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 doesnt 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 wont 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. Heres 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 Googles 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 youre 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.
Dont 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.
Dont try to be clever. Dont argue. Dont lie. Dont waffle.
Google has cached copies of your site. When an engineer checks yoursite, hell look for the offending content, and compare it againsttheir cache. Hell spend about two minutes on it; dont 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 didnt work. That was probably excessive. Once you have a ticket number, thats all that should be necessary.
They emailed a standard reply saying the problem had been passed to their engineers. Thats good. I understand they send no reply to spammers.
A week later my site was back in. Lesson learnt. To make sure Im not so vulnerable again, Im 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(!)
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* 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 ( ) is an ecommerce consultant and curmudgeon living in London, UK. His latest project is an ebook on buying property in Spain ( ). His blog can be read at .
When the movie Spanglish hit the screens in 2004, it was dubbed A comedy with a language all its own. I dont think the producers even knew they were slipping a lesson for website owners who want better search engine listings into the movie.
In the movie, Adam Sandlers household needs a housekeeper. Enter Flora - a Spanish woman who is unable to speak a word of English. They have to figure out how to communicate.
As website owners know, this is much like trying to speak with search engine optimization people. As they rattle off terms like Organic Listings and SEM and SEO and SEP and SERP, the average webmaster begins to want a slurp more than a SERP.
So, lets trasnlate some of those terms, shall we
And, last, but not least.
Dont use Spamglish. Bots dont have Visas. People are whats important. Just like Adam Sandler said. See
P.S. My most sincere apologies to Adam Sandler and the cast and producers of Spanglish for this little parody. I couldnt resist.
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