SEO Cartoon

Rate this cartoon!

(15 votes, average 4.60 out of 5)

 

 Loading ...

Escape from Google Ban: Get Back to Where You Once Belonged

What is Google ban?

Google ban is a penalty that Google imposes on sites violating its Webmaster Guidelines. It is not a step-down the Google search results pages and not a disappearance from them for a day or two because of a sudden change in the ranking algorithm. Google just removes information about sites that violate its guidelines from its index. Having a site that users cannot find is a webmaster’s worst nightmare.

How can you find out if your site has been banned?

• A sudden drop in traffic is a good reason to make sure that everything is okay with your site, says John Honeck, Google Webmaster Forum Top Contributor.
• A gray inactive Google PR toolbar, that had previously been green or just active, may be a sign that the site is no longer listed in the search engine index. – If your search for a command site:www.yoursite.com shows no results, the sad truth is that your site has been banned.
• You can also find out about a ban using Google Webmaster Tools. There you may see whether the pages of your site are included in the Google index and when Googlebot last accessed your homepage. In addition, you may receive a message from Google explaining what the problem with your site is, but most likely Google will inform you about such elementary violations like hidden text.

Instead of panicking…

• check your robots.txt and meta tags to make sure indexation is allowed from there;
• check if there are pages on the Web that duplicate your content;
• check if your site meets all Google Webmaster Guidelines. This is especially important if you have inherited the website or consulted an SEM company;
• visit Google Webmaster Help Forum, especially if you have implemented these steps but still cannot locate the problem. There you can find answers to all your Google-related questions.

How to get back?

When you understand the reason why your site has been dropped from the Google index, remove the cause of the trouble immediately. Then enter Google Webmaster Tools, go to Dashboard and choose “Request reconsideration”. Follow the steps, and do not forget to swear that you will never ever do evil again.
Remember, search engines like Yahoo and MSN more or less agree with Google in terms of what constitutes spam.

Never too much of a good thing, especially when knowledge is meant. Armed with this idea, we picked for you some informative articles concerning Google Ban and ways to avoid it.

Find Out If Google Has Penalized Your Site
OMG, I Got The Google Ban?
Why Has Google Banned My Website?

SEO companies’ visibility rate

Are SEO companies as good as they claim to be on their sites? Will they return the efficiency they promise? Are their skills qualified? The only way to find it out is to check how they optimize and promote their own sites.

Here we share Top 10 SEO Companies according to their search visibility rate for January 2009.

Web CEO analysts use objective evidence to rate SEO firms according to their search engine visibility. SEO companies’ visibility rate is calculated using a special formula that considers the positions of SEO companies’ sites in search engines results pages for the keywords their potential clients use, popularity of these keywords and number of competitors. Learn more about the formula.

Expert opinion

“Occasionally they [Google] do notify, but I think for real simple stuff like hidden text. I have never heard of a letter to anyone for selling links or other more complicated issues.”
John Honeck, Google Webmaster Forum Top Contributor

“If it’s been several weeks since you submitted your request and you haven’t seen any change in your site’s performance, this probably means one of two things: 1) Your site is still in violation of Google’s webmaster guidelines; or 2) There was nothing wrong with your site in the first place, other than that it wasn’t ranking as well as you’d like.”
Susan Moskwa, Webmaster Trends Analyst at Google