Definition:
Google banning occurs when Google removes your site from its index and
flags your domain as 'banned', so it won't spider your site anymore. It
is actually a serious disease and may be even life threatening specially
for small websites.
Etiology:
Webmasters' mistakes are almost always the leading causes of google
banning; here are some of the common mistakes that will get your website
banned:
1. Using small or hidden text in your web pages. Some webmasters will
try to use hidden text containing certain keywords inside their site, so
that the text is not visible by the human eyes, but visible by search
engines.
2. Using popular keywords such as "sex, mp3, yahoo" in the meta tags
when the subject of your site has nothing to do with those keywords is
commonly called keyword stuffing.
3. Participating in Link farms. Link farms or Free-for-all links pages
are pages that consist of links and exist solely to help listed sites
gain higher search engine rankings. These pages have no unique content
just links. Obviously you can't control which sites link back to you,
but if you link to link farms, your site will get banned.
4. Submitting multiple versions of the exact same page or an identical
page for indexing. Some webmasters try to increase their page count by
having similar pages and only changing the title, subject or small word
changes.
5. Using unauthorized automated software to submit pages, check
rankings, etc. Such programs violate Google's terms of service. Google
does not recommend the use of products that send automatic or
programmatic queries to Google. It is better to hand submit your site
and only do so once a month.
6. Keyword stuffing: adding too many keywords in Meta tags or page text
is called Spam and will get you banned. For example, if your website
contains 400 words and the keyword phrase "website advertising" is
repeated 50 times, the search engines will most likely think you are
spamming them.
7. Using Doorway pages: Doorway pages are Web pages designed and built
specifically to draw search engine visitors to your website. They are
standalone pages designed only to act as doorways to your site. Doorway
pages are a very bad idea for several reasons, though many SEO firms use
them routinely.
8. Linking to a banned site, specially extensive linking as in networks.
9. Registering an already banned domain. Some webmasters, after their
website becomes banned from google due to any reason, delete this domain
and register another while the first domain remains banned from google.
So, before you register a domain, make sure it is not banned by doing
the test mentioned below in "Diagnosis".
Manifestations:
1.The earliest manifestations of google banning are usually first
noticed by the webmaster as a sudden and severe drop in the number of
website visitors and when the webmaster tracks the referrers of his
visitors, he will not find anymore visitors coming to his site from
google.
2. Sudden drop of the google PageRank of all pages of the website from
any level to 0.
The combination of the above 2 symptoms is highly suspicious for google
banning specially if they occur suddenly to an "old", established, high
ranking website. In case of "newly born" websites, the diagnosis may be
difficult depending on the above manifestations alone as these
manifestations may be normal and transient for new sites which have not
been indexed by google yet and so their pagerank is still 0. In this
case, we need an "urgent" diagnostic test.
Diagnosis:
The diagnosis of google banning is very easy, even for new sites that
have not been indexed by google yet. The diagnosis is made by a simple,
accurate, and rapid test:
Test: Provided the site suspected for google banning is called
www.suspected-domain.com, do a search in google for
www.suspected-domain.com.
Results and interpretation: if www. suspected-domain.com is banned,
google will say: "Sorry, no information is available for the URL
www.suspected-domain.com" WITHOUT a direct link to
www.suspected-domain.com. This sign differentiates between banned sites
and new non-indexed sites. In the later case, there will be a direct
link to www.suspected-domain.com, and google search results will say:
"Sorry, no information is available for the URL www.suspected-domain.com"
followed by "If the URL is valid, try visiting that web page by clicking
on the following link: www.suspected-domain.com". This sign is absent in
banned sites.
Complications:
Google banning is an infectious disease; all sites linking to the banned
site are at a risk of catching the banning. So it is usual that many
link partners escape and on the long run, the site will lose many of its
inbound links.
Prevention:
Prevention is always easier than treatment, and fortunately, google
banning is a preventable disease. Prevention is easy, you don't need to
do anything to avoid banning, just don't do bad things, most of them are
mentioned above.
Treatment:
Unfortunately, no curative treatment is available and the prognosis is
bad, just palliative treatment:
1. Treatment of the cause. The first thing to do is to correct the
cause. If you are not sure there must be some errors you suspect,
correct all of them.
3. Isolation: if you have other websites linking to the banned sites,
remove their links to it to avoid them catching the infection.
2. Writing to google:
After you have corrected all possible errors, email google at webmaster@google.com
with an reinclusion request. The following is a template of reinclusion
request letter:
Dear Google,
I am the owner of http://www.banned-domain.com/
I did not realize that (doing a mistake) was a bad thing that would get
me banned from Google. Now, I understand that I have done a mistake, and
I apologize profusely. I have removed (bad thing) from my site, and I
promise not to make this mistake again.
I am asking you to Please Consider reinstating my website, http://www.banned-domain.com/
, into Google's Index.
Sincerely,
4. Domain transplantation: many people just ditch the former domain name
and start with something new. It is much easier to build a site from a
PR3 or PR4 (which most new sites are given) rather than trying to dig a
banned site from the depths of PR0.
Last word:
Google banning is google's defense mechanism to keep their search
results as accurate and useful as possible and it is their right,
however, in my opinion, it is a very severe and even fatal punishment
for webmasters' mistakes. If google has the right to ban a site from its
search results, its right to take off its pagerank is questionable. Page
rank is a measure of site popularity and "I am bad" does not necessarily
mean that "I am not popular".
Author: Dr Wael Serag, a
specialist in SEO diseases and complications. Improve your SEO health
and get free articles, tools and more at:
http://money-making-webmasters.com/
Article Source:
http://EzineArticles.com/
