My site has disappeared from Google’s listings, and I initially blamed the cause on my site going down for a long period of time a while back. After finally getting back online, I decided to start using Google Sitemaps. After trying to add my site, though, I ran into a problem; Google claimed my site was inaccessible! I could browse the site fine so I figured it was a temporary problem on Google’s end. After trying multiple times over a course of a month or so, I decided to investigate. What I found was a bit surprising: freedns.afraid.org (my dynamic DNS provider) blocks all requests from Google! I couldn’t believe it!
A bit pissed, I emailed Joshua Anderson (the maintainer of FreeDNS) about it. He asked for my domain name and stated that Google can now access my site. He didn’t respond to the portion of my email asking why Google is blocked in the first place.
Well, Google is now able to download my sitemap, but I will have to wait a LOOONG time before I show up in Google again. It took me a while the first time, and I’m basically starting again as if I’m reborn.
I also enlisted in a secondary DNS service, EditDNS.net, just in case there are some other surprises in afraid.org’s services. Hopefully if any queries to afraid.org’s servers fail, EditDNS will come through successfully.
Isn’t blocking Google such a bad idea? I wonder what the reasoning behind it is. I don’t see freedns.afraid.org having any trouble getting listed by Google.
UPDATE: FreeDNS has updated their FAQ to address the Google issue. Here’s an excerpt:
The official policy is this:
1) At around 4AM PST each night, the previous 24 hours worth of domain
additions are made visible to Google. (subdomain edits and updates are
instant).
2) No subdomains created via the shared domain system are visible to
Google. You *must* own the domain its self that you are creating a
subdomain off of to have it visible to Google by default.
Yeah, screw Josh, use Hurricaine Electric for your Free DNS. Josh deleted my zone files and then refused to give me the backups. Joshua Anderson is a total Dickwad and should not be dealt with regardless of whether his product is free.