Penalty Woes

Is there any hope to get re-instated?

[GuinnessGuy]

Greetings,

About three weeks ago we placed a re-direct on our homepage to a site which we were acting as a temporary affiliate for. Four days ago, after reading up on this site, we realized that Google would not like this sort of re-direct so we took out the offending code. Just last night I tuned went to our site and we now have no PR(as in grey bar) and we are not in the Google database any longer.

Granted, we did do something wrong, but when we realized it we took out the offending code, but now, even as we are legit, Google has penalized us.

Is there any method to appeal to Google to re-instate us? We did, after all, get rid of the offending re-direct BEFORE the penalty was instituted. Any suggestions as to how to go about reversing this dreaded penalty would be highly appreciated.

GoogleGuy, you out there?

[GoogleGuy]

Drop an email to webmaster at google.com with the subject line "reinclusion request" and describe the situation..

[GuinnessGuy]

Hi Googleguy,

Thanks for the information. Any idea how long this reinclusion might take, if it's successful at all? Also, is this type of penalty usually permanent if a reinclusion request is not pursued? Thanks...

[GoogleGuy]

I would guess probably 2-3 weeks. But there's also a pretty good chance that it's not a penalty, but rather just not crawling your site. Then we would also hopefully find your site soon.

[pianoman]

GuinessGuy -

I'm curious what kinds of re-directs googlebot is likely to "not index". Was yours an old-style "meta-refresh' or javascript or some new-fangled redir?

Just wondering...

[GuinnessGuy]

Pianoman,

Not sure as I'm not the webmaster. Sorry. All I know is that when our domain name was typed in it took you to the site we were affiliated with.

[dinnerware]

GoogleGuy,
We are in the same boat I believe because our former webmaster (stressing former) placed a hidden link text on our front page. If you are accepted back, does Google email you with a notification or response, or is it wait and see?

[GoogleGuy]

Hey, if our hidden text/hidden link algorithms caught you, those penalties automatically expire after a while. A typical hidden text penalty would be for one month. Just make sure that you clean up the hidden stuff soon.

[Good_Vibes]

I've got a few sites that got gray barred, but they don't use any spam (no hidden links, original content, all very different sites...).
They are about different kinds of widgets (blue, green, yellow...), but that is the only thing similar about them. Thus I am stumped as to why they would have gotten gray barred.

What other reasons would cause a gray bar?

[scottyman]

One of my client's sites was recently given a PR 0 penalty, this was due the cross linking structure. The client wanted to market their business the same way online they would off-line and could not understand why they could not cross link the businesses. Luckily not all sites were banned but the one with the lowest PR (and lowest number of external links hence being caught by the filter). We took our medicine, although a bit hard to swallow like all good medicine and it looks like we will be back in after the next update. I did not make a reinclusion request. So in my experience, identify what you have done wrong and make a change ASAP, and you will be back in within a couple of months.

[whatson]

What about sites that get penalized for too much reciprocal linking? Does that penalty expire, is it easy enough to remove the ban?

[nutsandbolts]

I've just sent a report in quoting nutsandbolts and webmasterworld - it will be interesting to see how long it takes for a response on it.

[Good_Vibes]

Could someone please make a list of what would cause a gray bar?

Here is what I have so far:
- server was down

Please add to the list...