The Hide-E-Hole Ferret Rescue used to be located at a slightly different URL (ferret-hide-e-hole.org). We got our new URL (hide-e-hole.com) to make it easier for people to find us. Since we had business cards and literature out there with our old URL, we retained the old one and just had it refer to the new website. Unfortunately, through a misunderstanding with my previous webmaster, the old URL was not renewed and some jerk from Romania bought it.
He’s not a jerk for buying it. I screwed up and it was up for grabs. The reason why he’s a jerk is that he found a copy of my OLD website and copied the entire thing! It is hosted by a Russian website company, and there is nothing I can do to get it removed. One company said they’d help if I paid $1,500! Right. There was no guarantee and that money could be put to much better use for vet bills!
I petitioned Google to at least remove it from their results list. The ultimate frustration … it was coming up BEFORE my current website! So Google removed it, but there are all those other search engines out there. 🙁 If anyone out there knows how to get the other search engines to remove the bogus shelter website, I’d love to have some help.
The problem is that people who are interested in adopting a ferret are clicking on the first result, which was the fake website. Some people called me, but I’m sure we lost a lot of potential adopters due to this. I can’t do anything about it now, what’s done is done, but I’d like to assure people that THIS is the real, correct and most recent website. I won’t say it’s all that current since I’ve been having trouble getting everything done, but at least this site is more recent than 2008 (which is the date of the illegal website).
I’ve had some recent surrenders who have health issues, and it doesn’t look like I’m going to have much free time any time soon.
