Google has started blocking one of our IP addresses. We thought this might happen. We are prepared.

We could still gather data from them through other servers we have or other means entirely, but we’ve stopped all pinging of Google until this is resolved.

I apologize to those of you who have come to rely on our reports on Google rankings. Hopefully, we will have something back up ASAP. In the meantime, you can still use SearchRascal to view reports on Yahoo! and MSN Live rankings. And we’re still doing development on new features, with the expectation that everything will be back online very soon.

We know this is a useful service for many people, and we also want to keep this a legitimate operation. We will be contacting Google to see what’s up, dawg.

Finally, if anyone out there can help in any way, it would be much appreciated. We’d be looking for good contacts at Google to raise this issue with, people who have experience with similar situations, or anyone who has experience partnering with Google on similar applications.

Thanks for your patience. As always, stay tuned to this blog for updates.