Tuesday, December 02, 2003

To:
Subject: Please?
Date: Mon, 10 Nov 2003 10:58:25 -0500

Hello,

I have a website ( link removed ) which I am trying hard to sell my rain barrels from. If you do a search in Google for "rain barrels" your site pops up ahead of mine. I have reviewed you content and it seems that the site no longer is being
used. Could you remove the site from the google index here: http://www.google.com/bot.html ? Or if not could you redirect to my URL? This would be greatly appreciated.

Strange type of question I know, but I sell rain barrels to support my family and page position in google is VERY important to me. :-)

Please respond when you have the time, thanks.

"A"

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Dear "A"

I have given your request some thought and I hope you will try to understand the reasons why I am not going remove to my site from Google's index.

While Rain Barrel is indeed in stasis, it is still occasionally read by folks who stumble upon through Google and other search engines. From my dead words in Rain Barrel, I have received and continue to receive email from interested readers, quote-digging journalists, professionals in my field, and from long lost friends. To remove Rain Barrel from Google is, in effect, to remove my site from future readers and I'm not prepared to do that.

I don't want to seem insensitive to the needs of the small-business person (I live with someone who owns and runs his own business) but I don't believe that a for-profit venture should have any priority over a not-for-profit venture on the Internet.

Google measures relevance by links. I've earned my links. Perhaps you should create a blog on your site to generate similar traffic...

Hope there are no hard feelings. Good luck and take care
Mita

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