While Google provides webmasters with tools to remove pages from its index, we overlooked the fact that Blippy could have been crawled by Google during the period of the exposure.

FORBES: Blippy Apologizes For Google-Searchable Credit Cards, Announces New Security Plan

Google's official page for Webmasters cryptically notes that Google is "able to place fewer restraints on sites that we crawl for this supplemental index than we do on sites that are crawled for our main index, " a phrase that puzzles most search marketers.

FORBES: Magazine Article

Critics have pointed out that preventing paid linking also drives Webmasters to spend more money in Google's advertising programs.

FORBES: Google Scares The Search Crowd

Apostolos Gerasoulis, executive vice president of search technology at Google competitor Ask.com is equally pessimistic about the search industry's battles with Webmasters who manipulate results.

FORBES: Magazine Article