In January, I posted about my research into the history of the copyright status on Sherlock Holmes. Although many news outlets rang in the New Year with proclamations that Sherlock Holmes was now free of copyright and in the public domain (“Now anybody can write a Sherlock Holmes story”), I pointed out that they’d made similar proclamations in 2013 (“Finally, Sherlock Holmes is now in the public domain”) after a 7th Circuit court decision castigated the Doyle literary estate.

Indeed, Sherlock Holmes, Dr. Watson, and the bulk of the Holmes canon have been in the public domain for decades now (in the United States, at least). My conclusion was that the Doyle literary estate has been using fear tactics to con creators—from movie studios down to independent authors—to pay them bogus licensing fees.

Something strange happened after posting that entry, though. I check in with Google Search Console now and then to see how my web site is being indexed and discovered by users. My post on the history of Sherlock Holmes’ copyright status has been indexed by Google but is not available via search. In other words, Google’s servers have seen the post, they’ve analyzed the content, but they refuse to add it to their search engine for users to discover. (Google has indexed pages on my web site that link to the page, but not the page itself.)

It’s been over three months. Posts I made after the Sherlock Holmes entry were indexed and made available on Google immediately, usually within a week. Almost all my other blog posts are available on Google (so far as I can tell). Not the entry on Sherlock Holmes’ copyright situation, though. I’ve made repeated attempts to get the page indexed. I ran a Google Search Console tool to find any problems on the page. I’ve gone through Google’s help system to find any valid reason the page may be excluded. The result: Zilch, and my page remains unavailable on Google search.

This isn’t a problem on alternative search engines Duck Duck Go or Bing. It’s only Google.

Google is free to present or exclude any pages it wants to. I’m not even arguing they owe me an explanation, although I’d appreciate one.

But just as Google is in control of their web site, I’m in control of mine. I’ve tried my best to navigate their systems and understand why they’ve excluded my page, to no avail. So I’ll use my final option—my voice, however small—to let others know.

Update: Several weeks after posting this, Google Search began returning the page as a result.