Forum:Google Banned Uncyclopedia?

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See these search results.

Yahoo's search result for "Uncyclopedia" http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=uncyclopedia

Google's search result for "Uncyclopedia" http://www.google.ca/search?q=uncyclopedia

MSN's search result for "Uncyclopedia" http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?q=uncyclopedia

I think it's cause Uncyclopedia doesn't pay Gargle enough to get linked.--Mindsunwound: (MUN) Torture Water There 00:17, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

Creepy. But I don't think Google "bans" any websites. I dunno what happened there. --[[User:Nintendorulez|Nintendorulez | talk]] 19:46, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

iv read that aparently their is no use in emailing and complaining cos they dont give a toss.--Da, Y?YY?YYY?:-:CUN³ NotM BLK |_LG⁸+::: 07:49, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

Probably they reduced the weight of Uncyclopedia because of all the false triggers we caused for people searching for legit topics. They do seem to be weighted in favor of real wikis like Wikipedia. I have no problem with this, I don't think we need all the attention from people *not* looking for us. The consequence of a slight reduction in people looking for humor wikis is acceptable --Splaka 01:26, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

i dont think its right that people looking specifically for uncyclopedia on gooogle cant find it.--Da, Y?YY?YYY?:-:CUN³ NotM BLK |_LG⁸+::: 07:49, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

I've studied this phenomenon, actually. It's been going on since mid-December, perhaps earlier... I think they're defining certain "hot-button" words as completely off-limits in terms of having Uncyclopedia links appear, and for all other words we're just being docked like, 100 points or some other astronomical number. (I think the penalty for white-on-white text is only 10 points or so, by way of comparison.) The best you can do is type in words like <shameless plug>Wikiphrenia</shameless plug> that don't exist in the dictionary at all... Even there, though, only one or two pages are being indexed, and in that case the top-ranked page isn't ours, it's from tribe.net. So it looks like we're getting an automatic dock as well as a dictionary-based one, and they aren't even sending their crawlers in here anymore. I agree that it isn't that big a deal, though.  c • > • cunwapquc? 01:35, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

It must be part of their accord with the Chinese government!--Rataube 02:08, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

google does black out pages. They have done so to two pages that i know of one of which was an anarchist cook book site (still up just not googleable). there was atually a news report on it on a houston texas tv news channel. they think it makes sence on "bad" sites but i thought they just filtered anarchy and terrorist sites, (or at least what they think is anarchust ,synonomous/analgous to terrorism). --pixionus@gmail.com (damn corpiratized google/america...) 4:07pm, 4/30/06

• I could explain it, I think...but it would be technical and boring... How about something funny?!?! http://uncyclopedia.pbwiki.com/Uncyclopedia Does anyone know about that site? -- – Mahroww a.k.a. Timothy Roe Sanière   02:25, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

What the ....? OK, we don't own the name "Uncyclopedia" or anything, but that's a bit beyond the pale, isn't it? They've even stolen the potato logo for fucks sake. Errr....? -- Sir Codeine K·H·P·B·M·N·C·U·Bu. · (Harangue) 13:54, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

Isn't Uncyclopedia, its contents and the images created for it protected by the Creative Commons SA license? It looks like the other page is a Chinese themed variation on Uncyclopedia based on the pictures and a few articles on their main page. If they are not following the Creative Commons license, can they get into trouble? --Lt. Sir Orion Blastar (talk) 18:56, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

interesting that other humour wikis don't get docked.

http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&q=encyclopedia+dramatica

It's probably all of those Steve Ballmer quotes. Any page that contains the words, "I'm going to fucking smash/kill Google." is probably automatically banned from their search engine.   t o m p k i n s  blah. ﺞوﻦ וףה ՃՄ ண்ஸ ފއހ วอฏม +տ trade websites 02:42, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

I think Uncyclopedia.org 's article on Google angered King Eric Schimdt. It's a big deal because it shows Google's more willing to censor than Yahoo or MSN.

btw, how come eric Schmidt use Yahoomail instead of Gmail. http://ericschmidt.com/

70.48.251.63 02:53, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

I noticed this a couple months back, but I figured they'd have fixed it by now. Perhaps it has something to do with the Google sandbox (WARNING -- CRAPPY WIKIPEDIA ARTICLE AHEAD)? --Jordanus 03:54, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

It seems as if doing a search for site:www.uncylopedia.org shows results in Google, so Google has not banned Uncyclopedia, or else there would be no results. It could be the sandbox, web sites are placed in the sandbox if they are thought to be spammers. Maybe the program that submits Uncyclopedia articles to Google got picked up as a spam-bot or maybe overzealous members submitted articles too many times? It just seems like the Uncyclopedia articles are very old versions and Google has not updated its cache on them. Perhaps due to the forbidden error on the robots.txt file on the Uncyclopedia site? --Lt. Sir Orion Blastar (talk) 00:22, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

If what's said in the article is true. "The filter restrains new websites from having immediate success in the search engine result pages." Then it shouldn't affect uncyclopedia, since it has been around for awhile now. 70.48.251.63 07:12, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

I don't have an issue with Google blocking Uncyclopedia. Imagine some 3rd grader doing some research paper on Uranus and types "Uranus" in Google. Of course, with our content-rich articles, it'll likely show up first in the search results and the student will click it. They'll find out that the Uranus locals named it themselves, sulfer and other strange formations spew out of it's core and massive crack, the Mac OS V visited it, and peanut butter has been good to it. Worse yet, there's no disclaimer on the page to indicate that it's fictional. --Keithhackworth MUN 13:29, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

Still, if I search for "Making up Oscar Wilde quotes", I get four pages of results - many of them pages about Uncyclopedia, and the second-last one an old copy of the Uncyclopedia sitting on one of my computers at home? Meanwhile, where is uncyclopedia.org itself? Absent. Weird.

I'd hesitate to even blame {{killquote}} use for this, as most of the killquotes are "I am going to f-ing kill {PAGENAME}" and don't mention the search engine(s) at all. --Carlb 01:02, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps it's because Uncyclopedia's robots.txt file returns a 403 Forbidden? Google's bots may be assuming the worst. AAAAAAAAA!--SirNuke 06:22, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

Could be. --[[User:Nintendorulez|Nintendorulez | talk]] 00:29, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

It used to be that Google had Uncyclopedia links. The IWETHEY website found out about an article here by searching Google and posted on their forum that it was ranked 12th for their name. They came here and blanked the article a few times in revenge. I guess Google does not like humor or something, because we parody a lot of other web sites as well like Livejournal which used to be indexed by Google as well. Google accepts X Sucks web sites, and humor websites, just not Uncyclopedia? Maybe that robots.txt file is messed up or something, can someone fix it? --Lt. Sir Orion Blastar (talk) 11:10, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Googling for 'uncyclopedia whatever' seems to work from some hosts, but not all. E.g. http://www.google.com/search?q=uncyclopedia+baghmom returns results from only uncyclopedia, or no results at all depending on the host. Could be that not all of their computers have been upgraded to this censorshop, or had it removed. Some DNS round robin thing? 2005-03-16 09:30 UTC

Is it worth trying the things outlined here http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/reinclusion-request-howto/ of course we don't actualy know what we did wrong but still......--The Right Honourable Maj Sir Elvis UmP KUN FIC MDA VFH Bur. CM and bars UGM F@H (Petition) 16:04, 16 March 2006 (UTC) (I can do it if people want or maybe RC?)

Its probably a good idea. We still want to have a steady stream of tech journalists to visit our site --Nytrospawn 19:30, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Since the form on the page seems a little non-specific, perhaps someone could use it to ask why we were banned in the first place so that we can look into the matter and (if needed) fix it before we ask for reinclusion. --Sir gwax (talk) 14:54, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

I was about to use the "Why my site disappeared from the search results or dropped in ranking" from http://www.google.com/support/bin/request.py but could someone with access to a Uncyclopedi.org email address do so, cheers. --The Right Honourable Maj Sir Elvis UmP KUN FIC MDA VFH Bur. CM and bars UGM F@H (Petition) 16:54, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

Excellent idea. --[[User:Nintendorulez|Nintendorulez | talk]] 03:04, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

Any luck with this?--The Right Honourable Maj Sir Elvis UmP KUN FIC MDA VFH Bur. CM and bars UGM F@H (Petition) 16:32, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Yeah I'm wondering why my Uncyclopedia page doesn't come up anywhere near the top of a search for "Nerd42" even though it's one of the ones I update the most --Nerd42eMailTalkUnMetaWPediah2g2 17:01, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

Uncyclopedia is now on the 4th page of results on Google, with a cached version of the page from March 25th, 2006. I know Google favours sites that are updated often, in it's database for a long time, and when are clicked on by users when they show up in search results. It's possible that all of those 'records' were reset since the robots.txt file was inaccessible.--(~Sir)Nuke || Talk v MUN v Not An Admin v Completely Unimportant 19:33, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

When I search I see uncyclopedia as 8th on the first page. Though it is using an alternaet url for our main page. ---Rev. Isra (talk) 23:00, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

You mean that StumbleUpon url? That doesn't count... In fact, i can't even get it to work...   t o m p k i n s  blah. ﺞوﻦ וףה ՃՄ ண்ஸ ފއހ วอฏม +տ trade websites 23:42, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

Alternate URL as in www.uncyclopedia.org/uncyclopedia/index.php?title=Main_Page and the link in SirNuke's post above points to the fourth page of results (start=30) for a search, not the first page. --Carlb 03:10, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

This has been going on for a long time now. I mentioned it in IRC a couple times but there is really nothing that we can do about it. My findings were that uncyclopedia was still listed in google, but not very highly. At one point, we had higher rank in a search for "Encyclopedia dramatica" than a search for "uncyclopedia". --Paulgb 21:28, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, but has anyone bothered requesting information from their request page as to why our page rank has dropped? --Sir gwax (talk) 21:40, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

My findings are slightly contrary to those of Paul's. First of all, Uncyclopedia's main URL (http://uncyclopedia.org) is entirely missing from any of the 50 pages I looked through, as well as our secondary link (The wikicities/wikia one.) Secondly, that's all I've got...   t o m p k i n s  blah. ﺞوﻦ וףה ՃՄ ண்ஸ ފއހ วอฏม +տ trade websites 01:45, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

While outlandish sounding, is it possible that other pages were google bombed to effectively knock us into obscurity? Because its not totally 'banned,' for instance this rather obscure search, [1] still shows a link to Uncyclopedia, but the ones for 'Uncyclopedia' and other common things do not. ~Sir Rangeley GUN WotM UotM EGA +S (talk) 02:03, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

Interesting... we should write a letter... or possibly more than a letter... like... LOTS OF LETTERS! Yeah, that'll show 'em.   t o m p k i n s  blah. ﺞوﻦ וףה ՃՄ ண்ஸ ފއހ วอฏม +տ trade websites 02:17, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

I have an even better idea! We can use a whole lot of letters, and form them into WORDS, and then use those words to make SENTENCES, then when we have enough of those, we can SEAL IT IN AN ENVELOPE AND SEND IT TO GOOGLE!! I don't know if there's a word for my new invention, so I'll call it a WORD PARCEL! Who'd for sending a WORD PARCEL?!!!?!?! --Spin 04:35, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

I just have to say, spin, that is the funniest thing I've read all week. You win the internets! --Splaka 04:51, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

Oddly, Splaka, I didn't laugh at Spin but I did laugh at your reaction to Spin. Heh. Reading Spin's comment again it is pretty funny. --Nerd42eMailTalkUnMetaWPediah2g2 15:34, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

Hey Spin, do you think that we can do this electronically? You know, kinda like an electronic word parcel, or maybe even call it an e-word parcel! That way we don't have to pay 39 cents for a stamp or something. -- jsonitsac talk to me crimes against humanity15:55, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

Any point? If it's just a bunch of 1's and 0's in a computer somewhere, they would probably ignore it because 0 means nothing and 1 is not much more than zero. --Carlb 01:27, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

Hmm... 2's should do it. Lots of 2's... and make sure to include the apostrophe's, we don't wan' any a dem self-hatin' '2s' wonderin' 'round.   t o m p k i n s  blah. ﺞوﻦ וףה ՃՄ ண்ஸ ފއހ วอฏม +տ trade websites 02:02, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

Just be careful not to step in the number two... --Carlb 20:33, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

Request Away

Since it didn't seem like anyone else had done so, I decided to over to http://www.google.com/support/bin/request.py and fill out a request. The request I sent was as follows:

I am one of the administrators of the satirical wiki Uncyclopedia and I am inquiring as to why Uncyclopedia does not show up as a relevant search result in Google. Many users and other administrators are curious as to why our ranking is so low, so I am wondering if you could tell me why we have been deranked and what we can do to get our ranking back up. Thank you.

--Sir gwax (talk) 20:42, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

---

Dear Mr./Ms. Gwax:

Thank you for your inquiry about the website Uncyclopedia. We at Google receive many letters and e-mails from valued customers complaining as to why their website is not featured in the top page of our search. As a result, we have compiled a list of the top reasons why your website is not as important as many other ones:

• Your blog may be important to you, but not to the general population.
• Your website has been deemed subversive by the Government of the Peoples' Republic of China.
• We need to make sure Wikipedia gets preference on our searches, regardless of how unreliable the information is on that website.

Thank you for your inquiry, and we are passing along your e-mail to the FBI as well as your entire search history. Thank you for taking the time to use Google, where our motto is "Do No Evil."

Sincerely, Google Customer Service Rep #158584 (Bangalore, India)

Don't forget that GHumor is ready to go into Beta Testing, and Google does not like competition. Did you get your GHumor invite yet? Apparently 13 year-old kids who wrote jokes on their Geocities page get a better pagerank than an Uncyclopedia article. Someone want to register GHumor.com before Google does? :) Could our next April Fools type main page spoof Google buying out Uncyclopedia and call it GHumor? --Lt. Sir Orion Blastar (talk) 01:49, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Well you've got a year, get planning!!--The Right Honourable Maj Sir Elvis UmP KUN FIC MDA VFH Bur. CM and bars UGM F@H (Petition) 22:50, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

I'd like to, but my articles usually end up deleted or NRV'ed. I sure could use some help on that. Maybe we can make a GHumor article or something? --Lt. Sir Orion Blastar (talk) 05:04, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

Just a question, Im getting paranoiac: is the "blacked" line blacked by you or by my browser? Because it happens that I am currently living in "this" place Gwax, just wondered if my ISP was able to do it by itself or if you're at the very origin of filling the line with ink... Because if it's not you, I may get a little scared...

--User:AJ 14:18, 9 April 2006 (BTC)

{{C| whatever text is to be hidden}} is used if text is to appear blacked-out as a joke. Another alternative is <s>text to be stricken out</s> which gives strikeout as a line. --Carlb 13:25, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

• LOL @ Google --NERD42  EMAIL  TALK  H2G2  PEDIA  NEWS  17:10, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

---

Licensing violations?

Earlier on in this thread (seems like ages ago), I said I wasn't all that concerned about this problem, but since then I've noticed that some Wikipedia types are sporking our content, putting it into their user space, and essentially taking credit for it - those pages are getting included in Google searches, whereas the original pages from here continue to not show up on Google at all. In most cases, the Wikipedians at least have the decency to include an attribution (if you can find it), but not in this case:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Morton_devonshire/Finding_your_inner_sockpuppet

...I mean, I know they think they all own this place (and to some extent I guess they do), but really, licensing violations? Maybe I should actually thank this guy, though - if he hadn't copied the article, that material wouldn't show up on Google searches at all. Then again, why are userspace articles from Wikipedia showing up on Google searches in the first place? I realize Google and Wikipedia have their hands up each other's asses big-time in support of the Massive Global Internet Scraping Conspiracy, but if I had a Wikipedia account, I'd blank whatever user pages I had, pronto.

IMHO the only way to get Google's attention on this is to get it "slashdotted" somehow, and even that might not do it. I doubt the mainstream media would be all that sympathetic, to be honest.

 c • > • cunwapquc? 04:45, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

Technically, Uncyclopædia articles should not be crossposted to WP without obtaining permission from the original author(s) as Wikipedia's GFDL terms allow commercial use and Uncyclopædia's cc-by-nc-sa license does not? While Désencyclopédie has that {{Uncyclopédia|page name}} tag to slap a cc-by-nc-sa license, a potato and a link back here onto a translation of one of our pages, WP doesn't accept noncommercial license. --Carlb 14:12, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

Responded, asked politely for attribution. Will take up with an appropriate WP admin should this not be resolved.--Sir Flammable KUN (Na Naaaaa...) 20:30, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

It seems he removed my comment. How rude. That, and he made a rather half-assed attempt to give attribution by jamming a tiny template the the bottom. --Sir Flammable KUN (Na Naaaaa...) 22:49, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

Have a toasted marshmallow or two, you'll feel better. See Forum:The Nerve of Some People Morton devonshire 23:19, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

I saw that too... Apparently it's just "based on" the original. Better than nothing, though, I guess. But just since posting the above gripe, another one has popped up (though not on Wikipedia). In this case they at least forgot to remove one (unlinked) citation:

http://www.godlikeproductions.com/bbs/message.php?messageid=223959&mpage=1&showdate=4/20/06

...But then, there's this guy, supposedly an academic type:

http://www.reluctantcyberprof.com/?p=13

...who will probably claim he coined the term on his own and has never heard of Uncyclopedia, but he had 3-4 years to come up with that word and only managed to do so three months after the Uncyclopedia article was posted! It's sort of flattering, but these people really should provide linked attributions. Maybe they're doing it because someone here did it to them, but even if that's true, two wrongs don't make a right... I might take a stab at contacting these two myself, unless someone here tells me not to within the next 2-3 days or so.  c • > • cunwapquc? 23:50, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

Be nice to the first one (the forum post). He linked directly to the article at the bottom, which, judging from the forum, is the best he can do in terms of accreditation. Plus, most of the other people make it obvious that they got it from uncyc. Tear into the second one. --Sir Flammable KUN (Na Naaaaa...) 03:41, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

Apparently it can affect search engine results when someone mirrors your content, I hope the forums are viewable by nonregistered users. If not then please excuse me. Best thing to do is report it to Google with the URL and take a screen capture of the page. It might make Google think Uncyclopedia is a spammer with duplicate content on different sites. --2nd_Lt Orion Blastar (talk) 21:09, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

Is uncyclopedia.wikia.com considered a "mirror" of uncyclopedia.org? Both report pagerank of zero now. --Carlb 21:14, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

Possible, someone needs to tell Google and Yahoo that uncyclopedia.wikia.com is not a mirror but another URL for Uncyclopedia. There is a page rank issue it is described here on how pagerank works. I was unable to find Uncyclopedia in the Google Directory, so I am unable to tell if it was banned or just not submitted there. I think we also need to report the Wikipedia user page violations of our content, Google and Yahoo may be penalizing us for spam because our pages match the Wikipedia user spaces. --2nd_Lt Orion Blastar (talk) 21:37, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

Has anyone (official, with a @uncyclopedia.org email address) tried sending an email to search-quality@google.com? Additionally, the Robots.txt page returns a 403 (unauthorized) error again. Additionally additionally, if you do a serach for site:uncyclopedia.org, some of the pages have been cached recently (18th of April).--(~Sir)Nuke || Talk v MUN v Not An Admin v Completely Unimportant 06:10, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

If anyone does, they should emphasize that lots of people do web searches to determine if ideas and things they're about to publish are original, and some of those people are humorists. If they don't find results on those ideas/things, and it turns out later on that the idea/thing isn't so original after all, that undermines Google's reputation for quality and comprehensiveness. (Especially if we point it out every chance we get!)  c • > • cunwapquc? 04:46, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

Yahoo too? Say it ain't so

(Moved down from section above this one) ...Google and Yahoo may be penalizing us for spam because our pages match the Wikipedia user spaces...

Yahoo isn't penalizing Uncyclopedia. 70.48.248.224 22:18, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

But Yahoo isn't showing any links to www.uncyclopedia.org, like they were somehow removed from the Yahoo index. Last year they were in Yahoo, and now a search for links shows zero results. If Yahoo isn't penalizing Uncyclopedia, then WTF happened? 70.230.168.27 03:48, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

Ahoy there, Mr. 70.230 - could you please clarify that a little bit for us? Normally you wouldn't need or want the "www." in front of "uncyclopedia.org," but regardless, when I type in "www.uncyclopedia.org" I get lots of results from Yahoo, even with the adult content-lock turned on. Soooo, what exactly are you typing in, and are you doing it from yahoo.com itself, or from a search link on an affiliate site (not that it should make any difference)? If you're doing exactly what I'm doing and getting no results at all, then that's definitely weird - almost like they're filtering results based on some cookie setting nobody's supposed to know about. (Pretty soon someone's going to have to write an article on Wikonspiracy Theories.)  c • > • cunwapquc? 04:46, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

Another (less conspiracy-like) theory

Here's a blog entry from one of the guys at Google who works on the actual search engine algorithms:

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/seo-mistakes-not-checking-your-site/

Essentially, this implies that any web site - no matter how innocuous it is - that posts text that's the same color as the background, on any page, will get completely hosed by Google! I first started noticing this reduced pagerank phenomenon with Google in mid-December, and sure enough, that's when people started to more commonly use black-on-black text to (satirically) indicate material that had been "censored" - for example, Template:C was created on Dec. 20. There's an example of that on this very page, even! Anyway, I had no idea they were so aggressive about this. And while it may sound easy to "fix," the solution may be different for each individual article that uses that effect. Still, it may be worth a shot...? Maybe Algorithm or Dawg could come up with a clever solution of some sort? And just so you can't say I didn't think of this, I believe we have to assume that Google has some sort of color-comparison scheme to prevent people from circumventing their colors rule by using near-exact color matches (99% grey on black, for example). Anyway, if this does turn out to be the reason for all this, then sheee-it...! I was really hoping it was a conspiracy, dammit!  c • > • cunwapquc? 18:14, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

PS. This might also explain why mirrors that have only been created recently (such as klucha.net don't show up on Google either, and why wikia.qwika.com is getting lousy page ranks too, even for their Wikipedia sporkings. --Some user 19:27, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

"Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by incompetence." Or something like that. I doubt Google has it in for us (although the concept has great comedic potential); it's a hell of a lot more likely that we (unintentionally) did something that triggered Google's software to automatically exclude the site. Exclusion from search results is not a comment on our writing quality (or total lack thereof) or number of users, or a reaction to what we say about Google, Wikipedia, and our the liberal use of the words "Fucking Kill".

We need to (a) figure out what we did wrong, (b) fix it, then (c) file a reinclusion request. It may take weeks to get reincluded, so we should get started ASAP. I've looked at the main page but couldn't find any hidden text. The possibility that hidden text on ANY page in Uncyclopedia could trigger it... damn. The problem there is that there's a shitload of them, and since it's user-editable, it's hard to keep people from inserting it. Also, there are other SEO tactics that Google doesn't like, so we should keep an eye out for those. At any rate, isn't this something that the admins should be spearheading?

That being said we have the right to be pissed off. Google makes a point in their corporate Code of Conduct [[2]] that in serving their users, they should strive for "Usefulness" "Honesty" "Responsiveness" and "Taking Action". Excluding Uncyclopedia from results isn't useful to anybody (except perhaps the six billion inhabitants of planet Earth), sending bland form letters in response isn't clear and forthright communication, they're sure as hell not responsive and taking action--InfiniteMonkey 19:56, 23 April 2006 (UTC).

"Never attribute to malice"... That's Hanlon's Razor. My ex-wife has a coffee mug on her desk at work that says that. Anyhoo, finding the Template:C instances is no problem (just click "What Links Here"), and AFAIK we can also search for text strings like "background-color" and "font-color", etc., though that might not bring back non-wikified tag strings.

I also thought of something else - Google recognizes the META tag for robots on individual pages now (see here), so if we could somehow add that to pages with black-on-black (or white-on-white) text, we would't have to worry about changing them, and thereby making them unfunny. Either way, we're going to have to be extra-careful about this, 'cuz apparently it only takes one page! (Here's another from the same guy: OUCH.) So either Google has to make an exception for certain wikis, or we have to have a dev-person (sorry if I forgot anyone earlier, like Volte) write something into MediaWiki itself to add the "noindex" META tag to any page that has "hidden" text. Damn.  c • > • cunwapquc? 21:01, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

The fix could be a simple as creating a new CSS class instead of including the black background info in the template. To my knowledge, Googlebot doesn't access CSS files, so it wouldn't know about the 'censorship'.--(~Sir)Nuke || Talk v MUN v Not An Admin v Completely Unimportant 22:22, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

Why not just file a reinclusion request saying that C is done as a censor thingy on purpose? I'm sure they can easily reinclude us. --User:Nintendorulez 11:40, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

EXACTLY!! Without the C template as it originally was, the websites using it are immediately less funny. Freedom of Expression for example relies almost exclusively on the C template.

Also, left this comment on the journal, hoping for the best. Mostly, figuring that the more contacts we try to get, the more likely we'll get something. If anyone happens to see a response before I do, leave a message on my talk page? --epynephrin 03:42, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Reinclusion Request

Since we're going to have to file a 'reinclusion request' anyway, couldn't we just email google about the problem? If this is what happened, it happened automatically and one look at uncyc should convince them that we're legit. I'm pretty sure they'd just restore our pagerank without anybody having to tweak the css. Doug

I just saw gwax already contacted them, but if we use the formal reinclusion request procedure (without first tweaking the templates), they might just restore us anyway. Doug 00:51, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

Does a reinclusion request make any sense if we are still indexed in Google (therefore not banninated outright), but just happen to have a pagerank which inexplicably dropped from six to zero? It's always possible that we did get included but sandboxed in some manner? --Carlb 01:05, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

If this has been going on since December, and I think it has, then we're almost certainly out of their database completely by now. IMHO, InfiniteMonkey is right - it might take them weeks to approve the reinclusion request, since they handle those manually, and only then will they send the crawlers back in. I doubt they'll make any hard-coded exceptions for us - this is Google we're talking about, they don't like to make exceptions, we're presumably nothing to them anyway, and it's not like we don't have lots of anti-Google content here to boot. It may be the best we can hope for is to get them to expedite the reinclusion request based on the sheer extensiveness of the site, the fact that we weren't doing the text coloring (or whatever) to "fool" them, and also the fact that Yahoo and MSN still have us ranked normally. Of course, this is still assuming they haven't banned Uncyc deliberately, but since this is my theory, which (like my theory of the brontosaurus) is mine, I have to assume it's correct, right? Well, there you go!  c • > • cunwapquc? 03:04, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

What do you consider to be "out of their database". http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&rls=GGLJ%2CGGLJ%3A2006-11%2CGGLJ%3Aen&q=+site%3Auncyclopedia.org+main+page lists 10700 results for site:uncyclopedia.org, cached versions of which are as recent as April 21 for the main page. A page rank of zero (as the google toolbar is currently reporting for every Uncyclopædia except .de and every Wikia except Memory Alpha) would ensure that any search results from the site are reported dead last, but technically they are still there. --Carlb 09:20, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

Damn theories... never there when you need 'em. Okay, so hopefully Doug is right and a little begging and pleading might just work. But I'm an inveterate do-it-yourselfer, and I also don't trust anyone with an IP address, so I'm not gonna hold my breath... I still think we should make an effort to at least identify all the black-on-black text on the site, and either change it to use a CSS hack or just stop the crawlers from indexing those pages altogether. Anyway, sorry if I seemed a little over-excitable earlier. I've probably been listening to too many Sonic Youth CD's.  c • > • cunwapquc? 02:12, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

it's not out of the database, it's out of the results, so that's what it's got to be reincluded into (dammit, listen to what I mean, not what I say!). It's pretty clear that this is what has happened. However, I wouldn't assume it's the black-on-black text, there could be other issues with the site as well so we need to do our homework and make sure we get everything. --InfiniteMonkey 03:18, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Here's a page you may want to take a look at, for instance: White (colour). Hm, that couldn't be causing us any problems, now could it? Also, anything which uses the primary colors template at the bottom is going to piss off Google. Personally, I hate to ruin a perfectly good gag just to please Google. I wonder if assuring them that our devious use of white-on-white is in the name of humor (rather than warping their search results) would do the trick. OK, off to check the remaining 16,999 pages... --InfiniteMonkey 03:49, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

We could do with finding a friendly intern at Google......perhaps Chron knows someone? -- Sir Mhaille  (talk to me)

As I mentioned above, I left this comment on the blog above, as it seemed like a prime location to find some sort of info. With a little bit of luck, we'll get something. I hope --epynephrin 13:37, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

I understand why this is a problem, but how far do we have to go to change the site so Google will include us or raise our pagerank or whatever? I mean, what if this turns out to be what the problem is? I just don't want us to bend over backwards to accomodate Google in terms of the site content. It's a conflict of interest with our mission to be ridiculous. --Hrodulf 15:38, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Are we the ones being ridiculous, or is Google? A search for google:Uncyclomedia Foundation finds just about everything but uncyclopedia.org --Carlb 18:32, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

I say we resort to physical violence to achieve our goals. Who's with me? --Spin 01:43, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

You sound like you are from Baghdad. Yugoslavian F 02:50, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

Naah, those Baghdad people are total wimps compared to User:Spintherism! Still, I'd like to see a two-pronged approach, involving both physical and psychological violence. Actually, this Baghdad thing gives me an idea... Maybe if we told Dick Cheney that there are "massive oil reserves" beneath Mountain View, CA, the Bush folks would send in the bombers etc., and do all the heavy work for us? Then we just come in and set the pageranks to whatever we want.  c • > • cunwapquc? 03:19, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

Alright, I will bypass their fortifications by invading through Beligum. Within a week we will have all of... Wait, who are we performing this physical violence on?--SN W | T 03:52, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

I thought it was Google, but to be honest, we'd probably stand a better chance of winning if we invaded France instead.  c • > • cunwapquc? 03:57, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

What country do we want uncyclopedia to represent in this invasion? I vote Abkhazia Yugoslavian F 21:55, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

The Reason Found

Read this.

Read it.--Wit (tawk) 18:06, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

Okay... assuming you're serious, you're saying our article on Google has offended them so much that they removed Uncylopedia from their index mostly because of that? Why not just do something simpler, like classify us as an "adults-only" site instead, just to show us who's boss? After all, Uncyclopedia runs an AdSense box, so it's not like they'd be looking for any possible excuse...

Besides, you haven't been around quite long enough, Wit - the disappearance of Uncyc pages from Google was a gradual thing that took place over the course of 4-5 months, starting (I believe) in December 2005. If they deliberately "banned" us, surely it would have been more sudden than that? I'm not saying you don't have a point, because if they are offended by our article on them, it might make them less eager to reinstate us. But I'm still going with Hanlon's Razor, myself... Either that, or maybe some sort of massive international alien robot conspiracy, possibly involving can-openers.  c • > • cunwapquc? 06:31, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Read this.

Read it. --Nerd42eMailTalkUnMetaWPediah2g2 18:37, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

Google starting to love us again?

Some of the other wikia are reporting that pages are starting to reappear. Maybe this is just a temp thing caused by the name change and going to sort itself out. Watch this space I think -- sannse (talk) 20:54, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Our name is the same as it has been for more than a year now: uncyclopedia.org --Carlb 23:28, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Of course duur-me ... maybe not linked then - I was thinking it was because Uncyc and others noticed the same problem around the same time. And now an apparent start to a recovery at the same time - maybe it's one of those "Google changed the indexing method" things then -- sannse (talk) 21:21, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

We appear to be showing up in the third page of Google results for Uncyclopedia. And above the ED page on us. Today is truly a great day. All we need now is some page rank...--SN W | T 06:12, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

I think I just saw "Making Up Oscar Wilde Quotes" on page 5, without the quotation marks, and dead-last on page 3 with the quotation marks, but that's a lot better than it was the last time I checked... Also, at the bottom of page 5 for "AAAAAAAAA!" - which may be an even better indicator, come to think of it!  c • > • cunwapquc? 06:40, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, and the main page was result #64 for me last time I checked.   t o m p k i n s  blah. ﺞوﻦ וףה ՃՄ ண்ஸ ފއހ วอฏม +տ trade websites 20:21, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

WUTE! 6/10!

LOOKIE! The Pagerank for the Main Page is back to 6/10, curiously, it hasn't risen in searches though. -- Kaizer the Bjorn takkun (nya nya) (1961 model!) Check out T61! 17:23, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

Not only is the pagerank back but searching for Uncyclopedia actually returns the home page, even if it is second to wikipedia's entry on us. At least searching specifically for us will bring you here, so it's a start. -- Ad 21:28, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Uncyclopedia reveals us as number one now, and AAAAAAAAA! comes up as a number two search for that. Thankfully, the highest result of ours for the infamous Euroipods is in the thirties, and it's VFP. Crazyswordsman 00:50, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

Google's a Stubborn Little Wanker

Look at this:

• Query:Main Page site:uncyclopedia.org
• Query:"Main Page" site:uncyclopedia.org

even in the query with quotes, the Main Page is the last entry. WTF!! -- Kaizer the Bjorn takkun (nya nya) (1961 model!) Check out T61! 23:56, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

FINALLY

At the top of the heap.

http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient-ff&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1B2GGGL_enUS177&q=uncyclopedia

--George VI 23:23, 25 July 2006 (UTC)