Virtual Flowers for a Blog Friend...PLEASE READ!!!

I'm sending some virtual flowers to my sweet blog friend Diane @ Lavender Dreams.

Google deleted her blog.  She's lost everything: every post, comment, photo...

Diane emailed me yesterday.  Here's the story in a nutshell:

My original blog lavenderdreamstoo was unfairly removed by blogger and I need your help to get it back.

Please read my post and add what I've written to a post on your blog so that our voices can come together and be heard.

You can copy the entirety of my post or select a few sentences. Anything you can do would mean a lot to me and hopefully will make a difference to blogger! I want my blog back!!! And we all know if this could happen to me, it could happen to any of us!

Sweet hugs, Diane

Before I go on, please click on THIS LINK to her new blog.

This is a LINK to the post about her issues with Google.

This is a snippet of what happened to Diane's blog from her post:

It wasn't someone reporting us. It was Google's automated piece of software (a bot) that roams the Blogger world looking for pre-programmed words of woe. Once it detects something it kills the whole blog without warning. Without any notification about these supposed offending words. Without an opportunity to fix anything. Just ZAP ... your digital life is deleted. Everything is gone!

Ten years of blogging, thousands of posts, many thousands of photos, over ten thousand comments and a hundred thousand heart-felt words all gone in an instant. Devastating! Be warned all you innocents in blogland.

The blog was actually removed twice, for "phishing". Which, as you all know, is absurd. We have never asked for your personal, private information. The Appeals process reinstated the blog the first time then the Google Bot zapped us again the next day. But the second time we were locked out of the Appeals process. We tried sending Feedback. Never got an answer. Tried to post to the Blogger Help Community. They never published the post. Located twenty phone numbers for Google. The numbers are all automated and only a couple allowed you to leave a message. We left messages. Never got a callback.

Google/Blogger pronounces you guilty using an "automated system" (their words) and gives you little or no opportunity to prove otherwise. It's been a nightmare. 

Diane is in the process of putting together a timeline of what's happened with her blog and her correspondence with Google.  She should have it posted shortly.

This is frightening, but honestly I'm not surprised.  I love using Blogger as the platform for my blog.  I resisted moving my blog to Typepad or Wordpress not only for financial reasons, but also for aesthetic reasons.  (For instance, I love how mobile responsive my template is compared to other blogs including Wordpress blogs.)

However, I do own my own domain.  It's inexpensive (via Go Daddy) and I've never had any issues with them.  My blog only costs me around eight dollars per year, maybe ten dollars more if I purchase something like a blog graphic or something which is rare.  If you want to go this route, Linda the Blog Fairy can help you.

Linda can be reached HERE.

I wanted to give all of y'all a heads-up about what's going on with Diane, and more importantly a link where you can find her.  She could really use your support and encouragement right now.

I hope y'all are having a peaceful and blessed Sunday.  I will check in with Diane in a little while and post an update.

Also, if any of you have experienced a similar fate or know of anyone else who has, it would be helpful to Diane to know how it was resolved with Google.

Thanks SO MUCH for taking the time to read this post!  Y'all are the best!

Until next time...

Blessings!
Ricki Jill