Google Removes TimesOnline from its Index
-
Jaamit
3 years ago -
3648
views
[Update, 15:10 - www.timesonline.co.uk is now back in Google's index. They went from having 0 pages indexed this morning to a quarter of a million just now. The SEO guys at the Times are saying there was a techinical issue of some sort causing the dropout - I am unconvinced and cannot see how any technical problem (which no SEO I know could detect) could simply take an entire site out of the index and then pop it back in again. All I can say is I can imagine both Google and The Times offices have had busy mornings. I'll update again if I find out more.]
A quick post to recap on some breaking news from this morning: The Times has, as promised, begun launching it’s online Paywall today, and one of the most powerful sites in the UK, www.timesonline.co.uk has entirely disappeared from Google’s index (hat tip to Malcolm Coles for spotting this on Twitter): a search for “times online” does not return the homepage, and a site: search for the entire subdomain displays 0 results:
Manual Removal
It does not appear that this is the result of the paywall going up – in fact, the paywall isn’t up yet and you can still view the content on TimesOnline.co.uk. A quick check of the Robots metatags on the site shows no sign of a “noindex” metatag to instruct Google to remove pages from the index, and no blocking of the site within the robots.txt. In any case either of those wouldn’t result in such a fast, broad deindexing of the site. No, it seems that Google has manually removed the entire timesonline.co.uk site from its index, either at the direct request of Rupert Murdoch (or his best minions), or perhaps this was an initiative from Google itself (in interesting thought, if less likely).
NB: at present the subdomains on timesonline.co.uk (eg business.timesonline.co.uk, technology.timesonline.co.uk) are still indexed. This may change down the line, but at the moment it is only the main subdomain, www.timesonline.co.uk that is affected.
14 comments so far to - Google Removes TimesOnline from its Index -
Gloves off – Will Mr Murdoch win? Or will he realise he needs Google to get the visitors to his site.
The newspaper industry (and many other spectators) are watching this match-up with much intrigue.
Great spot and the results will be intriguing. I bet they’ll be back asking to be re-indexed in no time as online news needs the search engines for most of its coverage!
Yup, whatever comes of this the wider issue is the impact that the loss in search engine traffic will have and whether they can offset the loss in ad revenue with paywall subscribers. I know the BBC’s traffic doesn’t rely on natural search, but then they do a lot of other stuff online including syndication that the times dont.
This is at Rupert Murdock’s request
Well, that’s just speculation / a joke. I don’t have any evidence about that!
I know that it is by request.
Is that you Rupert?
its being indexed by google news… ironnnyy
http://news.google.com/news/search?aq=f&pz=1&um=1&cf=all&ned=uk&hl=en&q=Volcanic+ash+cloud+costs+airlines+%241.7+billion
http://news.google.com/news/search?pz=1&um=1&cf=all&ned=uk&hl=en&q=site%3Awww.timesonline.co.uk&cf=all&scoring=n
They’ve not been caught selling links like the Independent have they?
Hi Jaamit
Quick pick up as ever. So the question is who made the decision.
Cheers Garry – yep that is the question. Although I’ve heard from a couple of people at the times that it’s down to a technical issue which they’re looking into. Can’t see what, nor how it could take out the site entirely and immediately, but let’s wait and see.
Interesting i believe that its a BMM client not that it is necasserily anything to do with them. How about an innocent remove from index request ;-)
Well i was just about to comment on about a follow up article we had written but…..http://bit.ly/cYc5jV
Google Removes TimesOnline from its Index very weird.