Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
Having reviewed the Google Webmaster Guidelines carefully, I concluded that I was most likely banned for a interlinking between a large number of sites that I operate. The sites were related (other video clip sites in other categories), but I had a footer at the bottom of all my pages that linked the sites together. Ironically, about 6 weeks before the ban, I removed the footer once I realized that it potentially ran afoul of Google's Guidelines. Is it possible that they would've banned me for this, even though it was already fixed at the time of the ban?
I also thought I might be banned for duplicate content. My site aggregates and organizes videos from YouTube in a way that is more useful for <a specific interest>. As a result, my site has a lot of duplicate content (although compiled in compliance with YouTube's terms and conditions). Earlier posts on this forum and others lead me to believe that duplicate content probably isn't what got me banned (it could depress my SERPs but not result in a ban).
After combing my site for any other potential infractions, I submitted a reinclusion request on 8/8. I've not heard anything back and my sites remain excluded from the index.
Does anyone have any other ideas for what might have caused the ban? Any suggestions on getting reinstated?
Thanks in advance.
[edited by: tedster at 7:31 pm (utc) on Oct. 7, 2007]
I work with many families of websites that are interlinked. That alone is not usually the cause of a ban. Do your sites have a healthy backlink profile from other related sites of decent quality, in addition to your interlinking? That's what it takes to stay in the index, in my experience. If interlinking between your own sites accounted for most or all of your backlinks, then removing that footer could have undermined you.
If that is your situation, the fix would be to get some backlinks from a healthy variety of sites that are related to your target market - top quality directories, blogs, other sites in your niche, and so on. If you already have good backlinks, then we'll need to look at other factors.
