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It's 7AM in the morning so pardon my slurred typing. :)
I woke up today to find that my site is now out of google and the page rank bar is "gray". Literally overnight this happened to the site.
It's been in google since April of last year so it is very odd for something like this to happen overnight. No spamming or any banned things have been done on my part. I have other sites that are also listed, but they are fine, just one site in particular has been ousted.
Any ideas why this happened? Could a competitor be messing around by "spamming" on behalf of us?
Now I'm really worried! Please let me know your thoughts,
Ronnie
<snip>
[edited by: ciml at 1:04 pm (utc) on Mar. 19, 2003]
[edit reason] Let's keep it general please. [/edit]
It's unlikely that your competitors could have done anything to get you banned.
If that were the case then a lot of people would be getting banned! ;)
Ive had a few probelsm with toolbar PR lately - all sites showing grey bar for a while. I tend to use WW as a measuring stick - if it has no PR and neither do I then the toolbar is broken!
If it is just your site that has gone grey, then perhaps it was down when googlebot came a-crawling?
Give a while and see if things resolve themselves.
Scott
I've noticed many flaky things going on where weeks after the dance, the results are still changing (you can hit 'refresh' and they change back and forth right in front of your eyes!).
I would wait awhile until Google gets more stable. Right now anything can happen.
Are you heavily cross linking your partner sites to each other?
Thanks for your GREAT quick replies. just to answer some of your questions:
1. the site has totally dropped out of google which is very odd.
2. i've been very careful cross-linking. only on the main pages and much less than 10 links for the sites each.
The very strange thing is that my friends' site is also gone and i noticed that a competitor is also gone from google! Hence I'm thinking it's almost as if they did something!
Ronnie
but i cant work out how creative craig could see it..
I woke up this morning to find that the same exact thing has happened to a network of our competitors site (about 4) that were doing massive crosslinking with other sites. They are delisted and have a grey bar.
Wonder if it is just a hiccup or a BAN?!
Nothing should be ruled in or out, but I would bet on zzargo having been removed.
> 10 links
Is that 10 sites with the home pages all linking to each other? Very dangerous IMO. It does seem quite odd that one of them was picked out.
chief, I think that quite a lot of sites are getting in trouble at the moment.
Same here, hand check and nuked. Sorry zzargo.
just to clarify, it's actually about 10 sites with links on different pages (not just the home pages) linking to one another only a few times (ie. partner sites link to one another on different main pages).
I just noticed that another site of mine is having the same issue.
You think it's the cross-linking issue?
These penalties can last and last I'm afraid.
Looks like I am suffering from the same issue as Zzargo...
My site has been cruising along since May 2002 and now overnight, I am completely out. Grey PR.
I also have a few (3-4) cross links to another site I run but it is by no means excessive or blatant.
This is really bizarre and if I'm reading right, it looks like I have been banned as well.
Could it be that some (envious) competitor filed a spam report to just the site busted? And if so, that would probably explain the manual ban, correct?
All this hard work is pretty much down the drain because I would never take silly risks to get banned. I'm in this for the long term so it is of no benefit to try and cheat the system.
Now time to figure out my next steps...
Thanks.
For example we have several news websites that we link out stories to our other news sites, but there may be only 5-10 of our links, and 50 to 75 stories linked to cnn, Foxnews, etc. We haven't seen any problems with this at all.
i do wonder if a spam report has been placed...
this is really discouraging news that's for sure. i'll definitely clean things up and just hope that it's a weird hiccup in the system.
also, oddly enough it only seems like it happened to my *old* sites. the new sites (within the last 3 months) are fine!
Looks like they are having clearout in certain keyword areas. Without going into specifics would music be common to the banned sites keyword space?
Yes, the set of keywords covers music.
I still have a feeling that someone filled in a spam report and therefore raised this is a red flag for manual intervention.
I would not have thought that my cross linking would be the culprit because it is quite minor. However, that is not to say that Google doesn't have the right to apply their filters as they see fit.
So, maybe this is a heads up for others to be very careful in what they are doing. You may never know if you might get affected.
I'm just perplexed because through no conscious and unethical effort on my part, I may have been banned. If I did in fact screw something up and I am made of aware of it, I will accept the fact and move on. Or have I been caught in the crossfire?
One can't argue when they know for certain that they are in breach and by extension have no right to complain.
I'm just a little confused and disappointed and once I start to get over the shock, I will have to continue to forge ahead.
Thanks.
g.
I reported a site who was using blatant spam with their crosslinking and just yesterday four of their sites dropped from the SERPS and turned up with Gray bars.
I'm glad to see Google is on the ball!
Yes, it looks like Google is coming down hard.I reported a site who was using blatant spam with their crosslinking and just yesterday four of their sites dropped from the SERPS and turned up with Gray bars.
I have no problem clamping down on spam and that makes SERPs a heck of a lot more relevant and clean, but my only concern is if someone files a spam report for reasons other than what it is meant for.
I'm sure Google is smart enough to weed out the illegimate reports from the legitimate BUT there will always be bias and subjectivity when manually banning a site, especially if the site being reported, although questionable and maybe on the edge, is not technically in absolute violation.
Nonetheless, Google reserves the right to maintain their index in the best way possible to keep it relevant and clean.
At the same time, the way I see it is that you are either spamming and it quite obvious or your not, so I can only speculate and assume as to how the spam reports are acted on.
So, this brings me back to my experience this morning with my (potentially banned) site, and that is I have been working hard since last spring to make it an informational site, that provides users/customers an easy and pleasant experience. I've had many positive comments from customers, which is what helps motivate you to keep improving and providing quality customer service.
Usually, spammers are in it for the quick buck and know the consequences. As such, they build their sites on a foundation of quick-sand and don't care if they do get banned because they have stacks of other sites on the go.
This business attitude doesn't work for me...
Thanks.
g.
If your not spamming, you won't get banned.
If however, you are spamming even in the slightest bit you are subject to being booted since your violating the TOS. They don't say, if you do this so much, it is bad. They say if you do this at all, it is bad.
I'm in it for the long haul and am in an industry that has a lot of spammers that have been getting away with it for a long time. Not just minor spam either. A search result would turn of 4 of the same companies duplicate sites for search terms. Not any more, they now get one just like the rest of us!
People make their own decisions as to if they are going to push the envelope a little bit. Personally, I sleep very well at night knowing that I don't have to worry about waking up and finding I've been booted from Google.
I've been able to get results without any tricks.
I'm really glad to see Google coming down on spam no matter how minor it might be.
Maybe you guys can clarify...if a site is banned, don't all of the links go with with it?
Also, the cross-linking has been fairly mild on the sites for a while (probably at least 6 months). It just seems odd that it went under the radar for over 6 months and suddenly over night this all happened!
There is a huge crackdown coming against users of peer to peer networks. They aren't just going after the software companies any more, they are going after the users:
Music Cops Target Users [pcworld.com]
Not at all! No illegal downloads at all. It's all legitmate software titles.
I suppose there's really nothing else I can do at this stage.
Same thing for me; nice little site, yes, cross-linked to some other related sites (the horror!), been fine for almost a year (4-5PR), then boom! Graybar hotel.
BTW, the category is sports and/or collectibles; no music. It was optimized for a 3-word phrase used commonly to search for ... gosh, what was actually ON this site.
Today if you do that 3-word search on Google, you get a couple pages of LINK FARMS. I actually had content, but apparently that's passe. Anyone can see for themselves if they want to contact me, or whatever. I know we're not allowed to state specifics here.
It stinks! I don't mind difficulties; it's hypocrisy I can't stand. (I had a different word in jthere for 'hypocrisy' which sort of tied in with "FARMS", but ...)
Boilin' Bill in MN
Who also brought you the infamous gourmet express example.
Later, on Judgement Day ...
Bill: What is my sin, Lord?
Sergey: You tried to attain higher ranking by building several Websites instead of one grand site, where people have to look harder to find what they seek.
Bill: Ah-huh. Well, I thought the idea was to make things EASIER to find. You would know, Lord; did I ever ONCE mis-lead a searcher? Ever?
Sergey: No, that's true. But you misunderstand. It's not the results that are important ...
Bill: HUH?!?
Sergey: ... it's maintaining the structure that's important! There are Searchers and there is the Search Engine. It was never intended to have some kind of service class in between them. Now, go to Hell. (SFX: trapdoor springs open) NEXT!
Also, did you cross link sites that were ultimately selling the same stuff?
