Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
I've since made a few changes to my site. Should I send another re inclusion request outlining what changes I have made and asking them to re index my site? In the first request I didn't outline any changes made.
What would you do? How should I update Google?
Also note that it is no longer named "reinclusion" but now "reconsideration request". this is because webmasters are free to communicate even though they are still in the index only with lower rankings.
[edited by: tedster at 4:30 pm (utc) on Dec. 20, 2009]
As tedster said, it's important to mention any changes you've made. Try to be as transparent as possible. What makes your site more compliant to their guidelines?
Well its been almost 6 weeks now since our site has been dropped from Googles index and still we have no idea why. I've cleaned up everything I could find and submitted a reconsideration request with (of course) no response. We are tearing our hair out trying to find the cause of this.
The site doesn't appear to be hacked and was performing fine for over 4 years.
[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 5:14 pm (utc) on Feb. 2, 2009]
[edit reason] moved post [/edit]
Have you made absolutely sure that the site isn't in the index (rather than just not ranking)? I'd recommend searching for some exact text strings that are unique to your home page... say 3 or 4 word strings. Put them in quotes when you search.
Do your pages show up at all in a site:domain search?
If the site isn't indexed, you should check that your server is set up correctly. Use a server header checker to see if your correct canonical form (say it's the www form) is returning a 200 OK status, and whether the alternate form (without the www) is showing a 301, redirected to the www canonical.
I also suggest you take a look at the Hot Topics area [webmasterworld.com], which is always pinned to the top of this forum's index page, and look at the reference material on Penalties.
Try to describe what the symptoms are, what you think might have been wrong, and what you've tried to diagnose and to fix things. This is necessary for any discussion here, and probably for Google as well.
Any thoughts?
checked for malare
checked for hacking
checked for cloned websites
checked for spyware
checked for bad links
not subscribed to link exchanges
added new content
checked meta tags
Found no other issues
Hence the reason I am asking this "new" question.
"Would having a "link to us" page on a website be enough to get me banned? I have removed it as no harm was intended. Actually the only think which appeared on the page was my url."
Hope this sastifies your history question. Now can I ask new questions about my site?
I have a couple questions that need to be answered to help drill down to a possible cause.
1-have you moved the site to a new Ip or DNS?
2-Have you checked your robots.txt file?
3-have you checked your google webmaster control panel for any messages?
4-has your sever been up and down lately?
5-have you done a site command to see if your have duplicate url's non www and www or possible https indexed?
6-have you set up a 301 to the preferred www or non www?
7- is there content that a Google employee visit from lets say another country might find offensive?
This is a few I can think of to check.
con771 I wasn't trying to stop you from asking question now that we see what checks you have done futher questions can follow to help you root out the cause.
It's hard to make any comments without knowing what kinds of changes you made, and what you thought Google might have objected to in your site that would cause them to drop it.
OK, an implied question there
Have you made absolutely sure that the site isn't in the index (rather than just not ranking)? I'd recommend searching for some exact text
EDIT- IGNORE THIS ONE, ANSWERED SINCE POST AUTHORED
Use a server header checker to see if your correct canonical form (say it's the www form) is returning a 200 OK status, and whether the alternate form (without the www) is showing a 301, redirected to the www canonical
did you run live http headers? what was the result?
As to your current question
No, it should not get you banned, but its a good thing you removed it. I would put that in your reinclussion request.
[edited by: Shaddows at 3:36 pm (utc) on Feb. 4, 2009]
"what you thought Google might have objected to in your site that would cause them to drop it."
- This is a tough one. The site has been up for over 4 years without any issues. We have always been adding content. Maybe we shoud take down the articles we have putup over the past couple of months and include that in the reinclusion request as well. (I'm not sure what problems they would have caued though)
As to # 3 "Use a server header checker to see if your correct canonical form (say it's the www form) is returning a 200 OK status, and whether the alternate form (without the www) is showing a 301, redirected to the www canonical"
- Yes checked and it is working fine. 200 for the www and 301 for the non-www redirecting to the www.
Getting no response from Google doesn't help.
Not a chance you know another domain on he server is there?
If you did you could see if they are as well banned. Being on a shared server is a problem because what happenes on that server can have a direct impact on all the sites on that server. This is something I would look into more closely.
Do you have a dedicated IP address from this server?
Just by chance and I mean chance is there a very close misspell to your domain name that could be mixed up with yours?
I own a few domains on the server.
I'm really grasping at straws here, but...
a) are any of your other sites interlinked with this one?...
and/or...
b) do this site and any of the others have common link sources... ie, does a page elsewhere on the web link to several of your sites?...
and/or...
c) is this site and any of your other sites in the same market area?
I'm wondering whether you were perhaps naturally interlinking your sites but at some point may have crossed a threshold that caused Google to view your sites as an artificial link network.
B) As far as I know there are no common link sources although I cannot guarentee this. How can I check/remedy this?
C)The site is simular. A couple of years ago both sites ended up with about 10 simular articles. (same topic, not content). We have ensured both sites have unique seperate content from that time on.
Also the other site has not been affected (so far). Any ideas?
What about this?
When I use the safebrowsing tool for my site I get everything clean, with google least visiting my site on Dec 20th. This makes sense as we were removed on Dec 23 fron its index. However I get this strange thing under
"What happened when Google visited this site?
Of the 33 pages we tested on the site over the past 90 days, 0 page(s) resulted in malicious software being downloaded and installed without user consent. The last time Google visited this site was on 2008-12-20, and suspicious content was never found on this site within the past 90 days.
This site was hosted on 1 network(s) including AS21844 (THEPLANET)."
Any ideas what the last part regarding hosting means? Could this cause me the trouble?
This site was hosted on 1 network(s) including AS21844 (THEPLANET)
Pages from your site are included in Google's index.
No pages from your Sitemaps are currently in Google's index. Indexing can take time. You may find it helpful to review our information for webmasters and webmaster guidelines.
I can confirm when using the site:command that I get some results for my site however, searching the site url doesn't bring up my site...
Any ideas what this means?
Fingers Crossed
The pages indexed are all older pages. Some of the first ones my site ever had...
I could make an argument that this would be a natural path for Google to follow... most trusted pages first. Sounds like good news. Please keep us posted.
