Google accidentally omits Digg from search results

Reports around the web suggest that users faced a weird situation for a brief period while doing a site: search for Digg on Google – it simply did not return any results. Turns out that it was a glitch. Martin Macdonald, on his Inbound Marketing Blog revealed that Matt Cutts, head of Google’s Webspam team, tweeted that the omission of Digg happened when they were removing a spammy submitted link on Digg.com. Inadvertently, the action got applied to the whole site, leading to the error. Cutts assured of a fix and seems like the issue is non-existent now – you can try doing a site:search yourself. 

This is how it looked!

Cutts tweeted, “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.”

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While there is no fixed word on this, many couldn’t help but notice the timing of this event – it comes just days after Digg announced that it is working on building a Google Reader-like reader. Macdonald notes, “Something interesting has just come across one of my networks (hat tip to datadial), just a few days after Digg have announced that they are building a replacement for the much loved Google Reader, they have (coincidentally?) disappeared from the primary google index.”

“We’ve heard people say that RSS is a thing of the past, and perhaps in its current incarnation it is, but as daily (hourly) users of Google Reader, we’re convinced that it’s a product worth saving. So we’re going to give it our best shot,” said the Digg post announcing the move.

With Google tolling the death knell of this service, Digg announced that it is moving its plans of building a Reader-like reader to the top of its list, with work already begun on the Digg reader. As part of this process, Digg revealed that it wishes to “identify and rebuild the best of Google Reader’s features,” and this includes the latter’s API. In doing so, they plan to make it progressive enough to “fit the Internet of 2013.”

Digg is seeking opinions and inputs of the users,on what they’d like to see in a reader. “In order to pull this off in such a small window, we’re going to need your help. We need your input on what you want to see in a reader. What problems should it solve for you? What’s useful? What isn’t? What do you wish it could do that it can’t today?” the post adds.