So I had something interesting happen this week. Theater Hopper was dropped from Google’s index.

Don’t believe me? Go to Google, type in “Theater Hopper” and see what comes up. Notice my URL isn’t displayed anywhere? Yeah. Good times.

So, what happened? Basically, someone hacked the site and placed a bunch of links to web sites selling cheap Viagra inside a hidden <div> tag. The links didn’t manifest in production on the site, but they were being pulled from the code by Google’s spiders and classified as spam.

Since Google has a very firm anti-spam policy (yet, oddly, continues to index literally MILLIONS of sites with malicious intent), my site was pulled from their site for no less than 30 days while I “clean up my code.”

Well, the code has been scrubbed and security has been tightened, but Google yanked me anyway.

I’ve submitted an appeal to be reinstated sooner than 30 days, but Google pretty much says they won’t make any promises.

This is really bad timing for me because I was hoping to attract some new readers after attending the Emerald City Comicon in Seattle last week. Now people can’t find the site.

At this point, I’m trying to raise a big stink to see if I can get Google’s attention. But, in the meantime, my traffic is suffering.

If it’s not too much to ask, can you guys go through the archive and bookmark some of your favorite strips using the ShareThis application under the comic? Index individual pages in Stumble Upon, Reddit, Digg… where ever you have accounts. Post comics to your Facebook page. ANYTHING. It’s the only thing I can think of to have you do to help stop the bleeding from this Google fiasco.

And if you’re reading this post through RSS, I implore you to please come back to the site and read the comic for the next few weeks. Keep your subscription to the feed, but if you could help me out for a short period of time, I would really appreciate it.

Thanks for your help and I’ll keep everyone updated with any change in status.