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It was previously listed near the top of google for various keyphrases and out of the blue has been banned.
I cannot think of any reason why this has happened. I really need to know how I can get it back on google - what is the best way to resolve this?
Many thanks for your time,
Neil
[edited by: ciml at 10:56 am (utc) on July 18, 2002]
[edit reason] URL Snip [/edit]
I'm not aware of any report where an IP or domain was dropped for using a rank-checker where it turned out to be someone hurting a competitor.
Perhaps not, yet. But the stated position from [google.com...] as korkus quoted may have kept the number of "competitors" even trying that technique at a minimum. Now that there's a contradicting statement that could be taken as meaning that it's "worth a try" the number of attempts could well be expected to increase.
Take a read of WebGuerrilla's post here for some insight:
[webmasterworld.com...]
[edited by: NFFC at 11:05 pm (utc) on July 23, 2002]
GoogleGuy helps all of us out. He solved shaka1978 problem.
hehe, loop fixed.
I know I'm being very dense - I'm not really a SEO, I have a business and built my web site for my business - no tricks, cloaking (whatever that is) or any of that stuff, I don't even know how, I used WP Gold to find out how I ranked in the search engines for various keywords. It saved me a lot of time going to each SE and plugging in the keywords myself. I don't understand how that could hurt any of my competitors - or anyone else.
Is it a crime to try to "optimize" my site so that it will appear within the top 30 or so? - how else would I ever get any hits using a search engine? I put a lot of work into my site, adding content, making it easy to navigate, attractive etc. I read this forum and other places to know how to do all of this.
If anyone can explain all this to me I'd appreciate it and please keep it simple because this is way over my head.
thanks,
Jan
We recommend avoiding participating in link exchanges to gain rankings on
[google.com...]
In your case, being associated with the spammy neighborhood of these link exchanges tainted your site, and using a rank checker didn't help your case with our classifier. :)
To answer your other question, of course it's not a crime to optimize your site to help it do well. But just blindly trying things to game search engines can do more harm than good. I'll check out your domain in more depth, and if those three things are all that's going on, I'll reset things for your domain before the next crawl.
Many thanks for all your comments, especially googleguy for clearing things up regarding the use of WPG. I certainly had no idea that google didn't approve of this and am extremely grateful that you've decided to re-list my site.
One thing I'm still a little unclear of - how does google know when someone runs WPG repeatedly in an attempt to sabotage a competitor.
For example, if I run checks on my_competitor.com 10 times a day for a month to try to get them banned how do google know it's me and not them? Do you cjeck the IP address?
Thanks a lot for everyone's comments, you've certainly given me a whole lot of insight into the world search engine optimisation and I'll make sure I tell as many people as possible about these forums.
worried
leanne :(
[edited by: leanne at 11:34 am (utc) on July 24, 2002]
Go to the link in googleguys reponse. Google claims that using WPG for rank checking will not affect the ranking of your site, but may cause your IP (where you checked from) to be banned.
GoogleGuy Quote:
>Please help spread the word that rank checking programs can lead not just to IPs being banned but trouble for domains as well. We did another pass to turn off a chunk of domains that use rank checking programs recently.
GoogleGuy your Webmasters FAQ needs updating! There are a few other small mistakes and omissions there too from my read through it today.
per the forum charter; we aren't doing personal site requests or reviews, there's 10k site owners that read these forums a day and we aren't going through personal reviews for all their sites. We do occasionally like one go like this that involves something unique.
(cribbswh : check your stickymail at the top of the screen. thanks).
The policy seemed to have softened in 2001, though IPs could be still be banned from searching and Google was seen to say that use was against their Ts&Cs but would not lead to a domain being removed. This seems to have been changed to become that it could harm a domain only recently. I've always advised people not to risk it. Bottom line is don't use WPG to check on Google, there are other ways of checking rankings - as an Adwords customer I agree with that.
[edited by: makemetop at 1:15 pm (utc) on July 24, 2002]
I'm currently hit with some kind of awful virus or intruder and in the middle of trying to contact Norton (hah- that's a laugh) but...
I am like Jan, used wpg (but not since I found out google didn't like it - at least a year ago), was in Buddy links and LinksToYou (but not for almost two years, now) and my site is still afflicted.
I rebuilt an old site just to have some visibilty in google, but it was the site I was planning to take down as it was a very old personal site and I wanted to use my domain.
How long does this "penalty" last if you stop doing what you discover google doesn't like? Nine months of penalty for something that stopped months before the penalty was even applied seems like a very long time to penalize an unsuspecting webmaster who followed the "rules" as soon as she discovered them.
We take precautions to make sure that people can't just use a rank checker to hurt a competitor. I'm not aware of any report where an IP or domain was dropped for using a rank-checker where it turned out to be someone hurting a competitor. The domain in question was using WebPosition Gold.
GoogleGuy,
You take precautions? How? How you confirm that the competitor is NOT doing it?
There is only one way to confirm it and that is Google Toolbar. If you are not using toolbar data to confirm it then I bet you ban the domain that the user of WPG is using to check the ranking. And hence anybody can ban his/her competitor's site by using WPG.
Are you ready for an extra server load from such competitors?
I'd be curious to know if you were using the URL verification function when you got a domain banned.
I'm not a big WPG user, but It doesn't seem like they could associate automated queries with a particular site unless you were running queries that were looking for specific urls.
And even if they can determine the domain being checked without the URL verifcation being used, how on earth can Google "take precautions" to insure that you aren't harmed by a competitor?
Does anyone honestly believe that Google can magically determine whether the guy running a 50 keyword report from an AOL dialup account is doing so with or without the blessing of the site owner based upon the data being passed by the software?
Please.
Now I'm off to setup my competitor kill missions.
I agree with WG, how on earth could they know who was running the queries? If it is done over a dial-up account and the reports were done for specific URL's on one single domain it now seems that this could get that site banned. If this is really the case why do we have to know about it? The SEO community doesn't need to know everything about how Google works, and certainly not about how to hurt competitors.
I think GG's participation here is fantastic and I believe it does a great amount of good for their PR, but telling us that running WPG can get your competitors site banned was not the right thing to do IMO. Most people here will understand that there is not really any chance for Google to check who runs the queries, and some will find ways to hurt their competitors.
I would sleep a lot better if this whole thread was deleted and this information didn't get any further than it already has.
What would stop anyone from using URL verification on a competitor
Excellent point... even webmasters not intending to sabotage their competitors may well include them for comparison purposes.
