As various readers have pointed out, some schmoe has set up his blog (apparently something having to do with search engines) at volokh.blogspot.com, our old home. When we moved our then-blogger-based blog to volokh.com, that freed up the old location, and blogger let people snag it from us.
We certainly should have prevented that, presumably by quickly setting up a new blogger-based dummy blog that pointed to volokh.blogspot.com. And the squatter shouldn’t have taken advantage of our error, since as best we can tell he has nothing whatsoever to do with anything Volokh, and is just trying to bait-and-switch unsuspecting users. (If he’s actually some long-lost namesake, I will withdraw the allegation.)
In any event, I’m a bit annoyed, but too swamped to try to do anything much about it right now. But if you have a link to http://volokh.blogspot.com on your site (or some subpage), and could change it to https://volokh.com, I’d much appreciate it. One reason the person grabbed the site, I take it, is that it has a high google ranking because of all the old links that go there. Changing the links will diminish this windfall, and will also make your site more helpful (since if you try to link to us, presumably you want to link to us).
Incidentally, what prompted me to get off my duff and write this post — no, wait, I’m writing it while still on my duff — was this message from reader Tony Rickey (who also got in touch with some big blogs himself to get them to update their links):
OK, I just figured it out.
You guys used to blog at Volokh.blogspot.com, didn’t you? And a load of people . . . still link to you there. See:http://www.google.com/search?as_lq=volokh.blogspot.com
Which means this guy now has a PR6 site to play with. PR6 is really hard to get, especially one as strong as yours, and I’d assume as strong as your old blog. I know some folks who also have PR6s that have used them to do some serious damage before this.
I’d actually consider it a favor if you could write a quick entry asking everyone who links to you to change the link . . . . Taking this baby’s toys away would make me one happy camper. And it would give the guy an incentive to shut the site down. . . .
As you might know, I’ve wanted a PR6 for ages — no reason to give this guy one for free!
I had never heard of “PR6” before, though I suppose I can figure it out from context. But it’s obviously enough to get my correspondent righteously angry.
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