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I'm shadow banned by DuckDuckGo and Bing

daverupert.com

131–140 of 205 posts

Re: I'm shadow banned by DuckDuckGo and Bing

#131
post #121
post #106

I have exactly this problem. Beej's Guide to Network Programming is indexed just fine. Beej's Guide to C won't index. The automated tool says it's in violation of some unnamed rule, but I can't figure out which. There's zero SEO, tracking, or ads, and the content is educational and G-rated. All the other guides index just fine. I asked for a review and they came back with the same ambiguous message. Eventually I just…

Could it be due to some overly zealous prude filter and the unfortunate coincidence that "beej" is American slang for blowjob (oral sex)?

Actually outright porn is indexed you know or so I hear.

Re: I'm shadow banned by DuckDuckGo and Bing

#132
post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What should you do when another site copies your content like this then? Have we gotten to the point where websites (and their content) need to be verified like Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok do for personal accounts? If so, will search engines be the ones verifying - using this as a new revenue scheme (with the dangers inherent in this... ie; pay to be listed or ranked higher)?

I actually did add a Bing authentication XML file to my site, but Bing deindexed me again anyway. Bing is the problem. It's broken.

Can confirm, authentication files don't help. Bing is seriously broken, and their support is all but helpful. This is an excerpt from one of their replies:

> "Thank you for your patience during our investigation. After further review, it appears that your site did not meet the standards set by Bing to remain indexed the last time it was crawled. To ensure that this was not a false flag, I also escalated the issue to our Product Team and they manually reviewed your site and confirmed that it is in violation of our Webmaster Guidelines detailed here:

https://www.bing.com/webmaster/help/webmaster-guidelines-30f....

We are not able to provide specifics for these types of issues but we recommend that you review our Webmaster Guidelines, especially the section Things to Avoid, and thoroughly check your site for any deliberately or accidentally employed SEO techniques that may have adversely affected your standing in Bing and Bing-powered search results."

Before snarking, please check that link and the long lists of things - I did not find to find my website https://linmob.net to be offending their "things to avoid list".

That was a reply to my first ticket requesting re-indexation, later tickets only got what I would call "non-replies".

Re: I'm shadow banned by DuckDuckGo and Bing

#133
post #106

I have exactly this problem. Beej's Guide to Network Programming is indexed just fine. Beej's Guide to C won't index. The automated tool says it's in violation of some unnamed rule, but I can't figure out which. There's zero SEO, tracking, or ads, and the content is educational and G-rated. All the other guides index just fine. I asked for a review and they came back with the same ambiguous message. Eventually I just…

i assume you have >0 backlinks to the site?

Re: I'm shadow banned by DuckDuckGo and Bing

#134
post #106

I have exactly this problem. Beej's Guide to Network Programming is indexed just fine. Beej's Guide to C won't index. The automated tool says it's in violation of some unnamed rule, but I can't figure out which. There's zero SEO, tracking, or ads, and the content is educational and G-rated. All the other guides index just fine. I asked for a review and they came back with the same ambiguous message. Eventually I just…

It is interesting since Beej's guide is probably the most famous C/Unix programming tutorial after K&R.

Whats K&R?

Re: I'm shadow banned by DuckDuckGo and Bing

#135

I may have found the answer, and I've seen this before (it happened to me once). It's when a different spam site copies your content wholesale, and a search engine decides they're the "original" site, and you're the spammy copycat. Because if you put the headlines (in quotes) from two of his recent articles into Bring, e.g. either "Megan Smith explaining the General Magic prototyping process" or "Denialists, Alarmist…

How do all of those Stack Overflow mirrors stay up if there is a mechanism to pull the copy-cat?

Re: I'm shadow banned by DuckDuckGo and Bing

#136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is interesting since Beej's guide is probably the most famous C/Unix programming tutorial after K&R.

Whats K&R?

Kernighan & Ritchie: https://www.amazon.com/Programming-Language-2nd-Brian-Kernig...

Re: I'm shadow banned by DuckDuckGo and Bing

#138
post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could it be due to some overly zealous prude filter and the unfortunate coincidence that "beej" is American slang for blowjob (oral sex)?

Actually outright porn is indexed you know or so I hear.

Porn is one thing, the word Beej is quite another. I wish this was a joke.

Re: I'm shadow banned by DuckDuckGo and Bing

#139
post #110

I may have found the answer, and I've seen this before (it happened to me once). It's when a different spam site copies your content wholesale, and a search engine decides they're the "original" site, and you're the spammy copycat. Because if you put the headlines (in quotes) from two of his recent articles into Bring, e.g. either "Megan Smith explaining the General Magic prototyping process" or "Denialists, Alarmist…

Recently on HN there was "Someone is proxy-mirroring my website, can I do anything?": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33952114 It feels like the Internet is a more hostile place than ever for small-time websites. You get squeezed from below by wily criminals, and crushed from above by careless megacorps who want to filter out anything that doesn't make them money.

Nowadays, when I search for things, the results are often clearly pages that have come from a program scrapping sites and then merging them into one page. You can tell because the pages are not really coherent and quickly start to repeat themselves. I assume they are getting money through ads on the pages, though I never actually see the ads because of my blockers. I wish there was a button in the browser that I could click to report the page as spam to all search engines.

Re: I'm shadow banned by DuckDuckGo and Bing

#140
post #133
post #106

I have exactly this problem. Beej's Guide to Network Programming is indexed just fine. Beej's Guide to C won't index. The automated tool says it's in violation of some unnamed rule, but I can't figure out which. There's zero SEO, tracking, or ads, and the content is educational and G-rated. All the other guides index just fine. I asked for a review and they came back with the same ambiguous message. Eventually I just…

i assume you have >0 backlinks to the site?

> i assume you have >0 backlinks to the site?

I always wondered about this. What exactly is a backlink, and why should I need one?

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