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This has nothing to do with Reader. We were tackling a spammer and inadvertently took action on the root page of digg.com. Here's the official statement from G

This has nothing to do with Reader. We were tackling a spammer and inadvertently took action on the root page of digg.com. Here's the official statement from Google: "We're sorry about the inconvenience this morning to people trying to search for Digg. In the process of removing a spammy submitted link on Digg.com, we inadvertently applied the webspam action to the whole site. We're correcting this, and the fix should be deployed shortly." From talking to the relevant engineer, I think digg.com should be fully back in our results within 15 minutes or so. After that, we'll be looking into what protections or process improvements would make this less likely to happen in the future. Added: I believe Digg is fully back now.

jmount 14y ago
The Star Trek TOS "The Ultimate Computer": Captain James T. Kirk: "And how long will it be before all of us simply get in the way?"
walshemj 14y ago
So was it the well known missing robots.txt killing a site problem (as described in the original article) or a manual action gone astray? When you looking at protections you need to ask what happens of this is a mom and pop site and not a well known sv company with high level Google contacts?
- jmount 14y ago
  I can't speak for Google or Matt Cutts. But it sounds like he said it was a Google bug.
luckynic 14y ago
Is this a stunt to put Digg.com on the map again?
relix 14y ago
If this would happen to a less popular site, what chances does a site-owner have of getting attention to this problem, and getting it fixed?
- WalterGR 14y ago
  None. Even if you know people within Google, there's so much fear of allegations of impropriety that employees are too afraid to even ask the appropriate team if there's a possible mistake that they should look at.
- drone 14y ago
  A similar issue (removed from search results, but remained in index) happened to my site due to a DNS issue last year, and I had to perform some magic steps+ in webmaster tools and we re-appeared in search within a day or so. + no magic, I just don't remember what exactly I had to do.
- Matt_Cutts 14y ago
  Hey relix, it took an unfortunate chain of corner cases for this to happen, and for this situation it was actually more likely for the corner cases to hit a larger site rather than a less popular site. In general, when a member of the webspam team directly applies a manual webspam action against a site, we also drop a note to the site owner at http://google.com/webmasters/ http://google.com/webmasters/ . That helps the site owner tell whether something is going on with manual spam vs. just algorithmic ranking. Then any site can do a reconsideration request at the same place or post in our webmaster forum at https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!forum/webmasters https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!forum/webmasters . People like to scrutinize Google, so I've noticed that writing a "Google unfairly penalized me" blog post typically makes its way to us pretty often.
  - WalterGR 14y ago
    Hi Matt, That doesn't match my experience. Could you explain the penalty against onlineslangdictionary.com? Showing citations of slang use[1] caused what appears to be an algorithmic penalty. The correlation between showing citations and the presence of a penalty is apparent: http://onlineslangdictionary.com/static/images/panda/overview-charts.png http://onlineslangdictionary.com/static/images/panda/overvie... Missing from those 3 charts is the one showing that citations were once again removed over 120 days ago, yet the penalty remains. It would appear that the algorithmic penalty was turned into a manual penalty. I've followed all procedures including those listed in your comment, without resolution. [1] By citations of slang use, I mean short (1-3 sentence) attributed excerpts of published works, shown within the appropriate definitions, as evidence of the correctness of those definitions. All citations were gathered and posted by hand.
johnrampton 14y ago
@Matt How can 1 bad link on a site take down a whole site? Is this normal?
ConstantineXVI 14y ago
Why not take the 'nuclear launch' method? Every time someone's about to de-list [large number] of pages, a second human has to confirm it. (This is presuming humans were involved at all)
cozydunt 14y ago
I see so many flaws with this process and small business owners that may not be able to get the attention that Digg just has.
Hamtron 14y ago
I would imagine it was more like: Apply actions to (tick one) : [] Individual Link [] Individual Page [] Individual Keyword [] Whole Domain [SUBMIT] And the manual reviewer was drunk on Google Juice :)
gurubunny 14y ago
Hey matt,If its a problem with one link alone then just take action on that one page alone, then it could be considered as action otherwise it can be taken as overaction. On the name of quality one should not take the whole site down for a day,This action of yours is completely wrong..

jmount 14y ago

The Star Trek TOS "The Ultimate Computer": Captain James T. Kirk: "And how long will it be before all of us simply get in the way?"

walshemj 14y ago

So was it the well known missing robots.txt killing a site problem (as described in the original article) or a manual action gone astray? When you looking at protections you need to ask what happens of this is a mom and pop site and not a well known sv company with high level Google contacts?

jmount 14y ago
I can't speak for Google or Matt Cutts. But it sounds like he said it was a Google bug.

luckynic 14y ago

Is this a stunt to put Digg.com on the map again?

relix 14y ago

If this would happen to a less popular site, what chances does a site-owner have of getting attention to this problem, and getting it fixed?

WalterGR 14y ago
None. Even if you know people within Google, there's so much fear of allegations of impropriety that employees are too afraid to even ask the appropriate team if there's a possible mistake that they should look at.
drone 14y ago
A similar issue (removed from search results, but remained in index) happened to my site due to a DNS issue last year, and I had to perform some magic steps+ in webmaster tools and we re-appeared in search within a day or so. + no magic, I just don't remember what exactly I had to do.
Matt_Cutts 14y ago
Hey relix, it took an unfortunate chain of corner cases for this to happen, and for this situation it was actually more likely for the corner cases to hit a larger site rather than a less popular site. In general, when a member of the webspam team directly applies a manual webspam action against a site, we also drop a note to the site owner at http://google.com/webmasters/ http://google.com/webmasters/ . That helps the site owner tell whether something is going on with manual spam vs. just algorithmic ranking. Then any site can do a reconsideration request at the same place or post in our webmaster forum at https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!forum/webmasters https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!forum/webmasters . People like to scrutinize Google, so I've noticed that writing a "Google unfairly penalized me" blog post typically makes its way to us pretty often.
- WalterGR 14y ago
  Hi Matt, That doesn't match my experience. Could you explain the penalty against onlineslangdictionary.com? Showing citations of slang use[1] caused what appears to be an algorithmic penalty. The correlation between showing citations and the presence of a penalty is apparent: http://onlineslangdictionary.com/static/images/panda/overview-charts.png http://onlineslangdictionary.com/static/images/panda/overvie... Missing from those 3 charts is the one showing that citations were once again removed over 120 days ago, yet the penalty remains. It would appear that the algorithmic penalty was turned into a manual penalty. I've followed all procedures including those listed in your comment, without resolution. [1] By citations of slang use, I mean short (1-3 sentence) attributed excerpts of published works, shown within the appropriate definitions, as evidence of the correctness of those definitions. All citations were gathered and posted by hand.

johnrampton 14y ago

@Matt How can 1 bad link on a site take down a whole site? Is this normal?

ConstantineXVI 14y ago

Why not take the 'nuclear launch' method? Every time someone's about to de-list [large number] of pages, a second human has to confirm it. (This is presuming humans were involved at all)

cozydunt 14y ago

I see so many flaws with this process and small business owners that may not be able to get the attention that Digg just has.

Hamtron 14y ago

I would imagine it was more like: Apply actions to (tick one) : [] Individual Link [] Individual Page [] Individual Keyword [] Whole Domain [SUBMIT] And the manual reviewer was drunk on Google Juice :)

gurubunny 14y ago

Hey matt,If its a problem with one link alone then just take action on that one page alone, then it could be considered as action otherwise it can be taken as overaction. On the name of quality one should not take the whole site down for a day,This action of yours is completely wrong..