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Charleston.net Columns Reviews Music Movies Arts Dining TV Extras Events Photos Local Cover Bands You could argue they're lazy. Even unoriginal. But you could never say cover bands aren't savvy. Read More Mike Rowe has nothing on Bryce You'd be surprised how often people come up to me and say, "Seriously dude, if you don't stop going through my garbage, I'm calling the police." No, wait! Forget I mentioned that. What I meant to say was people always drop this line on me: "You should do more stuff like that 'Dirty Jobs' guy." Read More Local group to perform contemporary chamber, jazz at concert At 8 tonight, the New Music Collective presents its second annual fall concert, aptly titled "New Music New Charleston." This group of contemporary chamber musicians, as they call themselves, began in the spring of 2005, the brainchild of co-founders Nathan Koci and Philip White, both natives of South Carolina. Read More Film based on Nicholas Sparks book drawing attention in Charleston Adapted by screenwriter Jamie Linden ("We Are Marshall") from the novel by Nicholas Sparks, the feature film "Dear John" is approximately midway through its 10-week shoot in the Charleston and Harleyville areas, with additional location filming having taken place on Edisto Island. Read More Super-Sized exhibition brings artists and students together An exhibition of huge paintings at the Gaillard Auditorium has inspired some local students to create their own large-scale project, and the two will be displayed together for the first time Nov. 25. Read More Family gives people what they want and get a big night, every night in return If you remember Italian restaurants before there was crudo and only scampi, before there was arugula and only romaine, before there was burrata and only mozzarella, then Gennaro's is your Italian taste memory. Read More Today | News | Sports | Entertainment | Features | Web Extras | Editorial | Obituaries | Blogs | Archives The Post and Courier | Charleston.net | 134 Columbus St. | Charleston | SC | 29403

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How to Determine if your Site is Banned in Google

How to Determine if your Site is Banned in Google

By Shari Thurow -

Reader question: I think my site has been banned in google. It used to have all of these top positions for the past three years, and it suddenly disappeared. Can you help?

Answer: In Part 1 of this article, I went over the differences between being spidered, indexed, and ranked in the search engines. This information is important when you determine if your site has been banned in Google. In Part 2, I will go over the 8-step process I use to check for search engine penalties.

Step 1: Check log files or Web analytics reports for search engine activity.

Instead of relying on positioning software to determine whether or not a site is banned in Google, review your log files or Web analytics reports to see if Googlebot is actually crawling your site. Staff with advanced technical skills can review log files; less technical staff can review Web analytics reports.

If you notice a significant drop in Google crawling, it can mean one of two things:

1. Site has been banned, or

2. Google has difficulty crawling your site due to technical reasons.

Step 2: Check index count.

A site's index count is the number of pages that are included in a search engine index. A page cannot rank unless it is included in the search engine index.

One way to check the index count in Google is to perform the following search:

site:yourdomain.com yourdomain.com

If your site is included in the Google index, it has not been banned. However, if your site has an index count of zero, it is a strong indication that your site might be banned.

Step 3: Check link count.

A site's link count is the number and quality of links pointing to a Web site. Link development is actually a more complex process than it seems. But for the purposes of this process, all we are concerned with is the actual number of links to your site that Google can find.

Whenever you do a link count on Google, remember that it is done on a per URL basis. In other words, you will have a link count number to your home page, a different link count number to an individual category page, and so on and so forth. Since most sites tend to have the highest link count to their home pages, then getting a home-page link count is probably all you will need to do.

In Google, getting a link count is very simple:

link:www.yourdomain.com

If there are links to your site in the Google index, your site has not been banned. However, if your site has a link count of zero, it is a very strong indication that your site might be banned.

Step 4: Review and fix possible technical issues.

If your site's index count is low and Google is finding links to your site, then the site might not be banned. Google might have a difficult time crawling your site due to technical issues. Items to review include:

URL structure

Robots exclusion protocol

Server redirects which are improperly formatted

Site navigation scheme(s)

Poor cross-linking

Password protection

Technical issues often arise after a site redesign and server changes. For those of you about to redesign your site, especially if you are going from a static to a database-driven site, make sure you bring in a professional search engine marketer early in the design process to ensure that your design/development team isn't doing something to prevent the search engines from crawling your site.

Also, Google has technical issues from time to time. I call it a search engine hiccup. Usually, the technical glitch is resolved within a month.

Step 5: Resubmit and monitor.

After fixing all possible technical issues, resubmit your site to Google at http://www.google.com/intl/en/addurl.html. I generally submit the home page and site map (as a back-up). Google should be able to crawl your entire site from your home page.

You don't have to resubmit your site to be included in the Google index if Google were able to find high-quality links to your site. People just like the security of being able to submit.

After resubmission, review your log files and Web analytics reports. You should see more Google activity once technical issues are fixed. However, if you see little or no Google activity, then it is a very strong indication that your site has been banned.

Step 6: Review spam penalty checklist.

To review, your site has probably been banned in Google if you see the following:

1. Log files/Web analytics reports indicate that Google is no longer crawling your site.

2. Index count is zero.

3. Link count is zero.

4. No technical issues exist that prevent Google from crawling your site.

Step 7: Review Google guidelines, terms, and conditions.

If Google has penalized your site, you will have to change everything that violates their terms and conditions. You can review their Webmaster Guidelines at http://www.google.com/intl/en/webmasters/guidelines.html and general Webmaster Info at http://www.google.com/intl/en/webmasters/.

All too often, unsuspecting Web site owners have hired a search engine marketing firm that spams the search engines. With Google, it is common to find free-for-all link farms, doorway pages and domains, and cloaking.

In order to get your site unbanned, you will have to find the exact issue (or issues) that violates Google's terms and conditions. You will have to send this information in an email to Google when you ask to be let back into their index.

Step 8: Email Google, resubmit, and monitor.

For the sake of this article, let's assume that the spam problem is a doorway domain that gets link popularity through a link farm. When you send an email to Google at help@google.com, make sure you include the following information in the email:

The domain that you believe has been banned.

All of the contact information of the person in charge of that domain.

The reasons why you believe the domain has been banned. (Hint: show Google that you've read their terms and guidelines).

What you have done, specifically, to change your site.

If you hired a search engine marketing (SEM) firm, then you need to give them the name and URLs of the SEM firm, the URLs of the doorway pages, and at least a couple of links to the FFA link farm.

An apology and a promise that it won't happen again.

In general, a Google software engineer will not directly reply to your request for re-inclusion. You will know if your site has been accepted back into the Google index by reviewing your log files and Web analytics software for Google activity.

Conclusion

It must be rough to suddenly lose Google traffic after three years of search engine visibility. Maybe it was a Google hiccup. Maybe the site was redesigned. Maybe the competition has better quality content and better link development. Or maybe the Web site owner hired an SEM firm that spammed the search engines. Hopefully, this 8-step process will help readers get on the right track.

Related links

Disabling Google and Other Search Engines from Crawling a Site

The Myth of Permanent Search Engine Positions

URL Structure and Search Engine Optimization

Getting Your Web Site Listed in the Google Index

Shari Thurow is Marketing Director at Grantastic Designs, Inc., a full-service search engine marketing, web and graphic design firm. This article is excerpted from her book, Search Engine Visibility (http://www.searchenginesbook.com) published in January 2003 by New Riders Publishing Co. Shari can be reached at shari@grantasticdesigns.com.

http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2005/01/03/how-to-determine-if-your-site-is-banned-in-google

Help, my site has been banned by Google!

Help, my site has been banned by Google!

It is the ultimate search engine marketing nightmare: Your site has been removed from Google's index and your traffic is falling.

By all means panic. Then draw your breath and read our Banned by Google Survival Guide. And yes, it works for the other search engines as well.

When your pages disappear

(November 2004, Update April 2006) There are those that wake up one morning and find that all of their web pages has disappeared from the Google index. Others find that Google has removed one page at the time, finally ending up with the home page, and then: none at all.

A Google ban can also be more subtle. The pages remain in the Google database, but they end up at page 722 for all relevant search queries.

If they had good rankings before, this is more likely than not caused by the wrath of the world's mightiest search engine.

For the sake of argument we will believe you when you say that you don't know why Google (or Yahoo!, Ask.com, MSN Search or any other search engine) has decided to ban your site and your web pages.

Moreover, we also take it that this is not the result of some mysterious flux in the search engine databases -- i.e. you have really been banned for some weeks now.

What do you do?

Technical reasons

First check whether the disappearance of your pages have a natural cause. For instance: See if someone has changed the robots.txt file and inadvertently stopped the search engine spiders from entering your site.

It could also be that someone has included meta tags that exclude the robots (NOINDEX).

If your web server has too much downtime, that might also hurt. If that is the case, get a new web host or new and stable web server.

Copied sites

It could also be that the ban is caused by someone else. For instance: It could be that someone has copied your site, and that Google, finding identical pages, has decided to give your competitor the benefit of doubt.

If this is the case, you must search Google for a text string that is unique for your web pages and see if you can find the thief. Then demand that the site owner (or -- if that does not work -- his or her web host) remove the offending site, while at the same time informing Google about the matter.

You can read the following articles to learn more about how to handle such instances:

• Pandia cloned by copyright thief
• Spammers hijack web site listings in Google

What is spam?

However, more likely than not you have done something that is in violation with Google's written or un-written anti-spam regulations. That is: There is something about your site that leads Google to believe that you are trying to unduly influence your search engine rankings.

Now this is indeed a tricky "judicial" area. Given that Google accepts that web site owners optimize their sites for better search engine listings, it is somewhat hard to decide what is kosher and what is not.

Still, Google's own guidelines gives you clear indications of what they consider to be big "no-no's":

Google argues that you should make pages for users, not for search engines: "Don't deceive your users, or present different content to search engines than you display to users," they say, and goes on to list the following banned advice:

• Avoid hidden text or hidden links.
• Don't employ cloaking or sneaky redirects.
• Don't send automated queries to Google.
• Don't load pages with irrelevant words.
• Don't create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.
• Avoid "doorway" pages created just for search engines, or other "cookie cutter" approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no original content.

Google also says:

"Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings. A good rule of thumb is whether you'd feel comfortable explaining what you've done to a website that competes with you. Another useful test is to ask, 'Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn't exist?'"

Actually, this advice does not make as much sense as Google would like it to.

The fact is that Google will not punish you for so-called "organic search engine optimization", as long as the page make perfect sense for any human reader.

Hence, Google will not ban your for sprinkling relevant keyword phrases thought the text, as long as the copy reads as normal text.

We will take a look at Google's list of advice, one by one.

And please remember: Even if you know that you haven't broken these rules, you could still considered a search engine spammer by Google. Check whether anyone else have been involved in the design of the site.

If you have inherited the responsibility for the site from someone else, he or she can have broken the rules. If a search engine marketing company has been involved, they can have stepped beyond the boundaries of proper search engine optimization practices.

Moreover, are you sure your local computer expert may not have tweaked the site a bit, just to be helpful?

http://www.pandia.com/features/banned.html

AM News: Widow of Nichols victim brought gun to court

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Sign up to receive daily AJC headlines on your mobile device. Powered by Looking to give back to the community? Visit DoGood.ajc.com today. Log on to ajc.com from your mobile device and download the new ajc icon for Blackberry users. Now you can wear a piece of history. Purchase a historic Obama T-shirt from the AJC. View the best strategies for planning Thanksgiving dinner in our Atlanta Holiday Guide. Bill Clinton stumps for Jim Martin Big metro counties seek foreclosure aid In all, Atlanta and Fulton, DeKalb, Gwinnett, Clayton and Cobb counties stand to get about $81 million in federal aid through the Neighborhood Stabilization Program. There's a total of $153 million headed to Georgia. Widow of Nichols victim had gun Candee Wilhelm carried a .380-caliber handgun past the security screeners on the first floor of the Atlanta Municipal Courthouse, where the Nichols trial is being conducted, according to a person with direct knowledge of the event. •Jury hears Nichols' alleged threat against DA Clinton boosts Martin runoff campaign Former President Bill Clinton told a chilly crowd of Georgia voters at Clark Atlanta University Georgia to send Barack Obama one more deputy - Democratic Senate candidate Jim Martin. •Photos | Prize money funds inauguration trip •Al-Qaeda No. 2 insults Obama | Transition page | Voter Guide $1.5B Streets of Buckhead project delayed "A lot of retailers are reconsidering or slowing down their 2009 openings," developer Ben Carter said. "The general consensus is that we'll be in a recovery mode in 2010. Retailers we've signed up are in agreement with that." 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The bag was one of the largest items ever lost by a spacewalking astronaut, and NASA guessed it cost about $100,000. Indian navy praised for sinking pirate ship An anti-piracy watchdog group today welcomed an Indian warship's destruction of a suspected pirate vessel in waters off Somalia, where hijackings have become increasingly violent and the hijackers increasingly bold. New movies "Twilight," "Bolt," "Dukes," "Fear(s) of the Dark" •Rapper gets 20 years after writing shooting song Whew! Hawks end 4-game losing streak The Hawks get another Marvin Williams 3-pointer in the final seconds. Only this time, unlike in Boston when Paul Pierce spoiled things with a jumper at the buzzer, the Hawks made the lead stand up and beat the Wizards, 91-87. •Atlanta soccer team cancels season •Ex-NFL player with 9 kids wants break in child support •Tech fans may not embrace 'whiteout' Southern Regional Medical Center Local history revealed Atlanta as it was: 1868-1939 Search our historic archive! 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The Note's Must-Reads are Ready for 11/20/2008

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