For the past week or two I've been querying Google with just my first name about once a day to see how much its ranking in the search results fluctuated from day to day. I wasn't keeping track, which would be an interesting exeriment using the Google API, but the index page was holding position anywhere approximately between 405 and 440. Obviously, not as ideal as Jeremy, Kasia, or Chris.
Yesterday I couldn't find it at all. Not in the first 700 anyway. Finally I searched for my first and last name [screenshot]which has had the index page on top for a couple of years now. Instead of my main website I have a couple of TrackBack listings. Clicking on more results from kb0off.sheddwellers.org results in a listing of every TrackBack page on my site, foaf.rdf my resume and a link to my main blog page without a title, trailing slash in the URL. Coincidentally I recently added "/mt" to my robots.txt file because I didn't think that it was necessary to have spiders crawling those pages. Now, thinking back on it, I feel that was unnecessary because those pages contain links back to people that have sent TrackBack pings to my blog which would (should), in turn, help their PageRank. There's also the strange coincidence that this happened at the same time that I began using the new URL's.
There must be a reason for all of this. Restricting robot access from one directory and setting up a few redirects isn't going to get your page unlisted. I'm actually quite suprised that it was unlisted at all. The only other explanation I can conceive is that I am at the receiving end of some foul play.
