Ripoff Report Has Been Deindexed

[Mike Grant]

Wow.

Haven't heard any reasoning for this yet, or if it is a mistake.


You can check yourself:
site:ripoffreport.com - Google Search

[Mike Grant]

RipOff Report Is Gone, Baby, Gone!

As of 5:00pm (EST), Tuesday, August 09, 2011, it looks like Ripoff Report is gone, baby, gone from Google! And that sound you hear... it's the collective "hurray!" of business owners across the world.

The bane of most small businesses', Ripoff Report is (or is the proper term "was" now?) an Internet gripe site that ranked high in the search results for Google. Although it had humble beginnings, it has drawn the ire from businesses and consumers. Some would claim that it ruined businesses, tarnished reputations, and destroyed lives. In fact, it could be argued that its popularity coincided with the rise of the online reputation management industry. After all, sometimes it proved harder to get something taken off the report than to build dozens of websites to counteract the effects - even if it was proven that the accusations were defamatory and false.

More insidious is that consumers were permitted to post gripes for free, but small businesses had to pay for the privilege. Talk about tipping the scales unfairly.

But people can breathe a sigh of relief today, because it's been de-indexed (for now). Interestingly enough, both Bing and Yahoo have long since done away with giving RoR the mounds of SERP goodness that Google has. Most of the results for RoR were buried past the 2nd or 3rd page of Bing or Yahoo, rather than front and center right in Google.

Tune in over the next several days as we track of the unfolding Ripoff Report de-indexing story.
(Now, all you small business owners who've fought long battles with the notorious gripe site, go pop some champagne and revel in a little schadenfreude.)

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[carljohn]

I have been seeing lots of site being deindexed recently by google including one of the well known bank website in my country which I just found out recently while searching for it, I turn to yahoo in the end. The only reason I can find is they have both http// & https// displaying the same content, so maybe google think there are duplicated and decided to deindexed all http:// URL. As a side note the https:// is still indexed but you can't really find it in google using search anyway.

[Mike Grant]

SELand claims RoR removed themselves from the index.



Ripoff Report is completely gone from Google’s index and Google says it’s been done at Ripoff Report’s own request. But, the question now is whether that request was made on purpose or an accident.

As the image above shows, a site:ripoffreport.com search brings up Google’s standard “Your search did not match any documents” message. Jeff Quipp seems to be the first to have noticed this with his tweet earlier this afternoon.

A Google spokesperson says the site is not banned, but was removed after Google received a request to do so via Google Webmaster Tools:

The owner of this site delegated access in our webmaster console to multiple email accounts, and one of those email accounts submitted a url removal request for the site. We’ve emailed the site owner to check whether the site removal was an intended action, or whether the removal was a mistake.
We’ve also reached out to Ripoff Report for comment, but have not received a reply.

Back in March 2010, Google simplified its verification system for adding multiple users to a Webmaster Tools account. Google’s own blog post even contained a warning about delegating ownership to new users:

…remember that anyone you delegate ownership to will have exactly the same access you have. They can delegate to more people, submit URL Removal requests and manage Sitelinks in Webmaster Tools, etc. Only delegate ownership to people you trust!

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[carljohn]

Interesting I just came across something similar yesterday but it was dated back in July should have been fixed though. If you are interested check out Webmaster Tools Bug Enables Anyone to Remove Any Site from the Google Index - Softpedia

[John Galt]

I bet the online rep management guys all felt a sudden, sharp pain in their chest without knowing exactly why. I'm severely doubtful it'll stay deindexed... but somewhere a disgruntled ROR ex-employee is laughing his arse off in the mean time.

[BarryWheeler]

Could be a great way to gain traffic. Everyone rushing to see what's up. LOL!

[Crystal Love]

Yeah, the reputation management firms are sulking right about now.

[Mike Grant]

Nah, we're actually quite happy about it.

[imdomination]

That's really interesting, if they gave someone access to their WMT account and they deindexed it.

Otherwise, there must be something else going on behind the scenes if they actually did do it on purpose...

[GlobalTrader]

Seems to be back in the Index as of 12 Noon EST.

[simonbuzz]

Its back in the Index just checked it now..