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Here I am right in the middle of a redesign of our site. We are a web design business. The site uses some plays on the 'display:hide' that css sllows people to do, which is also one method that spammers abuse to get their high ranks on Google.
I was waiting patiently for this update and the new spam filters, to see how 'sensitive' they are, so as not to get caught in the cross-fire. I'm not doing anything wrong in our new design, no spamming, and the content is there for all to see if they click the right button.
We're going to go live with our new site in the next few days, sadly we have no info on the new 'filters'.
What I want to know is, for the innocent people out there who have been 'banned' by mistake, how did you and how long did it take for you to get back in?
TIA!
since you are a web design company, it could be a nice reference to set up a se safe and friendly version as well as a full featured version that is blocked for crawling through robots.txt. I know, making a nice fully interactive site is far more fun than making a simple informational site - but it could be a good showcase for new possible clients if you make two versions, no!?
<added>webwoman, he didn't say he's banned. He's afraid he *could* get banned if he puts his new work online.</added>
Here goes:
rfgdxm1:
Good point, however, we are quite busy, and I am limited to weekends for working on 'our' site. I should be finished this weekend. I suppose I could hold it back for a bit, but that's like having a fire in your pants and not putting it out (I think - great argument eh?)
webwoman:
No we aren't banned. In fact, we're sittin' second right now and I have a feeling we'll be first real soon ;-) You give me hope, as the new site doesn't violate the TOS. How did you go about getting back in so quickly? Who did you contact?
Yidaki:
I could do that, or even have a splash page or something (ptewy - yuk!), but, we shouldn't have to do that sort of thing solely for the se's.
I could pull out some of the features, which are 'neat-o-man!' kinda things, but it would be a shame to lose other accessibility/usability features.
So you got back into Google without making any recent contact with them? Just *poof* there you are? I know GG said that recently they were reinstating a bunch of sites that had been penalized in the past, maybe your was one of those...
My understanding on how this is going to work:
Google will be sending out a bot to visit sites that have been reported via it's spam report. If the bot discovers hidden links or text, the site will be removed form the index. The bot will periodically check to see if the offending "dodgy" stuff of has been removed and if it has, the site will be re-included in the index.
I had forgotten about that...
But still:
Has anyone had the boot, and spoken with the big G with the result of getting back in?
Yes it was just like that. I don't know why they waited so long to add the sites.
How did you go about getting back in so quickly? Who did you contact?
I copied someone at Google in a legally threatening notice that I sent to the ISP that was hosting the site that mirrored mine. I had only been able to trace it to the ISP, they contacted their customer, he contacted me and immediately removed his mirror site. This was about a year and 1/2 ago, and as I recall the Google email addy I used was given to me by a geek friend of mine who had an address of a real person at Google.
My scenario is quite different than yours. But, I was wrongly excluded from the index and it did get resolved by the next update.
Still deciding what to do. I may just whack out the possibly 'offensive' material, and then pop in back in later, it wouldn't be too difficult, I guess.
Anyways, thanks all for the responses!
