The owners of TalkOrigins Archive, a Web site about evolution, had every Webmaster's nightmare happen to them: Their site was hacked, a bunch of invisible porn links added, and Google noticed the problem and kicked them out of their search engine. They tried to contact Google to find out what the problem was, and Google didn't respond.

But Google's Matt Cutts tells a different story -- he says Google did try to contact the site owners, but didn't get a response. Cutts defends Google's cooperation with legitimate Webmasters.

It's easy to blame Google for this problem -- everybody loves to blame the big bad corporations. Unless, of course, you take Google's side, in which case you blame the Web site owner for failing to police his own Web site. But the truth is more complicated than that. Both Google and TalkOrigins Archive share blame. And in the end, the real blameworthy party is the unknown hacker, who made both TalkOrigins Archive and Google into victims.

Wesley R. Elsberry of TalkOrigins Archive says he blames Google for failing to contact him to let him know that his site had been hacked and was being "de-indexed."

He says:

You might think that a company that prides itself upon advanced textual analysis and automated decision-making algorithms might provide helpful warning messages to webmasters concerning problems found in their sites. You would be wrong. [Google's Matt Cutts says that Google did send a warning email that I did not receive. - WRE] If Google decides that there is a problem, they will de-index the entire site, never attempt to communicate with the webmaster concerning their action, and (this is the big problem part) they refuse to tell a webmaster what the problem was or where the problem occurred, whether or not the webmaster deliberately created the problem or was the victim of some of the all-too-common website cracking that happens nowadays. Google's policy of keeping problems secret is harmful, and in fact favors cheaters over honest webmasters.

Elsberry says when he noticed the problem, he tried to get help through Google's Web site but couldn't get results. He tried to contact Google by phone, but got a recorded message saying that all problems were handled over the Web.

My mission, whether I liked it or not, was to find and fix whatever problem the TOA might have, with no guidance as to what the problem was and nothing at all about where to start looking. Since the TOA site is 5,000+ separate pages, that could be quite the task.

At least some of the commenters on Elsberry's blog take Google's side, saying Google has a responsibility to keep its indexes clean. Some blame Elsberry for failing to keep his site clean in the first place.

Read the Slashdot thread for further, interesting discussion (which inevitably verges off into a discussion of evolution vs. intelligent design, which I'm intentionally not getting into here).

Google's Matt Cutts responds, describing how Google noticed the problem at TalkOrigins Archive, de-listed the site, and attempted to contact the Webmasters to get their problems solved, but didn't get a response. (Elsberry says he never got the e-mails.) Cutts says:

But let's take a step back. This site was hacked and stuffed with a bunch of hidden spammy porn words and links. Google detected the spam in less than 10 days; that's faster than the site owner noticed it. We temporarily removed the site from our index so that users wouldn't get the spammy porn back in response to queries. We made it possible for the webmaster to verify that their site was penalized. Then we emailed the site, with the exact page and the exact text that was causing problems. We provided a link to the correct place for the site owner to request reinclusion. We also made the penalty for a relatively short time (60 days), so that if the webmaster fixed the issue but didn't contact Google, they would still be fine after a few weeks.

It's easy to side with Elsberry. Most Web sites, be they commercial (like InformationWeek) or not-for-profit (like the TalkOrigins Archive) are trying to build the maximum audience, and Google is a vital source of traffic. Getting de-listed by Google is a death sentence. TalkOrigins Archive were victims and they got no help trying to fix those problems.

But wait! There's another side to this story. It's a fallacy to assume that Google exists to serve Web publishers (like Elsberry -- or me, for that matter). It exists to serve its users -- people searching for information on the Web -- and has no obligation to explain how and why it de-lists sites. The fact that it makes those explanations anyway is an example of enlightened self-interest -- Google knows that if it works with Webmasters, its searches get better.

And yet: Google did a disservice to the users by dropping TalkOrigins Archive from its index. The original evolution information was still on TalkOrigins Archive, and intact. The site defacement was done in such a way that it was invisible to actual human beings visiting the site. Users visiting TalkOrigins Archive during the period it was defaced got exactly the same information they would have received before or after.

Google failed to notice that and therefore, if TalkOrigins Archive is to blame for failing to adequately police itself, then Google is to blame too, for having an inadequate search algorithm and failing to realize it.

Ultimately, of course, the real blame goes to the hacker, and Google and TalkOrigins Archive are victims.

Also victims: You, me, and everybody else on the Internet. Sure, the TalkOrigins Archive hack is petty in the cosmic scope of things. But it's typical of the millions and billions of spam messages, viruses, worms, link farms, splogs, and other defacements and criminal acts that add an enormous cost in money and effort to getting things done and doing business on the Internet.

(Via Ars Technica)