Removal from Google's Index - email notice from Google?

[h8dk70]

This morning I've got an email from google advising me that my main site has/will be removed from index for at least 30 days. They did specify the reason - hidden text. And yes, my site had this hidden text for years, from the time when I put it online, when I didn't know much about search engines and google guidelines for that matter. This is my very first site and I didn't even remember that it had hidden text.

Anyway, I checked the headers and it looks like it's from Google. For now I got rid of the hidden text (the site doesn’t have any other guidelines violations) but haven't submitted a re-inclusion request yet, the site is still in the index but I don't know for how long.

If you had the same experience, would you have any suggestions, should I wait or should I submit re-inclusion asap? Is that possible to forge email headers so that it would look like it came from google? if it is I wouldn’t be surprised if it came from my competitors. If G didn’t send the email could a re-inclusion request hurt my site’s ranking? Any other info that could help me?

Thanks very much in advance.

[edited by: engine at 2:05 pm (utc) on April 21, 2007]
[edit reason] No e-mails, thanks. [/edit]

[tedster]

Google definitely does send out this kind of email. There have been reports here from people who responded quickly and fixed the issue -- they were never dropped from the index.

[theBear]

However those that didn't correct the issue and request re-inclusion did indeed go bye bye.

[reseller]

h8dk70

should I wait or should I submit re-inclusion asap?

You may wish to file a reinclusion request asap refering to Google's email to you and informing the folks at WebSpam Team that you have removed the hidden text and you wouldn't do that again.

Good luck!

[shortbus1662]

If you're only out 30 days you should be thanking your lucky stars.

I was out for I believe exactly 365 days a about two years ago. April to April (a year ago I got back in) last year.

It was because I hired a guy to do seo for my site and at the time I really had NO CLUE about blackhat/whitehat, etc.

I remember his name, and I'm sure one of these days I'll be at a se conference and he'll be there... ;)

Still not quite the same even a year after getting back in, but I'm not thinking about cutting myself anymore haha :)

[bobothecat]

I would respond to the email that was sent to you first... letting them know the issue at hand has been corrected. Requesting a re-inclusion might make things more difficult for you since you technically haven't been "excluded" yet.

[b2net]

I got back after 2 days. However, my client is still not back after 30 days. Is the penalty longer than 30 days if the reason for banning was more than some hidden text like doorway pages?

[contentwithcontent]

I would recommend first and foremost correcting the problem and then going through your entire site and make sure your pages are following the guidelines, then submitting a re-inclusion request, You DO NOT have to be excluded to submit one.
You can mention the email you received in the text of the message.
example: I was notified of a problem with my site via an email stating that there was hidden text in my website. I have removed the hidden text and corrected the problem.

[nervo]

Google completely removed one of my sites from their index. They've never emailed me about it and I'm not really sure what would be the problem....
There's not one page of the site in the index. The site is one year old and had PR3 that in the last update went to PR0...

What would be the best approach to this issue?
Thanks

[tedster]

nervo, I'd suggest you open a Google Webmaster Tools account for your domain and do all your communicating with Google from there.

[nervo]

Thanks tedster. I already have an webmaster account, do you suggest me to submit a re-inclusion request?

[h8dk70]

Thanks very much everyone for your replies. I was hoping that someone who actually got a message from G would reply as well, would be interested to know what exactly happened i.e. was the site dropped, how long it took, did it come back and if yes when etc...

I'm still curious, is there any possibility of the email headers being forged? I guess only removal of pages from the index could prove that the email was genuine (scary thought)

Thanks again. All I can do now is wait and hope for the better.

[spina45]

I only WISH that I would receive such an email from Google. They have murdered me in the rankings and I have spent 8 months doing hard work, stupid work, and generally feeling depressed about it. I've sent them an email and they replied with a lame form letter.

Remove the hidden text, beg for forgiveness and do it NOW!