"Deliberately removing yourself from Google is fine for the author who is more concerned about taking an ideological stance than they are about being discoverable, but removing yourself from Google is terribly bad advice for anyone who wants to help people find their content."
OP states that most of the traffic to his website comes from RSS feeds, not Google.
To suggest removing a site from Google is bad advice for "anyone who wants to help people find their content" is also a "false premise", to use the parent's terminaology. It presumes that for every content owner, Google is always the optimal method of improving discoverability. That of course is not true.
For example, consider a website that gets almost all of its traffic from being submitted to HN. Removing the site from Google is not going stop any significant number of people from discovering the website.
Google is routinely sub-optimal for discoverability. To cite just one example of its many discoverability problems, it is highly localised. Any Google user who has travelled to different countries will notice, for certain types of searches, there is a vast difference between what sites she can discover through Google based on her location.
Both the OP's use of "nobody" and the parent's use of "anyone" are probably figures of speech not to be taken literally. If we take these terms literally, then both the OP's and parent's assertions are false.
OP states that most of the traffic to his website comes from RSS feeds, not Google.
To suggest removing a site from Google is bad advice for "anyone who wants to help people find their content" is also a "false premise", to use the parent's terminaology. It presumes that for every content owner, Google is always the optimal method of improving discoverability. That of course is not true.
For example, consider a website that gets almost all of its traffic from being submitted to HN. Removing the site from Google is not going stop any significant number of people from discovering the website.
Google is routinely sub-optimal for discoverability. To cite just one example of its many discoverability problems, it is highly localised. Any Google user who has travelled to different countries will notice, for certain types of searches, there is a vast difference between what sites she can discover through Google based on her location.
Both the OP's use of "nobody" and the parent's use of "anyone" are probably figures of speech not to be taken literally. If we take these terms literally, then both the OP's and parent's assertions are false.
Some folks like Google, some don't.