Google not recognising my site

Could I have been banned.

[Later2]

Hi everyone this is my first post. Thanks for the wealth of info that I have read here today. I am a complete novice at this business, but I seem to have started off reasonably well, except for one thing.
I have two questions that must make you guys yawn everytime you see them, which I presume is regularly (the question that is, I don't mean to imply you're constantly yawning).
The story so far:
I have a website that sells widgets in a highly competitive widget market. I sell my widgets off my site all over the world. I sell enough widgets to pay the mortgage and feed my kids and dogs and stop my wife from grumbling too much.
I have lots of good content on my site. I have spent a year working on it, fine tuning it and getting it just so ... even though I haven't really got a clue what I'm doing.
I can afford to get number 1 or 2 ranking with the most popular KW's on GA and still make a decent return. I have the same on Overture. I get between a 9 and 12% CTR.
I have meaningful links with a small number of high quality associated sites.
I have the number 1 organic ranking on the most popular KW's in both MSN and Yahoo (I think this is because of my content rather than knowing what I'm doing), but I draw a big fat zero from Google even though I pay (what for me is) lots of money on Google Adwords.
Qusetion 1: Why isn't Google recognising my site and
Question 2: How do I go about finding out what I have done to offend Google?
I used to post my url to Google every day, so was I spamming?
I have a keyword.com site mirrored on a keyword.co.uk site (with a small number of copy changes), so am I cloaking? The .co.uk site is now redirected to the .com site using the redirect option supplied by my host.
I have several unrelated "hobby" sites stemming from the .com url and these sites are unrelated to the main site. For example www.donteventhinkaboutmovinganywherenearacountrythathasachickenasitsnationalemblem.co.uk is actually found at www.keyword.com/donteventhinkaboutmovinganywherenearacountrythathasachickenasitsnationalemblem
I wonder if I have offended someone that has a chicken as his national emblem and this has caused me problems.
On two of my other hobby sites I have a page (one on each) of relevant links (lots of them) - each of which I have visited and chosen on purpose and most of which are not reciprocated.
Commments and thoughts welcomed.

[encyclo]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld [webmasterworld.com], Later2.

I used to post my url to Google every day, so was I spamming?

Yes. But that doesn't necessarily mean that you are banned or that if you are banned, you were banned for that reason.

Are you saying that you are completely absent from the Google index, or just badly-ranked? Is Googlebot visiting your site? Have you checked your robots.txt file to make sure there is nothing wrong there? Are you using meta or Javascript redirects, session IDs or anything else not search-engine bot friendly? No hidden text, cloaking, or anything else you wouldn't tell your Grandmother about?

[chrisnrae]

"site mirrored on a keyword.co.uk site (with a small number of copy changes)"

How long ago did you remove the mirror site? Changing a "small number" of the copy might not have been enough to escape the duplicate content issues. Also, how are your backlinks?

[Later2]

Chrisnrae et al I'm confused as I am not completely absent from the Google index, but I am (not visible) badly-ranked (remember I'm number 1 on MSN and Yahoo), but also if I do a check to see who is linked to me, none of my links show up?
The green / white line shows about 1/4 green.
My domain name is my product name. If you do a G search on my domain name you get a reference to my site on a partner site (on which I have a link) and then about six positions down the line my site appears ... but of course nobody searches on my product name, the main KW's are something else.
Q: Is Googlebot visiting your site? A: I had to go back 7 weeks to see a reference to Googlebot. NB I started submitting my url again this week - what frequency is optimal for Google?
Q: Have you checked your robots.txt file to make sure there is nothing wrong there? A: I don't know how to do this, or what to look out for (I'm sorry this is a brain surgery for beginners comment). FYI robots.txt is cropping up in the DOCUMENTS NOT FOUND list - is this significant?
Q: Are you using meta or Javascript redirects, session IDs or anything else not search-engine bot friendly? A: I don't know. I'm just using the redirect control panel provided by my host.
Q: No hidden text, cloaking, or anything else you wouldn't tell your Grandmother about? A: I have no hidden text, but I wonder if the .com / .co.uk thing might be defined as cloaking. There's a lot I wouldn't tell my grandmother about ...

FYI I developed my sites using NetFusion 7.5 and I have just bought a copy of WebPosition 3.

Q: "site mirrored on a keyword.co.uk site (with a small number of copy changes)" ... How long ago did you remove the mirror site? A: Very recently.
Q: Also, how are your backlinks? A: What are backlinks? Cringe.

[chrisnrae]

If you have no or little backlinks, that is probably why you are ranking so poorly. No need to submit your site to G, gain some good backlinks and G will come - assuming you haven't done anything to peeve it off. I am not fully understanding what you are saying you did with the .co.uk, so hard to comment if that is an issue.

You can also see a full list of your backlinks (Google doesn't give a full list) by going to yahoo and typing in linkdomain:www.yourdomain.com - as for the robots.txt, if you don't have one at all, then that can't be the reason the bot is staying away.

[Later2]

I followed your Yahoo suggestion and got 14 backlink results.

[chrisnrae]

Ok, yea, I can't say backlinks are your sites only issue with no personal experience with the site, but your backlinks are definitely an issue regardless. You need more inbound links - if you're in even a half way competitive industry, probably a lot more.

[Later2]

Many thanks Chrisnrae and Encyclo

[ritalia]

I HAVE A SIMILAR PROBLEM. MY PROBLEM I HAVE LINKS FROM ALL THE SE EXCEP THE BIG G. I DO NOT KNOW WHAT I HAVE DONE TO DESERVE THIS. CAN SOME ONE HELP PLEASE.

[netscan]

PERHAPS IT WAS ALL THE SHOUTING.... With that aside, work on your links, build your content and wait. That's the best you can do.