To Those With Personal Backpacking Blogs…

[Jolly Green Giant]

I use the Blogger.com format and I just leaned today that my site of several years has been taken down for a violation of their terms of service and content. I'm not entirely sure what this means because it is regularly used with a solid following and content is all personal opinion about backpacking topics and nothing more.

Just curious if this happened to anyone else as a faceless and nameless entity just took away a lot of work and a resource to some without warning or explanation.

Thanks.

[Tim Zen]

Jolly — that is a odd tale. The terms don't look that stringent. How did you offend Google?

All I can say is you get what you paid for the service. Have you considered putting up your own site for a few bucks per month?

[Bob Gross]

Part of the solution may be to own your own domain. Then, you set the rules.

–B.G.–

[Jolly Green Giant]

Honestly, I'm entirely miffed and would be fine with some kind of explanation versus just pulling the plug. I'm not selling anything or sending information anywhere, I don't use offensive language, etc. It's a blog of opinions and experiences associated with backpacking and can't imagine web content much more tame than this.

As to having my own site, I've thought about it and some have offered to set it up for me. After this fiasco, either I need to go that route or just give it up altogether which is a possibility now that the landscape has broadened to many more lightweight backpacking bloggers than existed when I first started with content many moons ago.

Thanks.

[John Jensen]

You should definitely ask Google what's up. They should explain a take-down.

But it may be as simple as Green Giant being a registered trademark of General Mills.

[Jolly Green Giant]

JGG trademark, huh – could be. I hadn't thought of that angle. The funny thing about asking Google is that I can't. There is no e-mail or POC. Instead, there is a forum where I'm supposed to write an entry for help, but when I try, it says I don't have permission. Cute.

[Bob Gross]

Jolly, since that site is no longer working, you probably want to take the address off your BPL profile.

Nearly always when there is a take down, it is some serious business or legal issue.

I had a web site that disappeared only when the Internet service was purchased by somebody else, and I was given a tiny bit of advanced warning.

–B.G.–

[Jolly Green Giant]

Drama over. Google apparently decided their automatic spam filter made a mistake and turned my blog back on. Sheesh, like kids with a magnifying glass on an anthill.

[MFR]

Glad it's back. I know that is frustrating.

[Author]

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