Have I been "Banned" - or just penalized?

And If so, how do I un-ban/un-penalize myself?

[mmmwowmmm]

Apparently my website has been penalized by Google. My website offers “Unusual Widgets”. My website name is “Big Purple Widgets” and the address is “bigpurplewidgets.com” On Yahoo I come up in the 23rd spot for “Unusual Widgets”, which is great, but in Google I don’t appear at all. But – and this is the weird thing – I do come up in Google for “Big Purple Widgets” (my website name), in the # 1 spot.
And then, below that in the search results, are all of the websites that mention and link to my site, where they say, for example “Check out Big Purple Widgets – They have some great widgets” and then a link to my site. But – and here’s the other weird thing – even though Google has obviously indexed these pages that link to me, when I do a link:http://www.bigpurplewidgets.com type of search, nothing comes up. Not one link. Yahoo shows just about all of my inbound links, but according to Google not one site is linked to me.

I have never used any weird SEO stuff, like hidden text, tiny text, etc. I have never joined any “link-farms” that I’m aware of. I have, in the past, exchanged links with some other free-for-all links pages, but I have un-linked myself to them about 2 weeks ago, and the googlebots have been to my site since then, and I am still being ignored.

Is it that once your site is penalized you have to do something special to “un-penalize” it, even though you’ve changed the things that caused it to be penalized in the first place? Or what?

The only things I can think of that google might be penalizing me for is:

1. On my home page it says:
“Big Widgets, Cool Widgets, Purple Widgets, Neat Widgets

2. and/or the title of my home page is “Big Widgets, Cool Widgets, Purple Widgets, Neat Widgets, Big Purple Widgets”

Could that be a “keyword spamming” problem? And if so, is it enough to get me heavily penalized? To the point where I don’t show up for anything except my website name?

Thanks

[hp11]

But and here's the other weird thing even though Google has obviously indexed these pages that link to me, when I do a link:http://www.bigpurplewidgets.com type of search, nothing comes up. Not one link. Yahoo shows just about all of my inbound links, but according to Google not one site is linked to me.

Google has never reported accurate backlinks. Yahoo is much better at reporting IBL's. How many IBL's do you have? When were they established? Google will also penalize sites that develop too many IBL's too quickly. Make sure all IBL's also have varied anchor text.

I have never joined any “link-farms that I am aware of. I have, in the past, exchanged links with some other free-for-all links pages, but I have un-linked myself to them about 2 weeks ago, and the googlebots have been to my site since then, and I am still being ignored.

As a guideline: PR is updated quarterly, backlinks are updated monthly and SERP's are updated (fluctuates) daily. Two weeks is not enough if that is the situation.

Is it that once your site is penalized you have to do something special to un-penalize it, even though you've changed the things that caused it to be penalized in the first place? Or what?

Clean up any problems, keep obatining IBL's, keep adding content, keep marketing and just wait. If you were banned that would be a different story.

Could that be a “keyword spamming problem? And if so, is it enough to get me heavily penalized? To the point where I don't show up for anything except my website name?

If your website is new you can also be in the sandbox. If not and you were as you believe penalized, just do as above. As far as keyword spamming, run it through a keyword checker. As a rule, if it sounds spammy and looks spammy - it probably is spammy.