Successful Google Reinclusion request

Heres what happened and how i did it

[warth0g]

1) Site was penalized in December (950-penalty)- still showed up for a small handful of keywords that were basically "domain" but i was ranking very high for several high traffic terms. Traffic dropped from 10,000 google referrals a day to less than 1000 a day.

2) This happened during a server crash ion the middle of indexing, failover server was not configured right and created duplicate content.

3) sent reinclusion request immediately described server problem, waited about a month with no change

4) Went through and removed all the sub-domains we were using (its a directory site and we had subdomains for each state) changed it to all internal pages.

5) Cleaned up a lot of the code, reduced the number of internal links on internal pages, removed a lot of the alt/title tags (over seo'd?).

6) submitted another reinclusion request describing the changes, waited and waited.

7) middle of March - penalty lifted out of the blue - google traffic shot back up to about 4000/day - still growing

8) breathed a sigh of relief

- my advice to you -
1 even though it doesnt explicitly say it - dont use subdomains
2 keep your code clean, dont overload your page with too many links - internal or OBL
3 MAke the site the best you can and be very polite, its easy to get frustrated, dont take it out on the google perosn reviewing your site!
4 be patient

[obono]

Congratulations!

Did you change the internal linking from subdomain type to subdirectory or you just 301 all links but left the original ones as is? If you changed the internal linking to reflect the subdirectories, how did you handle the 301? Some old links must exist for a 301 to be recorded and stuck.

I did the same exact thing back in November '06 but site is still banned. Oh wait. Yours was only a penalty, correct?

Where are you Adam Lasnik!

[rawley2]

I'm in the same boat you where in. Still hold some terms but most are gone.

I just sent a reinclusion request in today. I was 950 2-25-07 I have spent the last month cleaning the site up and rel=nofollow cross linked sites. I even found a hidden link in the frigging template! Had no idea about the hidden link in the template.

How long ago did you send in the 2nd one? Enquiring minds want to know...

[tflight]

Congratulations, warth0g, on getting your site back. I'm curious though if you have any specific reason to believe (other than coincidence) that your site returning has anything to do with the reinclusion request? I ask because so many people who have seen "950" impacts have the site come back from time to time for a few days/weeks only to return later to the 950 land.

I've seen one of my sites go in and out of 950 land nearly a dozen times since June. Sometimes it feels like it has been the result of changes I've made to the site, but ultimately it keeps going back to 950 frequently.

[pbaddock]

Yes, I must agree with tflight - I too have a customer site that is up and down like a toilet seat at a 21st birthday party! For 6 months they were at #6 for their own particular "blue widgets" search, then for the last month suddenly plummeted to #375 consistently, this week back at #14. Vinnie Barbarino: "I'm so confused!" ;-)

If I were you, I'd be waiting a few weeks before you start slappin' high fives.

[AustrianOak]

warth0g, congrats! I'm your distant cousin in penalties.. the -30 penalty.

Can you share when you submitted your most recent re-inclusion request and how long aprox. it took for the penalty to be lifted?

Thanks for the message, brings hope to the rest of us!

Oak

[edited by: AustrianOak at 2:26 pm (utc) on Mar. 30, 2007]

[tigertom]

5) above was the one that did it for me, I think.

I propose that Google doesn't like high optimization, and excessive internal links on any one page.

My key pages that I watch in the SERPs seem back to normal now.

[moftary]

Per google webmaster guidelines, Keep the links on a given page to a reasonable number (fewer than 100).

However I run a web directory with many pages having more than 200 links per page with no problems. I think breaking the design and content guidelines would result in a decline of the site performance in SERPs but definitely not a ban,

[tigertom]

"I run a _web directory_ with many pages having more than 200 links per page with no problems."

I'm talking about _internal links_ to pages on _your own site_.

In my case, the links were keyword heavy (ALT, title, image name, anchor text, bolded, underlined), and too many.

I stripped all this back, reduced the number of links per page, dialled back overall page optimisation, et voila!

[AustrianOak]

tigertom, once again.. what was the time frame between #6 and #7

Thanks!
Oak

[rawley2]

Warth0g,

What was the time frame please.. After you submitted the 2nd request.

Thanks,

[tigertom]

I didn't submit any re-inclusion request. I doubt you'd need to. You only do that when your site has been banned i.e. site:www.domain.com returns no results.

Time frame: a few weeks, I'd guess. Your pages have to be re-spidered, and the Google index updated.

There's no need to do a re-inclusion request for a penalisation. Just change what's causing it.

[edited by: tigertom at 4:01 pm (utc) on April 1, 2007]

[piskie]

Googles response time for these requests is not short. It could be that your panic mode rework crossed in the post so to speak.

[AustrianOak]

correction, I meant Warth0g.

[alexey9]

Congratulations. My site was removed from SERPs at the same time as your site, but I never get reply from Google Reinclusion person.

2) This happened during a server crash ion the middle of indexing, failover server was not configured right and created duplicate content.

What actually was not configured right? My server was hacked and I saw a lot of things changed by hacker.