I received a funny email this morning:
Hi,
There is an Internet Webpage that has my address showing right under the Webpage. Could you please remove my address from seemingly being associated with the wall collapsing as I want to put my property up for sale.
My address is XXXXXXXXXXXX
I guess the cache has to have the content removed according to Google, and then the Google crawler can delete it from the Internet. If you Google my address, you’ll be able to more clearly see what I mean. I do thank you and appreciate it if you could do this.
Please email me back.
Sincerely,
S
What S is referring to is an old post on AllVoices that shows the wall collapse above the old Salad King location on Yonge and Gould; entirely unrelated to her address except that AllVoices, at some point in the past, included a “related” video that mentioned her address at the bottom of the page (along with numerous other links which, I guess, are now tainted).
I replied:
Hello S,
The cached page you sent me below has the address mentioned in a completely separate video link (“Video Source: xml. truveo.com”) – which is neither edited, controlled nor maintained by me (nor does it even appear below my post any longer – have a look at the non-cached version). I suggest you contact Google and AllVoices with this issue and inquire why these two pieces of information are being conflated in the search results; if it’s happening here, chances are very good you’ll see it again with some other random post.
My photos make no mention of your address either directly or indirectly and I furthermore have no control over Google’s cached pages or how AllVoices chooses to combine what they deem to be related content on their pages. And, to be quite blunt, I’m not in the habit of removing things just because some third-party site may incidentally decide to include them alongside something else that may affect your resale. To put it into perspective, my name appears in the search results along with a millinery and a high school in Thunder Bay — should I ask them to remove their sites because they might be misleading when I go looking for a job? After all, I don’t live in Thunder Bay and I’ve never made a hat in my life, yet these appear right next to my name in Google’s search results.
Should potential buyers express reservations based on the link you sent me, feel free to refer them to http://www.google.ca/search?q=interwebs+for+n00bs
Best of luck,
Patrick
... with pictures
... with sounds
... with videos
... with opinions
... that's shorter
... that's longer
