I found this message from February that perfectly described what has happened to my blog. I had three separate blogs - all of them are gone. I get the "404 Not Found" page when I got to them. One blog had many pages with URLs - none of them are there. My dashboard shows nothing, except "Create A Blog." I have contacted Blogger support, but we know how that goes. This person whose blog disappeared in February apparently never got it restored, as it is still gone. My only option in that case would be to re-create it from scratch, using Google cached pages. Does anyone know what happens in these matters? Do they ever get restored? Should this be a lesson that we should somehow back up our blogs? And what's the best way to do that? My blog was at:
tbknews.blogspot.com
Thanks.
Here's the message I found from February:
From: StarryNightMan - view profile Date: Thurs, Feb 16 2006 6:27 pm Not yet rated Rating: show options
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My blog disappeared a couple of weeks ago. Poof.. gone. It used to reside at: http://outdoor-lighting.blogspot.com/. Now, all I get is a 404. All I've been able to get out of Blogger support is an automated e-mail directing me to the help system. I can still log in to the dashboard, but.. my only option is to "Create a Blog". Not very helpful at all. My blog disappeared around the time of all the hardware trouble that was experienced a week or two ago. Does anybody have any ideas how I can get my blog restored? Thanks!
Any assistance is greatly appreciated. Will I be compelled to recreate the entire blog? All three of them, actually, with dozens of pages, some of which were not yet cached to Google, and I don't have copies. Then there's the audio blog, which I assume will be lost forever.
AS- The first thing is to immediately login to Blogger and Create a New Blog and grab that address. That's to keep anyone else from getting it, do that immediately.
Do that for any of your deleted blogs.
Then work it out with Blogger support. Just guessing, since all of them are gone but now available (at least the one you posted is available) it probably got marked for deletion by the spambots. Blogger CAN restore them, but you need to grab the urls so no one else can bugger things up.
Then just keep it up with Blogger support, it could be anything from a few days to over a week. But grab those urls!!!
Well, it's too late. Some bastard has already stolen my blog URL. How does that happen? I think Blogger's going to get sued one of these days. Thanks for the advice. Perhaps this one can be deleted and mine replaced?
So some unscrupulous jerk apparently read this help forum, saw my URL and then stole it. My other blogs, which I did not publicized by including the URL here, are still 404 but at least not stolen. Unbelievable. Why doesn't blogger warn people that something like this could happen? As I say, if this happens to someone with money, I imagine Blogger would be looking at a huge lawsuit.
To everyone else who has a Blogger blog - WATCH OUT! The same thing can happen to you.
Another danger of this disgraceful behavior is that this jerk put up a link farm. Anyone now linked to my blog will find that their website rankings will go down because of an outgoing link to a link farm. How despicable. As I say, the entire Blogger community needs to be forewarned about this sort of thing.
And how come no one from Blogger has shown up on this post? I see that they do on a regular basis on other posts? Hello? Anyone out there? We have a serious situation here that is causing distress to many people, including destroying page rankings.
I have now created another blog to warn the entire blogging community that this could happen to them, at any time, regardless of what they have written.
I do believe that this warning should be passed around as much as possible. What happened to me and others is extremely harmful what happened to me and others.
AS wrote: > And how come no one from Blogger has shown up on this post? I see that > they do on a regular basis on other posts? Hello? Anyone out there? > We have a serious situation here that is causing distress to many > people, including destroying page rankings.
There is only one Blogger person who posts here, and that is Blogger Employee. Everybody else is a Blogger user like you.
I don't know what is going on, or even if there is something going on. All I know is that only Blogger Support can help you, and you will have to contact them again. Blogger Support, as you know, does not tell us what's going on. All we know is what we read here. And that ain't much.
Thanks, Chuck. What do you know about the Page Ranking and link farms? How long should I wait for response from Blogger, possible deletion of the link farm and restoration of my blog at my URL before I start removing the links to my blog? I don't want to jeopardize my PR or that of anyone who linked to my blog. Think there's a snowball chance in hell that I'll get my URL and blog back?
AS wrote: > Thanks, Chuck. What do you know about the Page Ranking and link farms? > How long should I wait for response from Blogger, possible deletion of > the link farm and restoration of my blog at my URL before I start > removing the links to my blog? I don't want to jeopardize my PR or > that of anyone who linked to my blog. Think there's a snowball chance > in hell that I'll get my URL and blog back?
Page Rankings, and the whole concept of automatically indexing your blog (or any website), are an invention of Google (and other indexing services). As they are free services, I know of no documentation regarding their nature.
If you reported the situation to Blogger Support, and if the hijacker is obviously a spammer, there is a very good chance that YOU will regain control of the blog, and of the URL. How soon is unpredictable. Be patient.
But please keep your second blog updated. For sure, publish its feed URL. See mine for an example.
Thanks for your advice and help, Chuch. Blogger has restored one of my blogs, albeit a more minor one. The hijacked one is still gone. I've update my blog to reflect that fact:
I added what Blogger claimed was my Atom feed, but I'm not very experienced with these things, so I have no idea if that works. On my previous blog, I had to go to feedburner and set it all up, but it stopped working sometime ago. Perhaps that's related to this fiasco.
If you keep at it, Blogger will Delete the blog that was taken over also, just keep with it. Since it is obviously spam they will delete it and should restore your previous one with it. Other people have had it happen and gotten it back when the spammers took over the available url.
And this is a guess, but I don't think that posting the URL here is what made the spammer get that one (even tho who knows). But from the sound of your posts, the one you posted was your main one which had been up the longest. The spammers look for blogs that have been indexed and attainaed even a little page rank in google, and they have automated scripts looking for ones that suddenly return 404's and are thus available. Sorry they got to it before you did, that's why I suggested to grab it immediately, the spammers are quick.
Other people have gotten the spammers out and their blogs restored...just keep at it.
AS wrote: > Thanks for your advice and help, Chuch. Blogger has restored one of my > blogs, albeit a more minor one. The hijacked one is still gone. I've > update my blog to reflect that fact:
> I added what Blogger claimed was my Atom feed, but I'm not very > experienced with these things, so I have no idea if that works. On my > previous blog, I had to go to feedburner and set it all up, but it > stopped working sometime ago. Perhaps that's related to this fiasco.
Good job. Please continue to update your second blog, as a warning and encouragement to all Bloggers. And be patient.
This is a distressing item to read. Sorry to learn this type of thing happens. I am very new to blogging and came to this link in hopes of learning how to backup blogs to protect from loss. Suggestions on that would be helpful. Sorry to read that ones' blog can be hijacked.
AS wrote: > I found this message from February that perfectly described what has > happened to my blog. I had three separate blogs - all of them are > gone. I get the "404 Not Found" page when I got to them. One blog had > many pages with URLs - none of them are there. My dashboard shows > nothing, except "Create A Blog." I have contacted Blogger support, but > we know how that goes. This person whose blog disappeared in February > apparently never got it restored, as it is still gone. My only option > in that case would be to re-create it from scratch, using Google cached > pages. Does anyone know what happens in these matters? Do they ever > get restored? Should this be a lesson that we should somehow back up > our blogs? And what's the best way to do that? My blog was at:
> tbknews.blogspot.com
> Thanks.
> Here's the message I found from February:
> From: StarryNightMan - view profile > Date: Thurs, Feb 16 2006 6:27 pm > Not yet rated > Rating: > show options
> Reply | Reply to Author | Forward | Print | Individual Message | Report > Abuse | Find messages by this author
> My blog disappeared a couple of weeks ago. Poof.. gone. > It used to reside at: http://outdoor-lighting.blogspot.com/. Now, all I > get is a 404. > All I've been able to get out of Blogger support is an automated e-mail > directing me to the help system. I can still log in to the dashboard, > but.. my only option is to "Create a Blog". Not very helpful at all. > My blog disappeared around the time of all the hardware trouble that > was experienced a week or two ago. Does anybody have any ideas how I > can get my blog restored? > Thanks!
Do check back on my "what happened to my blog" blog for other help. If anyone else gets anything out of this experience, I will at least have made lemonade out of lemons.
> Do check back on my "what happened to my blog" blog for other help. If > anyone else gets anything out of this experience, I will at least have > made lemonade out of lemons.
