AVG: Google take the block off the St Kilda Football Club’s Website

Google defames Saints ... bolts of lightning fall. I'm kidding, I'm kidding!

What I'm really talking about is that if you search for "saints football club", the number three organic search result is the famous (to Australians) St Kilda Football club. The "defamation" bit is that Google has one of its "This site may harm your computer" messages against it.

This means that it is not possible for anyone to click through a Google search and get to the St Kilda website, you have to deliberately cut and paste the URL back into your browser bar.

The reason that they're doing it is that, probably, at some point the website was hacked and was infecting people, but ... GOOGLE-GUYS! IT'S CLEAN NOW! TAKE THE BLOCK OFF, PLEASE! (I feel like saying "Mr Google! Tear down this wall!", but I wouldn't be so bold).

What this really underscores is the concept that a centralised database is useless at detecting web issues, the problem is simply too transient.

This happens quite a bit, and I must admit that I'm surprised that no one has accused Google of damaging their brand.

In the case of k1-usa.net, they used to be the number one organic result when people searched for k1. They were hacked for about 10 days, and then cleaned, but in the mean time they had earned the "This site may harm your computer" label and over the next 12 months, before the label was removed, their rating slipped and slipped until finally it was nowhere on the first three pages.

I can't imagine St Kilda taking it lying down if their ratings start to slip, and I can't imagine Google meaning that to happen. It just shows how difficult it is to keep up.