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I would love to know how many spam reports are sent to Google on a daily basis. 500? 1,000? Wow, can you imagine manually going through those things?
If the mom and pop site owner registers just one domain with a human-assigned penalty from a former life (probably an outright ban if human assigned?) and uses it for his site then he stays banned for a long time. That's a shame.
If I get this right, the analysis takes place on appeal. How many mom and pop site owners register a number of domains that by some miraculous coincidence all happen to have been expired? Probably not a lot; I think the phrase is 'collared'.
Fair enough, but I worry that Google can't reasonably be expected to go through this process for every 'please check my site' email. Are penalty reviews a top user support priority? I that guess searchers come before users.
Anyone have any actual statistics on this? Please note that a domain name has nothing to do with the size of a site. My little domain in my profile is one domain, just the same as microsoft.com is. The latter is obviously much larger. ;)
>And the average mom and pop doesn't need to worry about this issue; professional SEOs need to be aware of it. A professional SEO needs to consider the domains that they're buying because they buy so many.
Why? The concern is the mom and pop getting shafted by Google simply because they had the bad luck of spotting a nice sounding domain name and buying it, not knowing it was a throwaway by some search engine scammer. A professional SEO would know enough that they would have the savvy to be able to dig up the history of a domain name. The mom and pop likely wouldn't.
I think It may be fare what Googleguy was saying about only a small very small percentage of sites actualy having a pr0. On here we see and read about it a lot.And a lot of times, as is the case with this thread, the site being referenced doesn't have a PR0 to begin with. There've been more than a few posts here by people misidentifying their problem as "PR0" when in fact the site isn't in the Google index at all.
For instance, carbuyingtips said that he had this domain for six months, but in fact he's only had it for less than four months.
And the 300 inbound links... Were those pre-existing or are you a superstar link hound?
If they were pre-existing, and you knew it, then you were obviously trying to game the system.
If on the other hand you are a superstar link hound, then dude (or grrrrl), I salute you because 300 inbounds in that amount of time means you're working harder than James Brown!
It's approaching happy hour.
:) Y
edited for grammer by lisa
[edited by: Lisa at 1:22 am (utc) on Sep. 22, 2002]
I don't even know if this link will work, but I found a cached site in the google index about the site in question that started this discussion:
[216.239.39.100...]
And it might be out if the dance starts soon :)
Obviously there were some questionable doings on this site to lead this page to have been created - although it is no longer there, but the wonderful google cache feature still caught it. I personally don't know if the site did engage in plagiarism or not, but I think it is also an interesting ethical / legal question on whether a search engine should consider the legality of a site when deciding whether to index it (I'm sure it's been discussed here already).
I also found it interesting that the current site in question has a "google" search box on it - interesting given the owner knows he has a pr0 penality and is posting in this forum about wondering why he is not in google.
That is not the site in question according to carbuyerstips email address, so I think that one is really his site. (there is a "-" in the middle that makes the difference!)
The area seems very competitive - hence lots of sites with domain names very similar - a lot using the same affiliate partners. I posted earlier in this thread on this.
If you read the link, you will notice that it contains accusations of plagarism by the other site since the supposed change of ownership.
All the links to carbuyingtips site in the complaint are to URLs that are still valid on the current site.
According to the National Automobile Dealers Association, the average price of a new car sold in the United States as of June 1998 was $23,480. That’s why it’s important to know how to get a good deal.
Carbuyingtips-It looks as though you bought more than the domain. If this was not previously your site then we must all congratulate the previous owner. It really takes some cajones to steal someone's work, profit from it, and then sell it to someone else. Of course if it previously was your site then, well, you've got some too.
Its very interesting that GoogleGuy seems to be suggesting that carbuyingtips will be OK with his reincarnated domain. - Maybe in, but im not sure how well! As a previous poster pointed out, Im not sure as a user of Google's index i would be much impressed with the title alone, and encouraged to click on. I would suggest to carbuyingtips that he makes the title more attractive focusing on his original content that obviously 300 other webmasters value highly. Otherwise it just looks the many other sites with similar names and spins.
How about "Car buying tips - advice on buying cars in the US and Canada".
Still i digress.. sorry.
I think Google would be well served to contact the other site before lifting the ban.
It looks like it deserves a PR0 - tainted domain or not. It just breaks most of the rules we know relating to google.
I still cant belive this site after 4/5 months has 300 incoming links, unless it is lots of links from partners and recips from affiliate partners. Maybe 300 links OUT maybe, but 300 sites IN? For a site which looks almost identical to another site?
I still cant belive this site after 4/5 months has 300 incoming links
Yeah, but nobody had the nerve to point this out until the FIFTH page of this thread...
It's a fine balance between being skeptical AND giving folks the benefit of the doubt (which I usually do).
But that doesn't mean we have to accept at face value everything people post. It's a fine line to tread. As long as the skepticism is done politely, I really think it's okay to question some of these people's motives.
[edited by: martinibuster at 7:07 am (utc) on Sep. 22, 2002]
But I guess the topic of this thread (though i note the mods have sensibly made the topic more descriptive) is how he think he got PR0. Right from the start most posters who looked at his site could see many other reasons other than its tainted past as possible causes.
Its tainted present is possibly now the issue!
For example, once a site has been penalized, Google puts the domain on a list to aquire. Once expired, Google registers it immediately. I think you can place domains on hold? Not sure how that works, but they could do that too.
If the offender doesn't ditch the domain, the penalty stays as long as Google sees fit. Otherwise, Google registers the domain themselves for a one-year term. Enough to penalize the offender and force them to make a new site and for other sites to drop their inbound links. After the one year, then release it back to the public to register with a clean slate.
If the domain is transfered or sold to someone else, the penalty stays and the person who purchased it should have known better (a mom and pop site wouldn't purchase a domain this way normally you'd think).
Not sure if this would work since I don't buy/sell a lot of domains, but I am sure there is something Google can do to prevent sites to carry a penalty that have been re-registered to a new user.