Recent email I got from Google

[mvandemar]

I recently got an email from Google in reply to a question I had asked. The most important line, as far as I was concerned, said definitively that I was neither banned nor penalized. Made me really happy, since I was concerned. I figured that they wouldn't say that if it wasn't true, you know?
But then I got to wondering, after reading further, where it said that they don't review on a site by site basis. How could they know it wasn't if they didn't look? So I Googled* the sentence. Saw a few results say other people had gotten that same exact result, so now I can't figure out if they just say that to everyone who asks, or if it is a form letter, but only to people who aren't actually penalized. Anyone know one way or the other? And if anyone knows GG, please point him to this so we can maybe know for sure.

-Michael

*not an officially endorsed Google term. :P

[arbitrary]

They do site:

If you are listed, they say you are not banned. Even if your pages were all in the supplemental index, they would say you are not penalized or banned.

[mvandemar]

How do you know this?

-Michael

[BeeDeeDubbleU]

Easy, if you are banned you are not listed ;)

[followgreg]

Has anyone received an email where it says you were banned? At least I have never heard of this :)

I think that if they were so cautious about stating the traffic power was banned then they would not take a chance to have anonymous webmasters filling a claim...2 cents again

[arbitrary]

How do you know this?

From a guess on my part based on personal experience. I sent them a similar email to yours and received a similar response. From reading their email (between the lines) it was my deduction that they were just saying that my pages were in their index.

[garyr_h]

I got the same email before and a few days later my pages 'magically' appeared in the index when before they were nowhere to be found...

Hopefully something similar will happen to you.

[mvandemar]

I sent them the question because when you search for my domain name in quotes, "www.mydomain.com", it comes up in the 100's. I wanted to know if this meant my domain wasn't relevant to itself.

Also, I use to come up fairly high for my company name. Then one month I checked the rankings on it kinda too often (like 6k times, sue me, I'm compulsive), and I guess they thought suddenly it was competitive. Now I'm in the 600's for it. That's with #1 allinanchor, #1 allintext, #1 allintitle, and the company name IS the domain name.

Sounded like a penalty to me. I just wanted them to confirm this.

-Michael

[tedster]

mvandemar, does your domain name resolve to content directly, or does it redirect first? I've seen this kind of trouble when the "Home Page" redirects and the "pure" domain therefore has no content of its own.

[mvandemar]

No, no redirect except for the non-www to the www.

-Michael

[Lorel]

search for a line of text on your home page in quotes to see if anyone has copied your content. That can cause your site to drop in rank--along with a multitude of other problems.

[sonny]

received this when I was booted in 2004:

Thank you for your note. Your page has been blocked from our index because it does not meet the quality standards necessary to assign accurate PageRank. We cannot comment on the individual reasons your page was removed. However, certain actions such as cloaking, writing text in such a way that it can be seen by search engines but not by users, or setting up pages/links with the sole purpose of fooling search engines may result in permanent removal from our index. Please read our webmaster guidelines at [google.com...] for more information.

Regards,
The Google Team

Was back in a year later. Could only guess that it was because of a single sitemap page that was just filled with internal links to every page on the site. I removed the questionable page, took it outside and stomped it into oblivion.
After completing its 1 year sentence, all the while swearing its innocence to anyone listening; my site was finally paroled to a halfway house to receive intensive rehabilitation culminating in it successfully reentering the lofty rankings it enjoyed prior to incarceration.

[mvandemar]

Just checked, no copies of my page out there.

It's just irksome, since pages that mention my site come up much higher than my site. Search engines that list my site in their results for another search term come up way higher than my site. Scraper sites that scrape content from search engines that show my site in their results come up higher than my site. Link partners with a PR0 page with my link on it come up higher than my site! /sigh

I know I'm not banned, because yes, I'm indexed.

-Michael

[arbitrary]

It's just irksome, since pages that mention my site come up much higher than my site.

Sounds like typical sandbox behavoiour to me. Is your site new, that would explan the above.

[mvandemar]

Mid Janruary 05. And sandbox I would be fine with, not asking to be treated special or anything like that.

I don't even expect them to admit that there actually is a sandbox. My only concern would be if there is something else going on here, and whether or not they actually looked before telling me that there wasn't. That's all. :)

-Michael

[arbitrary]

With mid January 05 could be still the sandbox. That is the tough part figuring out if you did something wrong or this is just normal behaviour.

It is sad how Google has changed the web to the point where sites that list your site can rank above yours when searching for your site by name.

[Oliver Henniges]

Then one month I checked the rankings on it kinda too often (like 6k times, sue me, I'm compulsive), and I guess they thought suddenly it was competitive.

That amounts to 200 times a day on average, and maybe 5k times on one day(?). You did not use a script, did you? You did not use such a script from the IP of your website, did you?

[mvandemar]

Not per se, no, and nothing that Google would know that it was my site being checked for. Used a site that checkeck multiple datacenters at once, and I'd check differant ip blocks each time I'd check, so was like 40 differant searches a few times per day.

-Michael