Banned on my main keyword!

Do you have the same experience?

[Noximus]

Hi All,
My site had been listed on my main keyword for three years, after the last update the site is not in top 100. The other keyword listings are almost the same.
Is anybody with the same experience? Has your any site been banned just for the main keyword?

[Noximus]

Am I alone with this problem? Is there written about it somewhere on this forum? Please give me any clue.

[Rollo]

Ihad a site that suddenly dopped out of Google for now appearant reason. It took about 7 months to return. I would try searching for "Sandbox" or "filter" or "penalty". You'll see you're definately not the only one.

[tahiti]

Noximus,

i had the same experience as yours half year ago. i had banned by G on my main keywords, ie. free widgets, free widget deals, widget deals ...etc. the site is banned on its main keywords because of its exact inbound link title that i built up aggresively through link exchange campaign. before i manage to rank well for those keyphrase, Google already had my site back into sandbox for those highly targeted keyphrase and its ranked way down in the SERP.

does your site's inbound link are mostly the same as well? if so, the penalty is likely the same with mine.

the good news is i did come out from the penalty and recover back to top position through some consistent work and luck. here are the approaches that i had taken in order to hit a 'come-back' after Bourbon:

1. grow my site inbound links *naturally* and varies the inbound link title as much as possible. articles submission, directories ...and so on.

2. link exchange with related sites..and again, VARIES your link title.

3. rebuild the site with a low keypharse density (well, i believe reducing the keypharse density would be enough but what i did half year ago is a 100% reconstruct on my 200pages+ site).

4. add in more contents. the site grew from 200+pages to 300+pages within half year. all pages added are html static webpage with solid content.

that's all what i did and the site came back and rank even better after the Bourbon updates. i think your problem is not that serious as your site still rank well for some of the secondary keywords. there are hopes and all it takes is some patient works and luck i guess.

all the best.

[samwise]

amazing - and yes I too have been banned for my own keywords. I wonder why? They aren't that popular and I don't think anyone is bidding on them with adwords... it makes me wonder. emails working again :)

[outland88]

Are you referring to banned or just a loss of rankings for the particular keywords?

[samwise]

my own keywords don't show .

[Noximus]

tahiti,
Anchor text is not the same, it varies quite a lot. I've been exchanging links for several years.
keyword density is not big, it is about 5-7%.
outland88,
It is banned on the main keyword, just one keyword. On other ones I just lost some places in SERPS. But 80% of the traffic came from that main keyword.

[Noximus]

Do you have any idea how this problem can be solved?
Do you think massive link exchange with completely irrelevant anchor text will help to come out of this kind of ban?

[FillDeCube]

I have 20 over websites (travel related) banned. All websites still having PR3~5 but got no new traffic from google. :(

My sites was ranking on first page for my important keywords for THREE YEARS, but it is all gone now.. :(

[caveman]

>But 80% of the traffic came from that main keyword.

You just identified a potential cause of your problem. ;-)

Hint: This is not another 'diversify your revenues' post.

[Noximus]

caveman,
I did not understand you well, can you be more clear?
But how can I give my site the former listings back.

[Noximus]

Do you think massive link exchange with completely irrelevant anchor text and site deoptimization will help to come out of this kind of ban?

[Noximus]

Have you tried this action for your sites?

[thecityofgold2005]

was penalised by about 20 places on only my main keyword. this lasted about 3 months until last week.

ie. widget was penalised but widgets or buy widget was not.

so i was about 30 for widget but in top 5 for most variations of widget.

i presumed i had been penalised only on that keyword.

[reseller]

FillDeCube

>My sites was ranking on first page for my important keywords for THREE YEARS, but it is all gone now.. :( <

When did that happen? any specific date?

[Noximus]

thecityofgold2005,
my situation is similar to yours, for main keyword I'm not in even 500, for other ones it is in top 3-5.
FillDeCube,
my site got banned for the main key word on the last update - bourbone. for the last exactly three years (plus/minus 2-3 months) it was in top 5.

I'd like to mention one thing, that the key word is one word drug name, very competative, it is in top 10 highest competative drugs.

[abbeyvet]

Correct me if I am wrong but it does not sound to me like anyone's site was banned here - just that their sites dropped dramatically in the rankings, right?

[FillDeCube]

reseller ->
Its was gone after June update.

I believe google has put in a filter, filterred affiliate website, I can't see a single affiliate website from the top 20 results for my keywords . :(

[Noximus]

abbeyvet,
No, it is not loss of rankings, it is not a ban of the site, it is a ban for the main keyword.

FillDeCube,
you might be right, I've many affiliate links on the first page, there are about 20 affiliate links on it.
it might be affiliate links filter, like yahoo has.
How many affiliate links do you have? or what is the ratio of affiliate/non-affiliate links?

[JuniorOptimizer]

Noximus, do you still rank high for "allinanchor" search?

I had this happen. I got more diverse anchor text links and eventually the penalty lifted.

[tahiti]

Noximus,

"Do you think massive link exchange with completely irrelevant anchor text and site deoptimization will help to come out of this kind of ban?"

No, although what i did might makes me looks like i am buying this theory.

what i believe is if a site is too well optimized, Google will send the site back to the sandbox for certain keyphrase. the site is then checked manually or with another set of filter. if the site is found not guilty in the eyes of Google, the sandbox will be lifted.

thus, what i did when i had this problem is to move on and continue growing my site (contents and links building) as well as making sure my SEO strategy (keyword density, h1 h2 h3 tags ..etc) is acceptable by Google.

this, however, is my personal believe based on my own experience. it might not applied the same to other sites nor all of you folks here might agree with.

just 2 cents of mine, hope it helps.

[Noximus]

JuniorOptimizer,
I'm 38th in "allinanchor".
Do you think this means anything?

tahiti,
thanks for the advice.

[tahiti]

I had this happen. I got more diverse anchor text links and eventually the penalty lifted.

-- this is exactly what happened to my site as well. it took more than half year to be rank well in the SERP. JuniorOptimizer, how long did your site took to recover?

[Noximus]

Thanks Guys, I've got some idea what to do.

Good Luck Online and Offline!
Noximus

[JuniorOptimizer]

It took a good six months for me so.

I dropped down in allinanchor for a long time. One day I went back up in allinanchor and around a week later it popper into number 2.

I think diluting the anchor text removes the penalty for that phrase.

[BennyBlanco]

Just curious, with all this talk of 'banning', has anyone paid attention or listened to the many times when GG and other G reps have publicly stated that they do not 'ban' websites? All these things are are tweaks in algo causing ranking slides. Think about it. If you, as someone stated, are losing rankings from a keyword that isn't a high AdWords target, and isnt a hugely competitive term, do you really see Google having a person at a desk saying, ooohh, let's ban this guy.... but just for this keyword. Do you know how much it would take to manually maintain any search algo?

Frankly, I do not buy it. I will believe what I heard right from Cutts' mouth when he said that 'bans' are paranoia and these are just the result of algo shifts. No offense, but I compare these types of threads to the "I was banned from AdSense but i didn't do anything wrong".