What's going on with Google?

My blog seems to have disappeared from Google, and based on these comments at a Google users' group, others' have too.

Until a few days ago, a Google search on Irish Elk returned this blog first or second. A Google search on my name returned this blog in the top five.

Searches on Yahoo still do. Ditto other search engines.

But on a Google search, this blog has dropped off the map -- if it's there, I can't find it. Same with my name.

As most people use Google to find things on the Web, those looking for my blog or for me are now going to have a hard time. If I had a business that relied on Web traffic to my blog, I'd be in a bad way.

Until this morning, a Google mirror site, bbernal.com, apparently using the old technology, had returned the old results, with this blog topping a search on Irish Elk. By late this afternoon, however, the Elk had gone extinct there, too.

Are only blogs hosted on the Google-owned Blogger system affected by the apparent algorithmic tinkering at the main Google site?

As an experiment I googled Mark Shea and his personal website came up, but not his popular blog at blogspot.com. On a Yahoo search, his Catholic and Enjoying It blog is returned first. Meantime, a Google search on Amy Welborn does return her Open Book blog at the top of the list. Her blog is hosted at Typepad.

Does this mean that if you want your blog to turn up in a Google search you have to move your blog off the Google-owned Blogger system to a rival platform like Typepad?

This can't be good for Google, can it? What's the story?