I can’t say what I did or didn’t do that caused my site to disappear from Google search, but it has been fixed.

Most other sites I’ve created hit Google’s search within days. Me.com, however, took eight months. I finally remedied this oversight when I took it off my project backburner late last month. Before finding the solution, I made a few half-hearted attempts to find out why I wasn’t being listed.

I first tried adding my site to Google’s Webmaster Tools. Webmaster Tools show users what Googlebot is encountering as it scans their Web sites and provides other useful information. I figured giving Google permission to collect all it wanted about my online affairs would help. It did not. However, after performing a keyword scan on my site, Google spit out a strange list of keywords that were definitely not mine.

I then skimmed my site for hidden bits of code or those weird words from the list, perhaps from an sql injection attack. WordPress blogs are particularly susceptible to these and other security problems. Because of this, I did a few things to harden my install but found nothing wrong.

Back to Google. Sitemaps Generator, a WordPress plugin, is an easy way to submit your sitemap to the three major search engines. After you create a new post, the plugin generates a new sitemap and notifies Google, Live and Yahoo about the changes via ping. Does it help your site achieve a higher ranking? The plugin’s maker says it doesn’t know but “it can help Google to index and crawl your page better which may result in a more complete index of your page.” Even with the extra effort, no luck.

Meanwhile, Yahoo and Live both indexed my site, but no Google. Searches for help, including a couple of SEO companies’ forums, didn’t help either.

Finally, a random search yielded a great suggestion: Submit my site to Google for reconsideration. The Official Google Webmaster blog outlines how to do it. A couple weeks after submitting my site, it appeared.

You can only imagine my excitement. Much like Navin Johnson (aka Steve Martin in “The Jerk”), I knew I was “somebody” again. I am somebody!

Navin R. Johnson: The new phone book’s here! The new phone book’s here!
Harry Hartounian: Boy, I wish I could get that excited about nothing.
Navin R. Johnson: Nothing? Are you kidding? Page 73 – Johnson, Navin R.! I’m somebody now! Millions of people look at this book everyday! This is the kind of spontaneous publicity – your name in print – that makes people. I’m in print! Things are going to start happening to me now.

I wonder if Google will attach a short, verbal AdWords-like advertisement to these searches? Local search, especially as connected to cell phones and increasingly as linked to the phones’ GPS services, is a HUGE developing market. Imagine having your ad included as a sponsored result for someone’s voice search. “Nick’s Pizza Shack. Just 10 minutes from you in beautiful downtown Akron. Press 1 to call for reservations.” The possibilities are amazing.

Update: And the whole thing is in limbo.

So, is Apple making money off of it? No.

Are many developers? It’s hard to tell. Although this lady is making $2,000 a day on a crossword puzzle game she created.

Most articles I’ve read suggest these apps — many which are free or near free — are great for promoting other services.

“It’s all good, thought [sic], as a sort of reverse razors-and-blades scenario: Instead of razors selling blades, Jobs theorizes that applications will help drive sales of the iPhone — just like iTunes helped propel iPod sales,” writes Wired blogger John C. Abell. Here, again, we have “free” making people money.

Free apps may also help sell the services behind them. Some are a teaser versions of full-blown programs, iPhone-optimized versions of a pay service, or promotions for beer or food.

The quality of these programs vary widely. By allowing the apps to be sold, Apple is opening up its phone to a “marketplace” of ideas, or programs, really, and enriching the user experience. Many will stink; fewer will be awesome. Quite a few will only be downloaded a couple hundred times but will find their niche down the Long Tail.

Apple has taken a risk by opening up its previously closed system, but could reap the rewards of increased phone sales (the company already has sold millions and plans to sell 40 million worldwide next year) and marketshare. When Google’s Android OS debuts this fall, it could be a battle of platforms.

I use Google Analytics to track the traffic on this site and a couple others. Because I like to tweak, my tweak-then-page-reloads often show up in the reports.

I think I found a way to exclude myself from the numbers by using a cookie and filter. I’ll have to give the numbers a look over in a few days to see if this works.