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SOPA SEO: Googlebot to crawl at slower rate today

65 points by joshuahedlund 15y ago

steve8918 15y ago
This makes me curious. Let's say there was an organized mass-hacking attempt by someone like Anonymous, that took down tens of thousands of websites for several days. Would this affect the Google results, and how long would it take for the results to get corrected?
- freehunter 15y ago
  Based on my previous experience, yes it would have an effect. If it actually hit tens of thousands of websites, I'm sure Google would be willing to work with them. I'd imagine they might have backups of search results, or could nullify and re-scan the sites. Google has recently shown they have the ability to alter the page rank of various sites (ala Google+ results).
- chrisguitarguy 15y ago
  It would change the rankings. I recently had a client site go down (amazon instance stopped, no notification). It was out of the index by the time we caught it day or so later. This site also happened to rank pretty well for a niche term. The good news is that as soon as the site was back up, it was back in the index within a few hours. Not sure if that's a typical experience.
Drbble 15y ago
So Google is undercutting the blackout by suppressing the reality of sites' content and pretending the web is normal today? And webmasters are cheering it because they don't actually want to black out, they just want a slacktivist PR hit? And a subversive angle: imagine if SOPA passes and Google gets a deindex order, and they "slow their crawler" during the deindexing operation.
- nik_0_0 15y ago
  I see your point, but I think it is mainly because they don't want Wikipedia/etc to be de-indexed and not be #1 hit for EVERYTHING anymore. This protest is exactly that, a protest, a mere emulation of what could happen. It's not about pretending the web is normal, its about ensuring that everything is back to normal tomorrow.
  - masklinn 15y ago
    Wikipedia won't be deindexed as their blackout page is a javascript-generated layer over the content. Smaller sites with simpler blackout-ing schemes (e.g. replace their normal content with SOPA content) would be far more at risk, Wikipedia isn't.

65 points by joshuahedlund 15y ago

This makes me curious. Let's say there was an organized mass-hacking attempt by someone like Anonymous, that took down tens of thousands of websites for several days. Would this affect the Google results, and how long would it take for the results to get corrected?

freehunter 15y ago
Based on my previous experience, yes it would have an effect. If it actually hit tens of thousands of websites, I'm sure Google would be willing to work with them. I'd imagine they might have backups of search results, or could nullify and re-scan the sites. Google has recently shown they have the ability to alter the page rank of various sites (ala Google+ results).
chrisguitarguy 15y ago
It would change the rankings. I recently had a client site go down (amazon instance stopped, no notification). It was out of the index by the time we caught it day or so later. This site also happened to rank pretty well for a niche term. The good news is that as soon as the site was back up, it was back in the index within a few hours. Not sure if that's a typical experience.

Drbble 15y ago

So Google is undercutting the blackout by suppressing the reality of sites' content and pretending the web is normal today? And webmasters are cheering it because they don't actually want to black out, they just want a slacktivist PR hit? And a subversive angle: imagine if SOPA passes and Google gets a deindex order, and they "slow their crawler" during the deindexing operation.

nik_0_0 15y ago
I see your point, but I think it is mainly because they don't want Wikipedia/etc to be de-indexed and not be #1 hit for EVERYTHING anymore. This protest is exactly that, a protest, a mere emulation of what could happen. It's not about pretending the web is normal, its about ensuring that everything is back to normal tomorrow.
- masklinn 15y ago
  Wikipedia won't be deindexed as their blackout page is a javascript-generated layer over the content. Smaller sites with simpler blackout-ing schemes (e.g. replace their normal content with SOPA content) would be far more at risk, Wikipedia isn't.