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Unindexed

Simple project by Matthew Rothenberg is a website that deletes itself once it has become indexed by Google:

An experiment in the nature of ephemerality and persistence on the web.

Unindexed was a website that continuously searched Google for itself over and over. The moment it found itself in the search results it would irrevocably securely delete itself, making the precise instant of algorithmic discovery the catalyst of destruction.

Visitors were encouraged to post contributions to the site (which would also be destroyed when the site was detected). They were then invited to share the site with others, bearing in mind the impact their method of sharing would have on the eventual discovery of the URL by Google search bots.

A tension was created between the desire to share and the desire to keep it to oneself, and the site spread on a small scale via postal mail, word-of-mouth, etc.

The site was discovered by Google after 22 days on Tue Feb 24 2015 21:01:14 GMT+0000 (UTC) and consequently instantly destroyed.  Prior to the automatic deletion it it had hundreds of visitors and dozens of contributions. No backups were kept.

Whilst this site has now disappeared forever, the code to put one together can be found at GitHub here