Censorship

A few weeks ago I sounded off at a meeting of bloggers in Goa about how someone – either at Google or an outside hacker – had introduced hundreds of “robot.txt blocks” on my site.

These instruct search engines not to look at specific things you have written; in effect, they are censors.

In the last year, the number of robot.txt blocks on my site has climbed steadily and is now 791.

Meanwhile, the total number of urls from my site indexed by Google has fallen from about 800 to nearly half that figure, a sure sign of malign interference. (The total should only go up for it is cumulative.)

There has been a resounding lack of response to my appeals for help addressed to Google and the blogspot community.

One of the other participants at the meeting who seemed to have an inside track to Google expresssed interest in my predicament and I held out hope that something constructive would result.

Something has happened, but not what I hoped. 

The “Total Indexed” graph line no longer descends from 800; it now ascends from 0 to 512 on 1/6/13, peaks at 646 on 5/12/13, and then drops to the current 465.

Meanwhile, the graph line showing the number of urls “Ever Crawled” on my site  was at 717 when the “Total Indexed” is shown at 0, an obvious anomaly. (The "Ever Crawled" figure is now 807.)

The number of robot.txt blocks was 586 when the Total Indexed is shown at 0!

The mysterious statistical volatility on my site has not affected the selection of anodyne keywords Google uses as identifiers of my ever controversial blog. These are the top 20 keywords it associates with undiplomatictimes:

1. Indian (4 variants)

2. Post (3 variants)

3. January

4. February

5. World

6. March

7. November

8. British

9. New

10. December

11. Blog (4 variants)

12. August

13. Nations (3 variants)

14. Countries (3 variants)

15. United (2 variants)

16. China (3 variants)

17. April

18. Britain (2 variants)

19. Atom (2 variants)

20. June

In a certain twisted sort of way it is flattering that the high and the mighty, with all the resources of Western mass media at their command, should feel the need to censor my tiny voice. It can only be taken as signalling an intense insecurity.