HMAD Lives!

If you don't visit the site at least once a week, that's fine - I don't update it every week anymore, so fair's fair! But those who check in regularly were probably (hopefully?) alarmed that the site was completely removed for about ten days. Not offline, legit DELETED thanks to Google's software flagging it as a sp*m site. It took two attempts on my part to convince them that no, it's not that, it's literally just a bunch of horror movie reviews that they were making unavailable at the time of the year the site gets the most traffic. So, thanks for that one, Google.

And no, I still don't know what triggered it - they couldn't be bothered to even let me know it had been restored, let alone why it was removed in the first place. I just kept checking a couple times a day and finally, yesterday afternoon, it was there, in all its ugly white text over black glory (someone somewhere is definitely mad that this didn't force me to start a new site with better design, and to them I say: lol, sorry!). So that sucked, but at least it's back, and none of the reviews I was working on were lost (I couldn't even access my drafts - that's how extensive the removal was!), so beyond scaring me and a few readers, no harm no foul I guess.

But keep this post in mind if it ever disappears again! I'll never take it down on my own (even if I'm embarrassed by some of the older reviews) but if there's another glitch in their software I can't promise it'll return since there's apparently no way to talk to a human being there. They have helpers on their forums and the one guy helping me (named Adam) was great, but even he seemed to be unable to get any strong answers of why it was flagged as such, because obviously if it was a particular review or comment I'd just delete it outright and not have to worry. Cross fingers it doesn't happen again!

Tweet