September 23, 2005
Google News (Part II)
As a quick follow up, Matt Cutts did post the facts about their new Webmaster Notification (pilot) program the other day. It's in his blog.
As I suspected, the whole thing about the host being sent an email came from their address being listed in the WhoIs contact information. Matt says in a comment that they've changed their internal procedures somewhat to keep this from happening in the future.
They'll try to find an email address on the site first, but they'll also look in the WhoIs. The difference being that now they will not send anything to either the Technical or Billing contact. Only to the Admin. If they can't find a valid email address they may also try generic email addresses such as webmaster@ and support@.
It's still a very good program IMHO. And yes Matt provided a sample of the letter they send out. And they do get into specifics. Also said that they only sent out email to 100 domains in the first run. So it's not a large-scale program by any stretch of the imagination at this point.