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Google accidentally removes Digg from search results

Digg is back in Google search results after having been accidentally removed Wednesday morning.
(Salvador Rodriguez/Los Angeles Times)
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Oops! A mistake by Google on Wednesday morning caused the site’s search service to remove Digg from its results, leading to speculation that there may have been some drama between the two tech companies.

Digg users searching for the social news website were unable to find Digg atop Google search even if they looked for “digg.” Instead, they found the Digg Wikipedia page, Digg Twitter account and other Digg-related results but nothing for the site itself.

This caused users to turn to forums and ask if others were getting the same results. Once it was confirmed this was a widespread occurrence, some users began speculating about what may have caused Google to de-list Digg.

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Some wondered if Google decided to remove Digg as a result of the site recently announcing that it would build its an RSS platform, shortly after Google announced it would kill Reader, its own RSS platform.

“Just a few days after Digg have announced that they are building a replacement for the much loved Google Reader, they have (coincidentally?) disappeared from the primary google index,” wrote Martin Macdonald, a blogger.

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However, that was not the case. Google quickly put out a statement explaining that the whole situation was caused by accident.

“We’re sorry about the inconvenience this morning to people trying to search for Digg,” Google said. “In the process of removing a spammy link on Digg.com, we inadvertently applied the webspam action to the whole site. We’re correcting this, and the fix should be deployed shortly.”

And sure enough, Digg quickly went back on Google search results. All in all, it was a funny glimpse at the type of mistakes a large tech company like Google can make from time to time.

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