Penalties For Political Statements?
Since the last week of June I have noticed my stats heading south on this blog but didn’t think too much about it. I thought it had to do with summer arriving and readers going on vacation. But it’s not that because most of the referrals from Google have dried up. Referrals from other search engines have actually increased. This is something new in my experience.
But Google is the big dog and so without it things are going to go south as you can see in the second graph. So I started looking around to see if there are bloggers talking about this phenomena. And, in fact, there are!
This conservative blog media blog posted about Blogspot blogs being shut down on June 30. And this conservative blog posted today, July 11, about the same deal.
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Bloggers are getting shut down for political statements about Senator Obama? Could this possibly be happening? And I am finding the Google Search Engine stalled out and readership plummeting because I wrote about Senator Obama?
I very rarely write about political figures. But they make such good targets and writers have been doing this for the past 200 plus years in this country. I am not really a political person. So I try to spread it around in the name of fairness.
Clinton, Edwards, McCain, Bush and Obama plus many more. Eliot Spitzer for example set himself up to be a wonderful subject. Could it possibly be that writing about Senator Obama resulted in the air going out of these blogs?
I don’t know. But it is not very funny if it is happening. And shutting down blogs at Blogspot is rather heavy handed. These are people who have done nothing except write about a political candidate. Maybe i don’t agree with the things they say. But I definitely support their right to say them.
Watch out for more of this as the political season progresses. Some of what people say and do will be the result of anger and paranoia for sure. But there is an undercurrent of concern that has been around for awhile now and some of it actually began when Senator McCain and his buddies got campaign reform legislation started.
What’s going on with Google?
And welcome Yahoo, MSN, Search Live and AOL. I look to you to support free speech in this country. I don’t really care if I have ten or a thousand readers per day as long as I can write posts that reflect what I think and need to say.
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It certainly is a good thing that we are not trying to make any money around here. Blogging is just a way to enjoy being creative and maybe experience some new things.
THIS would certainly fall into the second category. So thanks Google! We will never feel secure while you are around.
Have a nice day.
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Here’s something that shows what the search engine sees when it looks at my blog and yours. . .
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Maybe this will help. Hey! You have to start somewhere. . . .
http://www.webconfs.com/spider-view-article-9.php
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4 responses so far
What did you read in any of my rhetoric that led you to believe my blog is a “conservative” one.
My mistake. Centrist maybe? It was not meant to be derogatory in any case.
See there you go David…You talk about politics and you get in trouble !!!
bernie kaspers last blog post..“Madison Indiana Wildflowers”
Hhahhahaha. Bernie. I can always count on you to lighten the load. Isn’t it amazing? I have always thought of the internet as being wide open and free. But there are people who are trying to destroy that. And they are doing a pretty good job.
This afternoon I am going to promote my Yahoo reader and dismantle my Google reader. That’ll show em.