how do you contact google about reversing a ban of a site

[american28]

Hi,

We seem to have been banned or completely dropped by Google because of something done by a SEO person we hired. We now have completly changed the site back to where it was before this new work went through. How do we contact Google to explain what happened?

Thanks!

[texasville]

[google.com...]
and tell them what you told us and promise it won't happen again.

[rkhare]

after reading so much on google bans, i feel now that its better to ban google then let google ban us ..... YPN ...... hurry up .... we need u badly

[Rx Recruiters]

My biggest site was banned on July 28 - Dropped completely out of the index. I filled out the contact form several times, sent them several snail mail letters, and sent several e-mails to help @ google .

On August 2cd I recieved a personal reply saying they would forward my e-mail to the engineers for review. That reply had a number in it. I sent several more e-mails after nothing happend - all with the case # in the subject line. I got one personal e-mail back referring me to the webmaster guidelines, and I replyed again. I deleted about 30 pages from my site that were questionable to the guidelines, and noted that in the e-mail. 3 days ago, I recieved a personal e-mail from Google saying that I would be pleased to note that I was back in the index. Some very old pages are also showing up in the supplemental results - pages that haven't been on the site in a year.

I was ranking #1 for quite a few key words, and getting a ton of Google traffic, but now I'm far down the list, and getting very little traffic from Google to speak of. At least I'm back in, and hoping to make the trek back up the rankings. Another thing to note - When I was banned, my total pages indexed were over 500. Now, I'm only showing 135 pages in the index, and the google freshbot isn't visiting everyday like it was.

I did retain my PageRank however, which had went to 0 on July 28. It was back as soon as my site was back in the index.

I'm hoping that the next deep crawl will reindex my all pages and I will start getting traffic back! Has anyone else had any luck getting reincluded - and how long did it take to get their tarffic back (if at all)?

[american28]

Hi, Thanks for this help. I'm sorry to sound like a novice (which I am) but does anyone have any good suggestions on how to find only good, white hat type SEO professionals? I dont want to find problems with Google again caused by a Bad Guy SEO pro. Thanks, Lance

[andrea99]

i feel now that its better to ban google then let google ban us .....

I agree! I am blocking googlebot from most of my pages now, both with robots.txt and with a googlebot noindex meta.

I noticed that Google has ignored these denials and some blocked pages still appear as URL only. This may be temporary though.

My story is very similar to Rx Recruiters except that my last email from the "engineers" reads:

Thank you for your reply. We strongly encourage you to review our
Webmaster Guidelines at www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html. If you
make changes to your site to comply with these guidelines, please let us know.

I plan to change the entire site at that domain radically before I contact them again.

I did not remove the offending pages but blocked the gbot from them... They are still doing well with Y and M, Google seems unreasonable and greedy if they want me to deny these pages to my visitors who like them...

[Rx Recruiters]

Andrea99 - My first reply from the "engineers" was the same as yours. I replyed to that e-mail saying I had deleted about 30 pages that I felt might be in violation of the TOS, and in about 2 weeks, I was back in. Not ranking well, but back in the index.

[bymer]

[google.com...] - can someone please indicate what email or form was used for contacting google? I have a site that has been in the index since 2002 and had _no changes_ to the make up/html in over 2 years, yet as of this week I can't find it in google anymore.

any help is appreciated in advance.

[ocmaria]

Help Center --> Then at the very bottom of the next screen, it reads "Can't find what you're looking for? Contact us"

[google.com...]

[bymer]

thank you very much.

Did something happen in the last few days that would result in total elimination from Google index? What is very odd is that my site had no change to meta, title, description, or any other kind of site/page elements in the span of last 12 months if not more. I'm curious if someone else had this happen in the last few days. This is very strange.

[WebFusion]

I did not remove the offending pages but blocked the gbot from them... They are still doing well with Y and M, Google seems unreasonable and greedy if they want me to deny these pages to my visitors who like them...

then again....it could be you who is being "unreasonable and greedy" for expecting google to send you free traffic when you openly acknowledge you are violating their TOS to get it.

[andrea99]

then again....it could be you who is being "unreasonable and greedy" for expecting google to send you free traffic when you openly acknowledge you are violating their TOS to get it.

If Yahoo follows suit and also bans my site I will have to reconsider this position but I am going to be disallowing googlebot on all but a few of my pages, even those not banned. The lack of that torrent of Google traffic is making me work harder for the traffic I do get and is in that way improving the quality.

I don't think complying with G's TOS is worth the trouble at this time. I may develop a version for Google but that is not a priority.

I replyed to that e-mail saying I had deleted about 30 pages that I felt might be in violation of the TOS,

Bringing my site into compliance will be far more difficult than deleting 30 pages. There are several hundred pages which are still doing well with Y and M. Deleting them to accomodate G would probably be a net loss... But thanks anyway. :)

[redintheforest]

Yep. Same here. My webmaster seems to think it is a technical glitch and we will all show back up in a month or so (as long as you hadn't changed the site previous to the last crawling.)

[andrea99]

...you are violating their TOS...

These are not "terms of service" they are "Guidelines." I never gave Google permission to crawl my site except by default, that is I did not disallow them.

I am now disallowing Google from all but two of my pages. It is they who are violating my TOS by continuing to cache pages that I have specifically disallowed.

I won't be back in their index unless I change my mind.

[europeforvisitors]

after reading so much on google bans, i feel now that its better to ban google then let google ban us ..... YPN ...... hurry up .... we need u badly

Are you talking about bans by Google search or by AdSense? (I don't see how joining YPN would help a site that had been banned by Google search.)

[linkjack]

"how do you contact google about reversing a ban of a site"

buy u$ 10.000 of adwords for 2 or 3 months in a row

[bymer]

"how do you contact google about reversing a ban of a site"
buy u$ 10.000 of adwords for 2 or 3 months in a row

ha, very funny, but actually has no underlying basis - it seems that you can pay a lot more than $10 per month, for years, and still be delisted.

[andrea99]

Oddly enough I had just begun buying Adwords when my site was banned. One thought crossing my mind at first was that there may have been some connection.

[bymer]

Oddly enough I had just begun buying Adwords when my site was banned. One thought crossing my mind at first was that there may have been some connection

may be, if we consider that Google bans site under the premise of weeding out the "non-quality" content you could say that they are not interested in serving ad impressions to sites that they do not feel are "fair" in getting into the index in the first place.

of course, as anything Google, we can speculate all we want :)

[andrea99]

In my particular case the ban followed much too quickly upon the Adwords campaign opening for it to have been anything but coincidence. The connection in my mind was a natural impulse but upon further consideration I dismissed it. This does not mean that there might not be some connections in other cases (see following).

My AdSense earnings for July were substantial and I was worried about them since the bulk of them were earned by the banned site. But I'm pleased to report they have been paid which is an encouraging sign that there is no corruption in that regard... Speculate away!

[linkjack]

bymer, who's kidding? if you buy tons of adwords you make friends. that's how it works.

[andrea99]

bymer and linkjack, in my opinion there would be no connection except in cases where the revenue were say, in the mid to high six figures. That might warrant a special memo, anything less would not likely be worth crossing that line.

My dollar figure may not be accurate but I'll bet such a threshold exists, and it is high.

[linkjack]

andrea99 - say no more. the more digits, the better.

anyone thinking google is in this business to make friends is in a deep state of sin.

[moftary]

In my particular case the ban followed much too quickly upon the Adwords campaign opening for it to have been anything but coincidence.

wow wow wow, wait a minute here.
It also happened to me, just asked for a free customized adwords campaign and then got boomed after a few days of the request!:)

I have always been sarcastic of people applying the concipiracy theory on google and connecting between google natural listings and the adsense/adwords programs. But you successfully raised my suspeciuos level.

[andrea99]

then got boomed after a few days of the request!:)

In my case it was the very next day, which happened to be the 28th. A lot of sites were banned on the 28th, it just seems like a coincidence to me...

[ocmaria]

Pfft, I was buying $30 worth of AdWords per month and still got hosed.

[Fighting Falcon]

Well, google seems to have picked-up my request for re-inclusion. After an initial delayed reponse of about two week, they've responded to the subsequent email within 24 hours.

Bad news is they say that our request has been passed to the engineers and they will review the site and consider for re-inclusion. But the punchline says:

"If the website is reinstated, it will appear in Google's
search results sometime in the next few months."

Well at least I know now....:)

FF

[ocmaria]

Got that same reply FF. Guess we continue to wait! (And good luck to you!)