|
|
Banned By Google And Back Again
The date: 29th July 2005. The time: early morning. I got out of bed and fired up my PC. Opened my browser to check my site. Had a look at the third-party Google toolbar plugin (http://toolbar.google.com/) on said browser (FireFox). It showed grey.
Ice formed in my stomach. I opened my bugged version of Internet Explorer: my PageRank was 0. By now I was frantic. I went to http://www.google.com and typed in 'site:www.tigertom.com': no pages listed. I did this for two other satellite sites of mine: ditto.
What had happened?
TigerTom.Com (http://www.tigertom.com) had been banned by Google. I went to the WebmasterWorld forum (http://www.webmasterworld.com), and found out the awful truth. Google was doing one of its periodic updates of its algorithm, and had filtered out my sites completely.
Further research there, and a bit of soul-searching, revealed why. I had too many pseudo-directory pages with auto-generated external links. Snippets from search engine results were used as descriptions of said links. Said links were run though a redirect script. These are hallmarks of pseudo-directories and 'AdSense scraper'* sites. Google is reportedly trying to filter these from its 'SERPs'**. I say reportedly, because Google doesn't announce these purges. They are inferred.
To compound my sins, these pages were also effectively doorway pages?.
The theory was that legitimate sites had been hit as 'collateral damage'. I say theory, in that Google rarely comments on individual cases. It won't tell you exactly why your site was banned. I guess this is for reasons of time, and to give no clues to spammers.
In my case the ban was justified for my two satellite sites; while not looking like spam, they were effectively doorway sites.
My main site was different. It had offending pages, but was mostly a diverse labour of seven years; a personal site on steroids.
Google bans sites algorithmically: a site that fits their 'spammer' profile gets dropped via software from their index automatically. Real spammers shrug their shoulders and move on; honest webmasters write emails begging for mercy.
Like me.
I did some searching via Google, to find out how to do a re-inclusion request. Here's how:
1. First, you check your site is truly gone, by going to http://www.google.com, typing 'site:www.yourdomain.com' without the apostrophes. If it returns no pages at all ...
2. You check Google's webmaster guidelines at http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html. These are not really guidelines; you should treat them as iron-clad rules.
3. You stop the offending content from being web-accessible, permanently.
If you're familiar with Apache web-server mod_rewrite you can:
- Send a 410 'Gone' response to requests for the offending pages, or
- CHMOD them to 600, which will return a 403 'Forbidden' response, or
- Move them to a different directory if you need to keep them, or
- Just delete them.
Don't try to be clever. Just get rid of them.
4. You go to http://www.google.com/support/bin/request.py, tick the relevant boxes, and type 'Re-inclusion request' in the subject box of the form.
4a. You add the complete URL of your site i.e. http://www.naughtydomain.com,
4b. You state that you have read the webmaster guidelines above,
4c. You admit what you did wrong; simply, succinctly, with no carping or special pleading.
Don't try to be clever. Don't argue. Don't lie. Don't waffle.
Google has cached copies of your site. When an engineer checks your site, he'll look for the offending content, and compare it against their cache. He'll spend about two minutes on it; don't give him a reason to continue to exclude you.
4d. You ask for re-inclusion.
5. You wait.
In my case, it took about a week; a long, unpleasant, fretful week. I sent follow up emails saying what I was doing, and a fax, and I was going to write letters if that didn't work. That was probably excessive. Once you have a ticket number, that's all that should be necessary.
They emailed a standard reply saying "the problem had been passed to their engineers". That's good. I understand they send no reply to spammers.
A week later my site was back in. Lesson learnt. To make sure I'm not so vulnerable again, I'm splitting my content to different sites, on the principle of 'best not to have all your eggs in one basket'.
Have I learnt anything from this? Yes. Have more than one site as your 'money-maker'. Spend less time on search engine optimisation and more on traditional marketing. Come up with a unique selling proposition that compels people to link to your site. Easy(!)
------
* A site specifically set up to host Google Adsense advertisements (http://www.google.com/adsense). Usually of low quality, consisting of pages of links to other web sites, text copied from free-print articles, and a big Google ad block 'above the fold'.
** Search Engine Result Pages
? Doorway pages are low-quality keyword-rich web pages whose sole purpose is to lead the viewer to the 'real' content, usually whatever the site is selling.
About the author: T. O' Donnell (http://www.ttfreeware.co.uk/) is an ecommerce consultant and curmudgeon living in London, UK. His latest project is an ebook on buying property in Spain (http://www.tigertom.com/spanish-property-for-sale.shtml). His blog can be read at http://www.ttblog.co.uk/.
Reciprocal Links to Boost Link Popularity ?
Link popularity means the number of incoming links pointing to your website. This is one of the criterical factor that rank the search results. If you are have link on website with high PageRank (PR4+), you will benefit from it and your ranking will boost.
Search Engine Marketing: Are You Accidentally Hiding From Potential Customers?
You may be hiding if the search engines can't 'see' all of your site's relevant content.
The Truth About Search Engines: Playing A Game You Cant Win
If you go strictly by the numbers, Yahoo, MSN and Google are the "Big 3" of search engines and directories. Between them, they index millions and millions of pages in their directories. Although Google claims to index over 4 billion.
Google Love - Five Top Tips To Make Google Love Your Site
1. Google love ...
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) - Fix Your OnPage!
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is something you should be aware of before creating a site. Make sure you've done careful researches on the best keywords to use. Using the wrong keywords would eliminate your site from search engines forever!
Five Simple Steps to Getting Links to Your Site
Today if you want your site to survive in the search engines your going to need backlinks. Almost all the major search engines rank sites based on the number and the quality of backlinks. Besides getting a good search engine ranking with links, it also one of the most effective ways to increase a site's traffic. So, how do you build your link popularity? In this article I'll show you 5 simple steps that will help you build your site's link popularity.
A Classified Way To Drive Business To Your Web Site
There are more than 105 million of them in the United States. Worldwide, there could be at least 250 million of them. Them, according to statistics from the Nielsen/Net Ratings service, is the number of active Web surfers. 250 million in the whole world? The figure is more than the populations of Canada, Australia, Great Britain, and a few non-English speaking countries combined. That's a lot of them!
Website Copy-writing for Higher Sales and Higher Search Engine Ranking
Why, you ask? Mainly, because search engines want to provide their users with good content. How do they find it? By surfing the web for it. However, search engines don't view websites with human eyes, instead they use "spiders" (also known as crawlers, or robots), a "spider" is an automated program used to browse the web in a methodical manner.
Creative Search Engine Optimization ? A Case Study
Search engine optimization this and search engine optimization that. You read and hear about it all day, but what about your site? While there are plenty of articles providing useful information, this article shows you how a real world example met with success. The point of this article is to emphasize creativity when approaching tough optimization situations.
Keyword Research And Overture
Many of us who build websites get in the habit of using the Overture "Keyword Suggestion Tool" to do keyword research. It's convenient, and one of the few remaining such tools that is free. Be careful, though, because there are four problems you may run into with it.
9 Ways to Keep Google Happy
A recent Google patent application has the SEO community buzzing. At a bare minimum this document reveals the direction Google is taking its future search criteria. Changes in the way Google will be evaluating pages for search rankings are intended to address two major problems:
Optimize Your Site Pt2
6: The hidden benefits to having the right links. Every site online has an index or default file as its home page file. But outside of that rule you can name the other pages whatever you like. So why not cram the names with keywords and/or keyphrases relevant to that page and your site? We've just scored again ;-)
Search Engines - The Dominant Factor
Let's face facts - Search engines are starting to rule and dominate the way people advertise their products and services.
Why Search Engine Optimization is Not Enough
OK. So you've created a nice website with lots of interesting products and information. Now all you need is visitors.
Boost Your Website Rankings with Expert Content
The chase for a high web ranking is constantly on and is in fact very demanding given the tough competition provided by all the other websites out there who happen to be putting up material on the same subject as you. All websites with average or below average content become victims of isolation and cyber ostracism. A good web ranking while ensuring a website's popularity pays off in the form of greater earnings from advertisers on the your website.
Get Personal With Google
Anyone who's been on the net any time at all knows that Google has been the search engine of choice for many for a while now. Whether that continues remains to be seen, but for now, with MSN still in development and Yahoo going through some growing pains, many still feel that Google is the leader. As such, it's worth dropping in to the Google Labs every now and then to see what's going on there.
Whats with the Competition? Ever Heard of Cooperation?
I attended the SES Expo in San Jose, CA the other day. It was an hour from my home in Larkspur, CA just north of the Golden Gate Bridge. Along the way I was thinking this would be really neat to see, a lot of companies doing the same things really, and to see how they play together.
Search Engine Optimization - Enhancing Web Site Visibility
I've had several prospects and clients say to me "I want my web site to come up on top in search engines." And some have been contacted by an SEO company asking for lots of money and claiming that they can guarantee top search engine results, which in many cases is just false promises. There is no quick and easy way to make a web site display in the top 10 on search engines. Getting a web site to come up high in search engines "naturally" can take time and effort. When I say naturally, I mean without paying to be a sponsored link. The content of the web site has to be relevant. By this, I mean the web site content should be very descriptive, and ideally unique, about your business, product or service. This way search engines can rank your site according to this detailed, descriptive and relevant content. Some reasons that a web site will rank high:
How To Get Number 1 Spot In Google, Every Time, Guaranteed
Woaah! Wait a minute. Before I exclusively reveal these insider secrets can I ask you question? Well, actually, I want to ask you a series of questions.
How Do I Improve My Web Site Conversion Rate? Part 2
Question 1