Ask.com Blacklists Catholicgauze!
by tdaxp ~ May 20th, 2006
Just as tdaxp spun off from Groundrocket, Catholicgauze spun off from tdaxp. I’ve tracked his rise in the blogosphere, and more recently his criticism of Ask.com Maps. According to Catholicgauze’s original review, Ask.com Maps is like Google Maps, except wildly inaccurate. The watery sinai penensula and the malarial swamps of the Australian Outback.
Ask.com respnded by pulling Catholicgauze from its database. In his words:
Throughout the past few days I have received hits from IP address from Ask.com. So did Ask fix their map problem or reply to concerns? No, they blacklisted Catholicgauze! When one searches for “Geographic Travels with Catholicgauze” or even “Catholicgauze” there are no results which directly lead to this blog! They honor other blogs like TDAXP. Yahoo and Google will show Geographic Travels with Catholicgauze at or very close to the top of “Catholicgauze” searches.
Why Ask? I point out a problem and you try to bury me and leave the problem only. I really want to like your map service and even stated that. Your behavior of blacklisting users while being kicked around by Google is shocking.
While not quite as bad as suing bloggers who write negative reviews, Ask.com’s behavior raises serious questions as its use as a reliable search engine. Back when it was AskJeeves, I would recommend Ask to people new to the internet. I will never do that again.
The New York Times uses top 1% of income, not wealth. From the legend:...
August 13th, 2006 at 12:00 am
From a comment earlier
“No where does the main web search link directly to any part of GTWC. GTWC use to be the first result until it was magically removed when I wrote about their mapping site.
The blog search was a token they gave me when I started raising a fuss.”
August 13th, 2006 at 12:00 am
Funny, I search the Ask.com/Bloglines search engine for blogs and feeds and find numerous links to Catholicgauze.
http://www.ask.com/blogsearch?qsrc=1&o=333&l=dir&q=%22Catholicgauze%22
May 21st, 2006 at 12:00 am
Wow, that's pretty pathetic of Ask.com I remember I did used to use AskJeeves, but they added all these advertisements crowding the results a few years ago.
May 21st, 2006 at 12:00 am
Adam, agreed.
“Andy Yang,” supposedly Product Manager for Maps at Ask.com, and replied to Catholicgauze, and Cg responded in turn.
It's good reading
http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=20709534&postID=114809834524533836
August 16th, 2006 at 12:00 am
As Catholicgauze described on his blog [1], “jimmy o'reilly” is an Ask.com employee (contractors, whatever) who did not identify himself as such. He is part of a network of Ask.com employees who have been attacking your analysis on the blogosphere.
This is too bad. I used to be a big fan of the Ask.com property, bloglines [2]. Ask.com has been a joke before [3], but at least then it was intentional.
[1] http://catholicgauze.blogspot.com/2006/08/askcom-caught-crusade-on-them.html
[2] http://www.tdaxp.com/archive/2005/03/30/how_did_i_ever_live_without_bloglines.html
[3] http://www.satirewire.com/features/satire-jeevesinterview.shtml