Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
The last thing I did before the ban was adding links to a navigation page that already had several hundred links to mp3 files (she was a singer). I was editing the page with MS Frontpage and changed a default check box to "open (links) in a new window." Instead of changing the default for new links only, Frontpage changed all the existing links on the page.
After that, clicking on an mp3 link opened a blank browser window, closed it, then the visitor's media player opened and played the file.
Could google have interpreted this change to hundreds of links on one page as spam? The links were corrected several days later but the site was erased from google by then.
Does the above scenario sound plausible? If not i'm at a loss about what to fix. The site remains in all the other search enginges as before.
The whole thing is a heart breaker because our 86 year old father read the log file reports daily to see that people were still listening to his daughter sing.
Any suggestions about this are appreciated.
Charlie
First I believe that you are not banned but rather are in sandbox. Google probably interpret the bulk links changing as the sign that the topic (theme) on the page has changed and began the history from scratch.
If it is possible and drop has happed not too long ago I would have tried to rollback to previous link forms and than make changes gradually. However even if you leave all as it is I believe you will restore you SERP in a several months.
Vadim.
So the site must be in the database but google won't provide that information, even to people searching on the "www.domainname.com"
If google takes such extreme action for editing a site there should be a warning about that. It would be nice if the domain owner services would give information about the site--sandboxed, banned, whatever.
The internet should have half a dozen search engines dividing up the market so that nobody's hard work can be ruined by one search engine. I'm reducing my personal use of google and relying on the other search engines--my small contribution to a solution.
Charlie
A second point, "sandbox" is a word that we webmasters invented -- it's not Google's word at all. What we call the "sandbox effect" is a combination of factors and filters in their algorithm that sort of test domains for signs of quality. This helps Google to keep "disposable domains" and "push-button automated link and PR networks" from spamming their search results so badly that they become unusable.
Also, Google has a trial program of notifying webmasters when a true penalty is going to be applied. It would be a nice thing to see this grow -- but the issue of scale is rather overwhelming when you think about how very big the web is today.
I've also been reading reports of legit sites losing all pages indexed by Google in the last 3 months after the rollout of BD (around March 28, and I've personally seen over 900 pages from one of my domains de-indexed), with some data centers reverting to an odd mix of pre-jagger/post-jagger indexes, so your site may not be banned by Google but just caught up in the recent mess created by switchover to Google's new infrastructure.
