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our site removed by google, i think the reason is "incoming guestbook links"... how can i clean up guestbook links? i didn't know that is a reason to remove site by google and i want to reindex our site but i don't know how?
appreciated your help
welcome to webmasterworld.
You fail to mention the following:
How long had your site been in Google.
Whether it Guestbook Links were the only backlinks you had.
Was there a problem at the last crawl (server down etc)
Shak
I would think it has something to do with your "Reciprocal Link Exchange". Man that's a long page! Chances are pretty good that you are linking to more than one "bad neighbourhood"!
I didn't look at the rest of your site, but since I saw that link on your homepage ... I took a shot in the dark.
>How long had your site been in Google. : 1,5 year
>Whether it Guestbook Links were the only backlinks you had. : no it had more than 70 links from high ranked pages except guestbook links
>Was there a problem at the last crawl (server down etc) : none
i know and i will change it soon (max. 100 in a page...)
so i need to change too many things on the web-site and i am learning when i read this forum...
Alltheweb might miss the 20,549 pages of reciprocal backlinks, but google won't.
If you want to use such a technique I might suggest taking a lower profile.
you might get away with 100 or so - 20,000 is a different story.
either way your chances of getting back into google with that domain are about as good as Larry Page inviting me over for dinner.
Short answer is to give up and start over.
Your site has already been removed by Google and it is likely due to your Reciprocal Link Exchange programme. I may be wrong ... but I think its likely.
There may be other things which may have caused your removal. I think your best bet is to do a lot more reading and a lot more question asking around here before taking any drastic measures.
Have you had a look at Webmaster Guidelines [google.com]? If not, do so. I am sure it will help you discover where you may have gone wrong.
And, this would be very trivial. Pay some bored teenage relative to add a competitor's site to hundreds of guestbooks. And, if Google was significantly worried about guestbook links, a much better strategy than penalizing sites would be to work on algorithmically filtering most of them out. Most guestbooks are using standard scripts, and it would be very easy for the bot to spot these, and just say "I won't count any of these links at all". For all we know, Google may have already done this. Just because a guestbook link shows up with the link: command doesn't mean that Google hasn't flagged it to be ignored by the algo.
Personally, I doubt guestbook links could do much good for any site. Almost all guestbooks have tons of links, which means that each transfers little value, and typically guestbooks have low PR. Now, if you could find some guestbook with very few links and a PR of 8... ;)
Also, it seems to me the very idea of penalizing for guestbook links is wrong. Remember, webmasters *want* people to sign guestbooks. Most people who have guestbooks do so for vanity. This is a way to get feedback from users. This is how they know people found and enjoyed their site. And, some people just like to sign guestbooks. I know of one woman likes this. She *always* signs the guestbook if a site has one. She has to of signed many hundreds of guestbooks. Her reason has nothing to do with search engines, and she doesn't even know what Google PageRank means. Thus, if Google were to penalize for this she would be an innocent victim. And, many people sign guestbooks not for search engine reasons, but instead of a way of promoting their site. They aren't trying for higher PR, but instead are hoping that people some people will click on that link, and thus get the site some traffic. Hey, if someone wants to give you what amounts to a free ad on their site, why turn down the opportunity?
And, unless this is being solely done for legitimate reasons, such as exchanging links with webmasters of sites on the same topic, then basically you *are* part of a bad neighborhood. A link farm basically is just a bunch of sites linking to each other. Thus, unless all these reciprocal links he has are for an obviously legit reason, he is basically asking for trouble by doing this. And, there also is that concern you'll end up linking to a bad neighborhood. Your site may be clean, but are you sure all the sites you link to are also?
P.S. Where did the 20,000 guestbooks signed figure come from? Was that a guess, or did Chris_R look up the actual number before the URL was removed?
Everything I saw at ATW WAS NOT a guestbook either. It was other pages and domains with hundreds of interlinked pages. In google - 3 out of 10 on one page were guestbooks - the other 7 were just interlinked pages.
Keep in mind - I am not PICKING on this person for doing it, just mentioning that you can't really expect to stay below the radar with the amount of effort I saw put into it - nor can you expect google to put you back in....
Also CSS was used to make a couple things links that didn't look like links - google might not like that either.
But Google would need to find evidence a competitor didn't do this. Since there were some other fishy things about the site, then that combined with those guestbook links should be enough. Anyone trying to help their site by signing guestbooks had better make sure the site itself is squeaky clean.
Google does not penalize for guestbooks, but lots of guestbook entries look suspicious.
Google does not use meta keywords, but several K of meta keywords while doing a review might look like the work of someone would be interested in trying to spam search engines.
Keyword stuffing comments wouldn't have an effect on Google's algorithm, but once again, makes them look like a spammer.
Using CSS to make links look like regular text probably won't get you banned, but it sure doesn't look that good either.
Being in an industry known for spam problems.
Now if you have all that going against you, do you think they will give you the benefit of the doubt if they find *anything* that is even slightly in the "against the rules" category?
Unless of course you can find that mythical PR9 guestbook with only 2 links on it.
No problem!
add
127.0.0.1 www.google.com
to your hosts file and put in guestbook.php in your root directory. Go to www.google.com/guestbook.php and check your PR, it should be PR9 and you will be the only one able to sign it. ;)
