Google Reinclusion Service, Shouldn't Google offer better support? Options

[T Bill]

Our site was banned from Google for reasons we do not know. We designed the site for our users but are now taking a couple of weeks to redesign it for Google.

I have emailed Google and asked for their help but all they do is send me an email telling me to go to their help page. We are. And, we are going to put the effort in to optimize our site. But, I have to say that I find myself resenting the fact that I can't get a response from a real person at Google telling us what the problem is.

Being banned from Google is losing us from $10,000 to $20,000 a month. It's no small matter.

Why isn't there a Google Re-Submission Service?

It's a fact, good sites get banned.

I sell widgets. I have a huge inventory, a great customer service team and a staff that really cares. We work from an economically depressed and rural part of New Mexico (our county needs good clean businesses) and sell to over 30 countries worldwide. We have built a good business and it supports a number of good people.

If you are looking for widgets, we have the largest selection online. So, if you are searching for Sun Servers, I don't want to be in the listings. If you are not looking to buy anything, I don't want to be in the listings even if widget is in your keyword phrase. But if you want a blue widget, I have the selection and I am one of the best resources you can find. I've been in the widget business since the late 70's. We won top internet retailer awards for our site and for the service we provide our customers. Yet, Google finds something wrong with our site and bans us without giving us a voice in the matter.

What if there is some text left from one of a thousand site updates on one of many thousands of pages that was black and during the update it's page background was changed to black making it hard for our guy to detect. He just happens to miss it. That is reason to ban us from the world's top search engine? That's nuts.

Am I right, or should I just be happy Google exists and accept what they offer?

[SearchRank]

I have had a couple of my own sites banned from Google in the past, one for reasons I was totally aware of and the other a complete mystery.

On the first one, I undid what had got me banned, begged their forgiveness, promised never ever to do it again, yada, yada and I was added once again.

The other site left me completely clueless. It wasn't really banned as the first one was but did have a penalty of some sort. They kept saying that they were not able to crawl it or some kind of nonsense like that. I had to completely redesign it before it was re-included.

Therefore all you can do is to stay persistent. If they are referring you to some guidelines, then try to figure out what you are doing wrong. In both of my cases, it took about a year of persistence to get each site re-included.

Also, one more bit of advice - if at all possible, don't completely depend on the search engines, Google or any others for your business. The "don't place your eggs all in one basket" metaphor.

[OldWelshGuy]

Welcome Tbill, I understand your frustration, but lets look at it from the other side for a moment, & I am playing devils advocate here, not having a personal pop at you or your site.

Google have rules posted on their site, your site broke those rules in some deceptive way. You are amongst friends here, and we ALL know how tough it is to get actually banned from Google. We are not talking about a bit of same colour text to background are we!

You say that Google will not tell you why you were banned, I suggest you know a host of things you did wrong that could have got you into trouble, but you want google to tell you which of those things got you banned, so you can continue using the others.

Google have banned you, you have asked to come back to play again, they have told you 'read the rules and play within the rules' What else do you expect them to say? in their eyes you are a spammer, someone who tried to cheat their algo with deceptive practices. WHY should they treat you better than they treat others?, better than the people who play within their rules.

You say in your fiorst paragraph that you built your site for searchers, and now you are building it for google, so that tells me you know exactly what you are doing with regard the search engines.

Hard though it seems, You are BAD in the eyes of Google, and you are going to have to prove that you are good to be allowed to play.

That said, if you want a first page listing, then they will gladly take your $$$ for adwords (IMG:http://www.highrankings.com/forum/style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

[Nathan Malone]

I would recommend that you post a site review request when you become an active member so we can take a look at your site and find out what is wrong.

[T Bill]

In reply, we have been online with this url since 1998. Years ago I'll admit to trying some "tricks" but for at least three years we have done nothing but try to have an honest website that benefits our visitors. We have added text descriptions of categories and such, but nothing like spamming.

In fact, let me take that back. Someone has mentioned that we keyword spam. That's out of ignorance and is just because we wanted people and search engines to know what we sell.

If you think we are doing something "BAD", so bad as to get banned... What is it?

BTW - we use AdWords and I love Google. I just think that there could be an improvement here.

[T Bill]

I'd also like to add that we have about a dozen improvements we are making to the site and in a couple of weeks I will submit it for review.

I appreciate any help in achieving this goal but my purpose for this post was to see if a reinclusion service is viable. It's my hope that we could come up with some good ideas and maybe get Googles attention. I believe that if the right people at Google knew about this and saw a solution that would benefit webmasters and Google, they may take it on.

If a site is banned and applys for reinclusion, they are probably not a spammer. If Google individually inspects sites, it will increase the value of their search. And, if they charge a fee it could fund itself and even be profitable.

In my view, it could only benefit everyone.

[Nathan Malone]

Yes, keyword stuffing is considered spam by Google and that is probably what got you penalized. I haven't seen your site but my guess is that is what happened. Here is a list of typical spam tactics I have seen:
keyword stuffing
text the same color as the background
1px wide marquees
javascript (nothing else needs to be said)
doorway pages
nonsense text such as "this page is optimized for the keyword phrases widgets (yes, widgets), blue widgets (blue widgets), red widgets (all about red widgets), etc., etc.
and a bunch of other more sophisticated spamming techniques, to say nothing about the usual keyword stuffing of the page. A common way to tell if you are spamming is to read the text on your page. If it sounds like spam, then it is spam.

[OldWelshGuy]

T Bill, again I am not having a pop, but if you got banned, and you can't see why, then maybe you are doing something that you feel is OK, but Google see as NOT ok. You mentioned what if you had some content not showing, well the first thing that should be done to a page is ctrl A, you need to see if there is anything hidden, sure it takes a lot of time, but it is essential stuff.

Maybe it is time to step outside and get a second opinion on the SEO methods you are using. A complete SEO once over is probably going to cost you a couple of thousand dollars, and might well turn up a lot more than you would expect from it, by way of additional information, as well as its main goal to ensure your site is Google friendly.

OWg

[Nathan Malone]

I'd also like to add that we have about a dozen improvements we are making to the site and in a couple of weeks I will submit it for review.

I appreciate any help in achieving this goal but my purpose for this post was to see if a reinclusion service is viable. It's my hope that we could come up with some good ideas and maybe get Googles attention. I believe that if the right people at Google knew about this and saw a solution that would benefit webmasters and Google, they may take it on.

If a site is banned and applys for reinclusion, they are probably not a spammer. If Google individually inspects sites, it will increase the value of their search. And, if they charge a fee it could fund itself and even be profitable.

In my view, it could only benefit everyone.

Well, I would advise you to do everything possible to clean up your site and then I would try to get a listing on Dmoz, Yahoo's Directory, and then I would ask Google to reconsider the ban. BTW, another possibility that may have gotten you banned is that you may have linked to "bad neighborhood" sites, which are sites that are usually unrelated to your site (casinos are especially popular). Is this a possibility in your case? If so, you need to take down all unrelated links immediately as I have seen many a otherwise great site get in trouble for doing this (including such big sites as phpbb.com and phpfreaks.com).

[Nathan Malone]

BTW, if you are willing to spend the money, there are several excellent seo's on this forum who could probably send your rankings back up.

[Steve Sardell]

Hi T Bill,

I once had a bogus SEOer causing us to go thru a similar situation with G. Every time I would get disconcerted with their customer service, I had to remind myself of what they would be charging us once we were back on track.

If you are relying on G for the bulk of your traffic then it can be horrifying as you watch the cash register stop pinging. Just keep plugging away.

[OldWelshGuy]

farmernate, with the exception of javascripting abuse (which covers a multitude of sins) none of that stuff is going to get your site wiped out from Google. There are sites stuffed from ear to ear, and they just get some sort of penalty of filter applied. What Tbill is talking about here is banned with a cap B, removed from the index, not even showing up under a url search.

TBill, could there have been something a little more sinister with regard your affiliate programme that upset Google? (not in the prog itself, but rather with some affiliates or other, the sins of the father being cast on the son but in reverse so to speak. I only glanced, but I see that quite a few sites are using your brand name as affiliates.

Just a thought.

[Steve Sardell]

I was a bit slow on the response speed.

In both of my cases, it took about a year of persistence to get each site re-included.

Seems to be about the same length of time it took for one of our sites to get back. Once in the dog house, can't simply wag the tail and expect to get petted. It is a bear, however, trying to figure what went wrong if someone else initially did the site.

[Nathan Malone]

Ah, I get it, I just didn't read it carefully. So you are actually banned, not just penalized? To confirm this, why don't you do a site:www.yoursite.com search on google and see if anything comes up. If you are actually banned, then either you did something really bad or Google messed up somehow (probably the former but I hate accusing people when I don't know things for a fact).

[T Bill]

Wow! I got a phone call, came back and there's a ton of help. Thanks.

I'll try to answer them one by one.

A common way to tell if you are spamming is to read the text on your page. If it sounds like spam, then it is spam.

I've been told that we are keyword spamming. But we sell widgets and that's what our site is all about. Should my category link be "Music" or "Music Widgets"? If it's a Bruce Springsteen Widget, should we just call it a Bruce Springsteen?

T Bill, again I am not having a pop, but if you got banned, and you can't see why, then maybe you are doing something that you feel is OK, but Google see as NOT ok.

Yes, whatever it is, it is not simple. We are not penalized but banned. However, the googlebot visits daily.

Maybe it is time to step outside and get a second opinion on the SEO methods you are using. A complete SEO once over is probably going to cost you a couple of thousand dollars, and might well turn up a lot more than you would expect from it, by way of additional information, as well as its main goal to ensure your site is Google friendly.

We hired a well known SEO firm and paid thousands and they couldn't help. In fact, they used techniques that we considered "tricks". They also didn't help our other search result much if any.

BTW - we have done well since '98 in all other search engines. No other problems.

Well, I would advise you to do everything possible to clean up your site and then I would try to get a listing on Dmoz, Yahoo's Directory, and then I would ask Google to reconsider the ban.

Good advice. We are spending the next two weeks cleaning it. We're making the layout tighter and using css to reduce the code.

We have been listed in Dmoz and Yahoo since 1998. When the Google ban happened, Dmoz dropped us after being listed for over five years.

If you are relying on G for the bulk of your traffic then it can be horrifying as you watch the cash register stop pinging. Just keep plugging away.

Luckily, at this point in the game, all search engines are only 15% to 20% of our total traffic. However, I estimate that this ban is losing us from $10,000 to $20,000 a month. Nothing to sneeze at.

TBill, could there have been something a little more sinister with regard your affiliate programme that upset Google?

Yes. We have found a lot of redirected pages. We also found a few adware companies. We are cleaning this up. It's not an easy process.

To confirm this, why don't you do a site:www.yoursite.com search on google and see if anything comes up.

I did it. We're banned.