	$0.01	$0.00
Sunday, November 23, 2008	9	0	0.00%	$0.00	$0.00
Monday, November 24, 2008	9	0	0.00%	$0.00	$0.00
Tuesday, November 25, 2008	14	0	0.00%	$0.00	$0.00
Wednesday, November 26, 2008	2	0	0.00%	$0.00	$0.00
Totals	582,541	1,503			$262.67
Averages	22,405	57	0.26%	$0.45	$10.10

UPDATE: Reader TGH posted this -- until it's censored?

UPDATE: Boycott Google

Comments

[kobi]

pamela:
we wish you the best on this.
i would hope that some of the websites which are earnestly pursuing justice re the birth cert. issue, for example, would support you and put up a message on their title pages.

and, hopefully, there is a conservative of integrity in the us congress who can back you up re free speech/free press issues.

shoot, contact sarah palin, why not?

[Ron Coleman]

Hey, hey, hey.... what the H-E-double-hockey-sticks is THIS about, Pamela?

[Pamela Geller]

Damned if I know .... freedom of speech? It came out of nowhere, no warning, no notice, no nothing.

[flyingsongster]

Pamela have you removed the Google sidebar and reinstalled it? Also, have you
thought in the meantime about putting your name(Atlas Shrugs) in each header, so that the search engine will find it? Google may have had an update and dropped a lot of info. There is a change in their search engine. It used to be that it kept the memory of my prior searches. Try, first to reinstall the sidebar.

[horselady]

I'm not surprised. I used to have a photo account at Photobucket and I had no problems there until Google either bought it outright or bought into it. None of my photos violated their TOS but there were several photos of Islam that were less than flattering. Suddenly one day, I could not get into my account and was told my account had been banned for violating the TOS. I could never get an answer about which photos were in violation. Even worse, I could not get in to retrieve my photos, which numbered over 2,000. They told me to get a court order and were very nasty about it.

I didn't want to spend several thousand dollars on a lawyer. I was able to find about 75% of the photos but it was very time-consuming.

Now I keep my photos at FOTKI and have had no problems. But I do keep a backup file of most of the photos just in case.

I don't know why they gave you a forbidden listing but I assume the same thing will happen to my website eventually, too: http://barenakedislam.wordpress.com

[Randall]

Pamela:

Please have the user change the client=pub-2934720(numbers) in their URL to simply client=pub and that will free up the searcher.

I sent stats on link popularity, Atlas Shrugs links have been flushed by both Google and Microsoft Live

[Randall]

I am disgusted that certain people feel that they are in control of what the citizens shall or shall not know. This is censorship in a subtle manner and is against the principles of our nation's founding fathers who knew that the news media was the only way to keep a check on government abuses and excesses.

I am angry that no warning was given you, but you left to figure out on your own what happened. I thought antisemitism was waning, but this is ample proof that it's now growing as we approach a new administration.

I did notify World Net Daily about this, but perhaps other news agencies need to know too. If Google can do it to you, they can do this to anyone.

Again, I am very sorry that this happened, and will pray for even more success for Atlas Shrugs then you've had.

[Pamela Geller]

flyingsonster, I reinstalled the sidebar as you suggested - created new code - and still FORBIDDEN. No change. I need to employ IT specialists and I have ......... it will take some time

[Citizen_Cane]

“Yes, if you google Pamela Geller or Atlas Shrugs, I come up, that is not the issue. My work is not there, it does not come up in google's search results.”

What are you talking? Atlas Shrugs is the first hit if I google after “Pamela Geller”? Paranoia much?

[LeftCoastConservative]

Citizen Cane - get a clue. You sound as though you are not understanding what Pamela is talking about at all, and maybe that is because your understanding of english is not too good.

Pamela clearly stated that doing a search based on the topics that she has uncovered or has done a great deal of research on and has written articles on her web site are excluded from the google search.

[sheik yer'mami]

Censorship in another way. Stealth Jihad.

The 'Illustrated PIG to Islam" was taken off the web entirely, run by a very brave fellow who (still) lives in a Muslim country. Sheik yer'mami was taken off a few months ago because a Muzz complained over 'nudity'- if you can call a picture with a hijabbed broad with a suicide belt 'nudity' you're moving the goalposts. For me she was (and still is) well dressed. We're porn again!

Money talks. The Arabs got it all, perverting everything we hold dear. No wonder in this world full of suckers and bootlickers.

[SlimGuy]

Google and yahoo both have been playing games since the election.

I have customized up portal pages at myYahoo and Igoogle and have multiple tabs set up there and any rss feeds from conservative sites are not refreshing but any other content works fine on the other tabs.

Yesterday I couldn't get to any of the military blogs I follow.

I have a backup method in place but it really is a pain.

All those years working with China how to deal with 'objectionable' content is paying off for them I guess.

[Zero]

Socialists. Google is a politburo.

FountainheadZero
"Existentialism on election night"

[Timur]

Who owns controlling stock in Google, George Soros or the Saudis?

[GMcCal]

Randall, you can remove the numbers after client=pub in the search and get to google results, but that won't help. Google has pushed Atlas Shrugs way, way, way down the priority list on any search results. The first time you search, Google omits some results, so none of Pamela's work shows on any of the pages of search results. If you repeat the search to include all results, the first time you will come to any result with AtlasShrugs is about page 44. How many people are going to scroll through that many pages?

[SlimGuy]

The only way on google right now to get results of quality is to add the qualifier to the search string of site:atlasshrugs.typepad.com so that it limits the search just to this blog.

You get about 9000 hits by doing that , but how many people even know this capability exists?

[SlimGuy]

Correct that site modifier by putting the 2000 in where it needs to be..my bad

site:atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com

[Brutus]

What is the deal with Google? So much for "don't be evil."

I kicked in a few bucks to the tip jar. Keep up the good work on this excellent blog.

[MooPig]

Please try contacting this person Jayne d'Arcy... via blog:
http://pribek.net/2008/10/07/a-message-from-jayne-regarding-the-slurp-bot-affair/

and/or --

http://pribek.net/2008/07/01/more-google-nonsense/

or maybe here...

http://pribek.net/2007/07/12/does-google-knowingly-commit-fraud/

[flyingsongster]

OK Pamela, it was just an easy try.

I noted in putting a query into google, "Obama, Odinga" that the first page showed
2 Wordpress blogs...During the Hillary Clinton campaign lots of writers, as you know were blocked by Google.
They moved to Wordpress, and used the free service.

Even when I had a very small blog, a query of chosen words, put my teeny little blog at the top. Pamela..you can leave the Google world, by entering the Wordpress blog world..Call Wordpress...

[flyingsongster]

Ok Pamela, I tried several queries: Techdude birth certificate, brought up
Citizen wells, wordpress blog first...

In all of my google queries, I have seen no Typepad...dot coms..
but lots of wordpress blogs.

[David Perkins]

Anytime the distribution of information is in the hands of a few, it means the ease and availability of it is subject to the whims of that few. And the opposite, the restriction and concealment of information, is JUST as easy, and that is the mark of the totalitarian.

Google has already knelt at the communist altar of China, and it would never shock me to find them manipulating advantage to take it from Jews and give it to ARabs, Muslims and secular leftists.

Google is soon to go that route. They're already on the way.

[TINBH]

the leftists' "c.i.a." - google

[Lede Agenda]

And so begins the censorship. All hail the Obama-Messiah! No Dissent Tolerated! Hope and Change! Hope and Change!

/sigh

[Timur]

Scarey, since Google would also have the ISP's of anyone who tried to find certain kinds of information and could, in theory at least, disclose those addresses to whomever it wished. And if their CEO is one of Obama's right hand men...
"1984" was 24 years ago... (Orwellian reference)

[Rodney]

I googled "obama birth-certificate forgery" and got the first result as follows:

Atlas Shrugs: Obama's Birth Certificate ForgeryHere is the evidence: FINAL REPORT ON OBAMA BIRTH CERTIFICATE FORGERY CHANGE YOU CAN BELIEVE IN (7/20/08). This provides "reasonable suspicion". ...
atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/obamas_birth_certifcate_forgery/ - Similar pages -

[Rodney]

PS: I did not put the search in quotes of course, just the hyphen between two words as you see, to make it a phrase.

[joe siccspack]

Your post about brownshirts was right on the money. I want to support you in any way I can, but I had to take down all of my blogposts because over at natural born citizen, google is investigation terms of use violatiolns againstg Leo Donofrio, who's lawsuit is at the supreme court, and NO one is saying this. It is unbelievable, and makes me wonder if there is even such lawsuits in action right now. It isnt here at your blog, or any other of the leading conservative blogs. It's like we are what KOS calls "tin foil hatters". Am I losing my mind? Google is CENSORING a man for filing a lawsuit!!!! Go look!
http://thenaturalborncitizen.blogspot.com/
there is nothing in the way of criticism, or accusation at that blog, only an assertion that since mR Obama was born as a dual citizen, he is indeed not natural born, and by the way, there is a growing concern that Berg's birth certificate thing was concocted by Obama to throw the real issue off the tracks- the fact OBAMA'S FATHER WAS KENYAN, WHICH MEANS BRITISH, AND THE FOUNDING FATHERS MADE IT CLEAR, 'only natural born citizen's need apply, no one else, especially BRITISH.". Come on Pam, shout this from the rooftops!!!!!! There are multiplt lawsuits that could cause the election to be stopped in it's tracks! Obama isnt even the president elect yet, not untill he gets the elections from the electoral college. He is no longer a US senator. If they stop him now, he is caught between worlds! Stop him!!! Shout this! tell the people that it's on radio stations across the nation, or did they get to you too? http://thenaturalborncitizen.blogspot.com/

[joe siccspack]

After posting the previous comment about Leo Donofrio being investigated by Google for terms of use violations, *POOf* they took down the ugly WARNING- POSSIBLE TERMS OF USE VIOLATIONS page and all is well. Guess us tinfoil hatters can get back to the busy business of trying to stop this election. Have a good day. (btw, I know you dont know me, but I love your blog. I am genuinely sorry about the brownshirts doing this to you, I am furious, but right now this other issue is time sensitive. J)

[Rodney]

Blogspot seems to have a better system for dealing with "complaints"--rather than blocking the blog they merely put a warning page up, apparently until they do an investigation. So Donofiro must have passed the investigation.

[yonason]

I did the searches "Pamella Geller" and then "Atlas Shrugs" and both came up, and they were first.

Could they just be forbiding you access to your own material by blocking your IP address? or some other selective targeting of you personally?

[Pamela Geller]

IT'S MY WORK NOT MY NAME!
Atlas has no rank. I was ranked tops in my categories
This has definitely happened. This is not "coding". Another reader suggested I redo the search box code and I did with the same result so I took it down
I was getting 10,000- 15,000 referrals from google searches a day. Now NOTHING from word search.
Word search of google is the problem. My work has been scrubbed. The search box on Atlas is an unpleasant side effect of the scrubbing. As far as altering the search to include my URL - how are folks who never heard of me supposed to know how to do that.
That is not the problem. I appreciate your input.
Also I was earning $12 to $20 a day from google ads - now ZERO for 5 days in a row. The sandboxing has been confirmed by cyper IT specialists. I have hired a consulting firl to remove the ban

[David Perkins]

There's no doubt about what they did.

The earnings tell the whole story. None of the searches that people have done in the past week or so have found an Atlas story, so her content is no longer listed with Google, only her name.

FOr people searching by content, i.e. "Obama's Birth Certificate", Pam's site will no longer appear.

This is sabotage, skullduggery and an early sign of the potential totalitarian "information control" to be exercised by the sycophants at Google, proven eager to endear themselves to dictators and leftists.

Keep fighting, Pam, and any of you commenters who haven't donated to this effort, COUGH IT UP. :-) Consultants don't work for photo ops with beautiful women, you know...

although, Pam, you might try incentives like this to lower their hourly rate.. :-)) just a thought.

[LeftCoastConservative]

This is EXTREMELY concerning! If it can be done to Pamela/Atlas it can be done to anybody and nobody is taking responsibility for this.

I agree that the big issue right now is the birth certificate issue, but if all news and updates about the issue are scrubbed from being searchable how are we to keep up,get behind and support those who are on the front lines fighting the battle, and any other future battles?

While I realize that google is probably the most popular search engine out there right now, there are others. I've decided to quit using google.

Ask dot com is owned by CBS if my memory serves me correctly. We might be seeing the amalgamation of search engines which will cause them all to be controlled by the leftists.

[GMcCal]

Also, consider kicking in for legal fees. This has obviously been a conscious decision taken by someone at Google and it has cost Pamela revenue and has damaged her good name and reputation. Certainly, there is a case to be made here for monetary damages as well as a "cease and desist" order. If, during depositions with Google employees and managers, it can be shown that Google has done this to other websites, perhaps there is a case for a class action lawsuit and a lawyer would take this on a contingency basis. Go after them!

[flyingsongster]

Pamela, have you contacted TypePad? It seems that they are doing some updates as well..
WHen you have two companies doing updates, at nearly the same time, there can be
Problems. As I have noted already, there don't appear to be any Typepad sites in any of the random searches I have performed.

[Pamela Geller]

The IT consulting firm confirms that I have been banned by Google
Thanks flyingsongster - it's not typepad
and as you inquired previously, it's not search code - I changed it and results were the same

[Richard]

Contacting TypePad is useless. I don't think they could find the sharp end of a stick.

[sDee]

could it be TypePad?

http://foolswisdom.com/typepad-seo-blows/

http://www.sourban.net/Is-TypePad-Bad-For-SEO

[kobi]

i have faith that truth will prevail.

don't ever give up pamela!!!

[pythagoras]

I smell Islam (and Marxists-since they're joined at the hip, ususally) in Ms. Geller's blacklisting.

It would be interesting to know what percentage of Google's corporate shares of stocks are held by orthodox Arab-Muslims currently. Possibly more than any of us would care to believe. As I have posted here, control of the US media and thus censorship in America is a primary objective in the present day jihadist movement. That may partially explain Atlas' being scrubbed from the GOOGLE search engine.

The liberal movement sold out to 'radical' Islam long ago (even thought the libs were unaware both of what Islam actually stood for and what it would eventually do to them).

So one might reasonably conclude that Atlas' blacklist by Google came out of "left" field (if you know what I mean).

[LeftCoastConservative]

I found this at conservapedia.com ---

"The rationale behind political censorship is that the political party in power can protect itself from revolution if the public is kept uninformed."

I think that it is interesting that the reason given was directly tied to the "political party in power" and not tied to dictatorships or other forms of imposed government.

Here I thought that those who have fought for pornography were taking free speech/no censorship to the extreme while at the same time casting in concrete those who would not be going to that same extreme. I'm now sure that the liberals would prefer that the internet would be used for porn rather than intelligent challenges to their goals and ideals.

[Always On Watch]

As I scrolled down the stats, I gasped.

This development is astounding.

Nevertheless, I've been saying since January that 2008 is The Year of Silencing Voices. A Google ban can accomplish that, for all intents and purpose.

[Steve]

I'm not having problems locating Atlas Shrugs content through Google. Grabbed random text authored here and performed several web searches. Came right up. So, looks like you're still out there.

With regard to the embedded search issue, looks like it's bound to Google's AdSense. Thing is, I don't see any Google ads on this site. But I do see references to blogads.com. Normally, Google ads are indicated as such. Point is, if you're no longer using Google ads, that might explain the embedded search problem. Evidently, they're often bound.

Found the following that might address the embedded search problem when AdSense is active. No idea whether it will work but sounds like it could re-enable the embedded search while the advertising issue is worked out.
1) Go to http://www.google.com/cse and click on manage your existing search engines.
2) Click on Control Panel next to the search engine’s name.
3) Click on the Make Money Tab and disassociate the AdSense account

Seems the key is to disable AdSense for this site. Unless, of course, this site is enabled to receive Google ads and they're no longer sending them because of your politics. Seems unlikely but never know. Strange times are indeed upon us.

p.s. Not sure how fishy this particular situation is but the thing with Donofrio's site sure smells funny.

[S. Aujero]

Can anyone tell me why I can type in atlas shrugs into my google toolbar and atlasshrugs.typepad.com comes up? I don't seem to have a problem finding the site this way. I'm certainly not doubting anything that Pamela says. Would it be because there are cookies stored on my computer? I was in the process of deleting anything Google on my computer, and thought to give it a try to see if I could do a search. It still stinks, and Google is still going in the trash can. I like DogPile search better anyway....

[jj]

pamela:

freedom of the press. for him who has the keys to the press room.

freedom of speech. for him who has control of the press. the media outlet. the keys to the library.

the relation between google osama bin obama is indeed ominous.

cash for legal fees will be forthcoming, my friend.

john jay
milton freewater, oregon usa

[jj]

correction:

"the relationship between google and osama bin obama is indeed ominous."

p.s. i might well have said, the relationship between soros and google and osama bin obama is indeed ominous.

[Pamela Geller]

Steve, Not sure what planet you are operating your system on but the site has at least 4 google ads running.
Further, my articles are not showing up in the searches and my sitemeter does not reflect any google word search referrals (where I was getting 10,000 - 15,000 a day).

As I explained repeatedly, Atlas Shrugs and Pamela Geller if googled will come up, but my work doesn't. Look at the google earnings chart (above).

Yes, you can find the site. It is word searches that I was scrubbed from. Word searches is how new readers find me. Word searches is how folks looking for news the media won't cover find that news (Danish cartoons, global jihad, Obama Odinga, Obama birth certificate forgery, etc). If the work is scrubbed, folks can't find it.

This is a freedom of speech issue and the blogs are the last vestige of free speech.

[The Liberty Sphere]

Pamela,

So sorry to hear of your woes with Google. But I'm glad to see you have hired some specialists to get this corrected.

In the meantime, I will post a story about this on The Liberty Sphere tomorrow so that my readers will be informed. I hope that this helps in some small way.

Regards,
D. Martyn Lloyd-Morgan

[Winged Hussar 1683]

Pamela,

The problem could conceivably be that atlasshrugs.com redirects to atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com. If I do a Google search for "Obama" at site:atlasshrugs.com, it comes up empty, but if I do the same search with site:atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com, I get more than 8000 links. This suggests that Google did not scrub the search results, but that it won't post them for a site that redirects to another.

[JewishOdysseus]

I smell a real "restraint of trade" legal issue here...Pam was using her site, for which she has made numerous contractual agreements, to earn some money, and now this inter-state entity arbitrarily takes an action to target HER BUSINESS, probably in violation of numerous FCC and perhaps SEC regulations.

In principle it is no different from an anti-trust or collusion case. No executive, no matter how cool, has the right to interfere with another person's contractual relationship. Since Google is a public company, its executives are subject o SEC oversight. The SEC sends lots of people to jail every year.

I know only the faintest details of this type of law, but I'm confident that even Google bigshots are in the end accountable. I bet there are a lot of good lawyers in NY who cd give a good analysis.

[Pamela Geller]

Winged, try it without "Atlas" at all, as a typical searcher would. They don't know Atlas -- they know the story - they do not know "Atlas". This is how I got new readers. I was the top ranked on stories that I broke.

AtlasShrugs.com has redirected to the typepad URL since 2005. It is a meaningless factoid

[MorrisAO]

Pam, I have no doubt Google is becoming more brazen in censoring sites. It's starting to happen quite a bit. The 'Dissecting Leftism' site has been involved in an ongoing battle with Google over his site, and it appears Cassy Fiano's site may have been suspended. As to what has happened with her site it's just a suspicion, but since the page I land on when typing in her URL contains 'suspended.page' I tend to think something is going on there. No proof of course. Cassy is a strong voice for conservatism as well.

Now that the left is in power in the US, I would think that the left will be feeling strong and willing to try on this kind of thing a lot more. I think we can all look forward to seeing a lot more of this. They will go after the strongest anti-Islam and anti-Semitism sites first, then it will trickle down to others.

It will happen here in Australia as well. There is at present a move afoot by certain politicians to bring in a net censoring law, supposedly for the good cause of stopping porn, but it will be used to stop other voices as well, as such laws always end up doing.

I won't tell you to keep on fighting, as I know you will anyway. I've sent a little support - what I can afford, and more will come as I can afford it.

Chin up.

[Rodney]

Those who fear the US may be moving toward dictatorship (as I do) might take inspiration from a 1960s song called "West of the Wall," which includes these lines:

WEST OF THE WALL I’ll wait for you;
WEST OF THE WALL our dreams can all come true. ...
We know must have an end. ...

Wall built upon sorrow,
One day you will end.
Hearts true to each other
Will not break, they will not bend.
In our hour of sadness
How clearly we can see
Tomorrow’s gladness—
Free, free, free W(free)EST OF
THE WALL, ...

The world knows of our sadness, and we are not alone!
WEST OF THE WALL,
That soon will fall,
And you’ll come home.

You can read an article I wrote about the song at the following link, and there is a link at the end of the article so you can actually listen to it on YouTube:

http://www.metrocast.net/~edawe/west%20of%20the%20wall%20arl.htm

[Rodney]

Oops! At the beginning, it should be:

That wall built of our sorrow
We know must have an end. ...

[yonason]

"Also I was earning $12 to $20 a day from google ads - now ZERO for 5 days in a row" -- Atlas

So, can you sue them? I mean, this is like burning your store down. It's causing you real damage. Does there have to be a special law that applies to the internet, or can it be prosecuted under existing laws?

Best Wishes For Success, Pamela.

[CalifGirlInMaine]

I checked "obama campaign finance fraud" on clusty.com and msn search, no appearance of Atlas Shrugs in the first several pages at least. Maybe their search engines tie in somehow with Google? However, Atlas Shrugs comes up on pg. 1 of Yahoo search, with the same search terms.

The so-called "Patriot Act" scared me, but what is happening now is even more frightening. Please keep up your good work.

[Diddy]

http://atlasshrugs.com domain redirects to http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/
Did a search for content on http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/

Results 1 - 10 of about 9,200 from atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com. (0.13 seconds)

Seems fine to me, or am I missing something?

[Pamela Geller]

Yes Diddy, Please read the post again. That is not the problem.

[oneuniverse]

A list of possible causes for a 'Google Penalty' :

http://www.ksl-consulting.co.uk/google_penalty.html#Google_Penalty_Checklist

If, as Google seem to be implying (and I thought this was meant to be their policy), your ranking and Google search responses is solely a result of algorithmically-determined calculations (with no human input), then they should have no trouble giving you the log report for the raised penalty.

I assume the reason they don't do this is because they feel it would allow hackers/SEO's to analyse the bahviour of Google's ranking algorithm too closely.

However, it feels like a violation of Google's "Don't Be Evil" motto.

If Google went further, and individuals at Google actually manually edited the search results to exclude yours and others websites due to reasons other than their own official guidelines, then they have taken a huge risk.

Were the integrity of Google's search results to fall into doubt, it is likely that it would damage their reputation and turn away users. The company may never fully recover. There are other search engines.

Given that that's the potential cost, and that the risk of discovery is not insignificant (how many people would be involved or notice any internal tampering with search rankings at Google?), the risk-benefit analysis implies that the potential benefit (or avoided loss) must be enormous.

So, either there has been no tampering with the search results, or someone very much wants no-one to see this website.

[Josef K]

YOU'RE BACK
Trust me.

[yonason]

IT'S MY WORK NOT MY NAME!

OH! Got it! (I think)

I did a search on the first sentence above "How does Atlas grow?" and get you, at the very bottom of the last page. (Just trying to see what they are doing)

OK, now try ""A couple of days ago I was wiped off google search pages." There's only one that comes up, and that's freerepublic. Yeah, I see the problem now.

So, can you sue them for the damage they are causing you? I mean, if you make a portion of your living doing this, and they destroy it, are they liable? Or aren't there any regulations governing them yet?

I hope you succeed in fighting them.

John Ray seems to have had a similar problem, as he describes here....

"REDIRECTION

Google's "Help Obama" campaign

Heh! I have thought of an amusing response to Google's harassment of this blog. I have moved it not to another platform but to another blogspot address! It is now at http://dumbama.blogspot.com.

I call it DUMBama in reference to the fact that all Obababy seems able to do is spout Leftist boilerplate in a nice voice.

Google will probably delete this blog once I cease making requests to remove the spam flagging but that hardly matters. Being a cautious old conservative, I already have duplicate archives online elsewhere -"

Maybe you can contact him for some other ideas?

Regardless, I wish you success against them. All the best!

[Pamela Geller]

Josef, I am not back. Please read the post. Pamela Geller and Atlas Shrugs come up. That was never the problem.
My work has been scrubbed.

How do folks find Atlas that do not know Atlas exists? How do I build my readerhip? People find Atlas when they do a word search in google ie "Obama birth certificate", "Obama odinga", "honor killings", "Obama campaign finance fraud" - stories that I broke or did groundbreaking work on and Atlas is usually in the top five of the search results. That's how folks find my work and generally I keep 15-20% of them as return readers. Regular Atlas readers know the media refuses to cover these stories - building readership is the only way to boost awareness in this increasingly dangerous world.

A couple of days ago I was wiped off google search pages. Yes, if you google Pamela Geller or Atlas Shrugs, I come up, that is not the issue. My work is not there, it does not come up in google's search results. It is critical to building Atlas that I be searchable.Youtube searches are still intact as are images.

Josef, what you googled was Atlas Shrugs.

[Josef K]

Posted by: Pamela Geller | Thursday, November 27, 2008 at 10:45 PM

Yup. I wanted to believe, okay?

Just searched this blog via the search box for "John Howard" and got the error message. DAMN.

Sorry :-(.

[Doc Washboard]

Just so you know: any search for the term "shrieking harpy" also has you up at the top of the list. Keep up the good work!

[Mark Lewis]

Well I would like to help and refer you to site that deal with referencing problems but unfortunately I am rather bigoted about helping people who appears to be rather collectivist. Islam is not trying to kill anyone. Its terrorists that do that. And do I hear you say "O what a defender of the faith?" and perhaps "What about 9/11"? This would just be a judgement of who I am and not the words. Thanks for your contribution, but while I am all for free speech, I would prefer that the critics of fundamentalists would look to their own camps whendisguising precudice.

[pmoshay]

Aside from your search index ranking on given terms, after 11/20 apparently they essentially 'turned off' delivering adsense ad impressions to your site. Might be interesting, if you were in the 'placement' program one could still select your site for image ad placements. I'll take a look at that...

[Pamela Geller]

Folks that don't know Atlas won't google Atlas -- they will google stories I broke and worked on that were at the top of the search results prior to this event and never see my work.

That is the problem. If you know Atlas then you can come directly here but on the stories I broke with the most comprehensive coverage -- they will never see it

Winged Hussar posted this comment, earlier:

The problem could conceivably be that atlasshrugs.com redirects to atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com. If I do a Google search for "Obama" at site:atlasshrugs.com, it comes up empty, but if I do the same search with site:atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com, I get more than 8000 links. This suggests that Google did not scrub the search results, but that it won't post them for a site that redirects to another.

That is an important clue, as it shows that the search indexes haven't been purged; in fact, right now about 6,000 links are shown, and on the first result page it shows that some were fetched by the Google bot about 2 hours ago (as in, before I posted this, immediately after the search).

There's something very wacky going on, no doubt about that. The sudden drop in Adsense hits/income is a very powerful clue that for some reason(s) the previously existing settings with / for Google suddenly became non-functional.

I haven't looked very deeply into this, but if indeed you can search on the "regular" www.google.com for terms that you know should be ranking high, with the restricting term "site:atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com" and you still come up empty, there's something sinister going on.

Have you looked, besides the settings in Adsense, at Google's Webmaster Tools for possible snafu or, more importantly, error messages in the sitemap Google thinks you have? Do you create a sitemap yourself (i.e. via Typepad) and is the proper domain included there, i.e. not atlasshrugs.com but the Typepad domain? I mean, I'm far from a Google expert, but I'm mystified by this.

If indeed there's some active scrubbing going on... That'd be cause, more than "just" alarm, for contacting a legal representative. Not that I'm a lawyer, but even the FCC isn't taken with content filtering, and I think the open net access principle applies to a quasi-monopolist like Google.

Keep us posted - and swing over to a different ad supplier, like, yesterday. Fortunately, there's still choice out there.

Good luck!

[MoniQue]

...some pertinent replies back from our request to the Secretaries of State in regards to our requests for Obama's records:

MORE INCRIMINATING EVIDENCE!!!

Here’s 2 responses back from South Carolina and Connecticut for request for records:

1) South Carolina: RESPONSE FROM SECRETARY OF STATE SOUTH CAROLINA: PAY PARTICULAR ATTENTION TO PAGE 2 IN WHICH THE CHAIR OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY OF SOUTH CAROLINA [CAROL FOWLER] UNEQUIVOCALLY STATES THE CANDIDATES ALL QUALIFY FOR THE OFFICE IN WHICH THEY ARE RUNNING.

2) Connecticut: RESPONSE FROM SECRETARY OF STATE OF Connecticut, IN WHICH SHE USES THE HAWAIIAN OFFICIALS PRESS CONFERENCE AS HER VETTING PROCESS OF OBAMA????!!! BIG PROBLEMS WITH THIS FOR HER. He was supposed to be vetted BEFORE he ran for office AND her statement about Hawaiian officials saying Obama was born in Hawaii and that they hold his original birth certificate is based on a PRESS CONFERENCE where Hawaii officials never said they verified he was born in Hawaii and they refused to answer if the original birth certificate they held was a Kenyan one or a Hawaiian one. AND THE PRESS CONFERENCE WAS IN NOVEMBER PER HER OWN ADMISSION – 3 MONTHS AFTER HE WAS DECLARED THE NOMINEE !!!

CLICK BELOW: SEE 2 DOCS:
1. SEC OF STATE OF SOUTH CAROLINA RESPONSE, 3 PAGES
2. SEC OF STATE OF Connecticut RESPONSE, 1 PAGE
http://moniquemonicat.wordpress.com/secretary-of-state-responses-in-regards-to-request-for-obama-records/

[RightWingIt1967]

Liberty Sphere:

Pamela's "index page" is at a value of 5 on the Page Rank scale. I looked at her other work that Pamela said got scrubbed...they all have a PR of 4.

I did a link:http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2008/07/atlas-exclusive.html in Google search - I believe this is one of the web pages that got scrubbed. The page has 25 inbound links...when I do a regular search on the page...it has over 200 inbound links. Also, the page is indexed.

Can you find anything else on this page?

If I don't hear from ya...I'll go to your site and e-mail you.

Mark

RightWingIt.com

[Joseph Hertzlinger]

The phrase "building readership is the only way to boost awareness in" from this page did not turn up in Google's web search but it did turn up in Google's blog search. Maybe the blog search people are more energetic about preventing either bugs or censorship.

If you're looking for other examples of this, for a while Google searches for "Boing Boing" gave zero results, which was almost certainly not political. This may be a combination of buggy software and politics; it may be an accidental bug that they're slow to fix until someone they like gets hit by it.

The real question, of course, is why they're using "security by obscurity" instead of using open-source algorithms.

[DenverRodeo]

Wow, there are quite a few stupid people in the comments above. After Pamela explained clearly in the lead article, and then again a couple of times in comments, people still come along and say "I searched for 'Atlas Shrugs' and I had no problems"...! Then Steve comes along with a slightly more complicated version of this by saying that he searched for copied pastes of text taken from Atlas Shrugs articles... Well, that's not what Pamela was talking about! She was talking about simple searches on words and topics -- that amounts to 99% of the kinds of searches most people do on the Net. For one thing, Einstein, how could anybody search for a particular word string that is on Atlas Shrugs, if they haven't already found Atlas Shrugs in order to copy-paste it!!!

What Pamela is talking about are searches that according to her no longer show up near the top of Google results (I'm assuming on the first page of Google results) and as someone else noted above, only show up now like on page 44.

Each page of Google search results has 10 results, and each page shows the next 11 pages at the bottom to click to. This set-up makes it highly unlikely that the average person is going to scroll past page 2 or 3. I myself sometimes go to page 5, but only once in a blue moon beyond that, and I'm a rather obsessive Googler myself.

Nobody scrolls down to page 44 for search results, except maybe a lab monkey wired to keep pushing the down arrow until he drops.

[DenverRodeo]

"it feels like a violation of Google's "Don't Be Evil" motto."

Not necessarily. They just have a different definition of "evil".

Remember that saying, "The road to hell is paved with good intentions".

[Pamela Geller]

Amen.
Thanks Denver :)

[Bagua]

Pamela,

When I search Google.com for:

Obama birth certificate
or:
Obama's birth certificate
or:
obama's fake birth certificate
or:
Obama fake
or:
Obama birth

All the searches had your article and blog on the first page.

Similar results from my location using google.co.uk

Regards

[Rathish]

It happens. Google has done it to me many times. It happens when they test the algorithm, when we try to do too much SEO, add page with too many keywords, really really long page, add link exchange etc etc...

I can assure you that its not a typepad issue or anything to do with obama or freedom of speech.

Just wait and U will be back in their list within 14 days. Not enough patience!, try the resubmission using the tool in "google webmaster tools". Clean up your page and simply wait

And one mote thing, you have volatilized their Adsense policy by publishing the revenue online.

Good luck