Cross Link Penalized

[Abigail]

About 18 mos ago a site of mine totally disappeared from google - it showed up about 6 mos ago, grey barred and only the index page. A few days ago I noticed all the pages url listings are back - no descriptions, no cache, no pr's, just the urls - am I being optimisic in hoping it is back on it's way in?

note: I think I was penalized for heavy cross linking to another site - those links have been dropped many months ago.

[bether2]

A few days ago I noticed all the pages url listings are back - no descriptions, no cache, no pr's, just the urls

If I remember correctly, googleguy said some time back that this means that the URL was found but the page has not been spidered yet - or something like that. So, yes, I think it is a reason to be optimistic.

Some of my new pages are showing up like that now also. And I believe that they will soon show up with the correct title, snippet, cache, etc.

Beth

[Abigail]

OK - I'll sit back and wait and start getting just a little excited. Thanks.

[Equiano]

Abigail

I don't want to put a downer on this, but I have had a site that exhibits exactly the same sympthoms as these and has done so since April.

I had initaily thought that it was a case of the site having been 'spidered' and within the next few weeks it would be pulled in but this hasn't been the case and six months down the line I am still waiting. I have a few backlinks from Pr5/PR4 sites, but this hasn't helped the situation.

I don't know if you case is going to be as bad as mine, but I have practically given up hope of getting a proper linking in the Google Index for this particular site.

[mcavill]

I had the same for a while after renaming some pages and putting 301 redirects up - the original pages were dropped as expected - then about 3 weeks later a few URL's started popping up, then about another 3 weeks the new pages appeared in the SERP's

no real change in ranking though, so the rename was a waste of time...but that's off topic ;)

[Abigail]

Well I am a little excited because I am 99.9% sure I was packing a penalty for over a year - just to see it showing itself is a real lift, I am hoping, hoping it is coming back into its own and will re-enter, especially since I have turned it over to my daughter's control and she has been putting so much effort into it. Inktomi loves it and I hope google is willing to forgive and forget and go on.

[CCowboy]

Penalties do expire according to GoogleGuy.. So play nice!

[Gralon]

i see the same thing but in the other way for one of my website.

Got many pages indexed and well ranked by google.
But since 3-4 weeks, many pages lost her "google cached page" and the title become the url.

What does it means? every day i lost visitors from google :-(
the weird thing is, this webpages always have Pagerank (many at 4 or 5) and googlebot visit the website everyday (but apparently the index is not refreshed).

How can i know if there a penality on my website and if so, how to remove it.

Thx

[MadHatter]

I don't know if you case is going to be as bad as mine, but I have practically given up hope of getting a proper linking in the Google Index for this particular site

You are describing my situation to a T! I feel like I am in Google H-ll and caught in some kind of a trap.
MadHatter

[kidalex]

Abigail, can you please explain to me ( the newbies ) - what exactly that you got penalized for?

Alex

[onlineshrine]

Yes please describe exactly what got the penalty in the first place. :)

[Net_Wizard]

She thought that she's being penalized for heavy cross linking.

Which, I don't agree, I know two sites that are heavy cross linkers but of two different owners, hosted by different hosting company. Both sites are pretty well known in their niche and each have their own unique group of backlinks.

Each site compliment the other thus the heavy cross linking. This was done for the benefit of the site users and has nothing to do with Google. In fact, this has been going on for over a year now. Yet, both sites enjoy high PR and pretty well ranked in their various keywords at Google.

So, I don't think cross-linking alone have caused your penalty. But, not knowing your site and the site you're cross-linking, it's hard to tell what is really the penalty.

Cheers

[powerofeyes]

Hello,
I have a question. Can any expert help me in this. I have a site which has been optimized recently. I had displayed my advetisment in a popular site and that site is displaying my ad in almost 400 pages. Google has spidered all the pages in that site. When i type my URL on the search bar I see 400 pages listed. All those pages belong to the same site which is displaying my advertisement.
My question will google penalize me for this. Is it considered as crosslinking.
thanks,
VIJAY.

[buckworks]

Having one site link to you 400 times won't hurt you.

It's not cross-linking unless you link back. If you linked back to that site 400 times, that might be risky. A certain amount of cross-linking is reasonable, but no one knows how much is "too much".

I can't prove this, but I think that it's when cross-linking between your own sites is all you've got for links that they're more likely to be seen as manipulation and devalued. Getting more links from outside sources will give you a wider margin of safety.

In post #12 above, NetWizard described two sites that link to each other heavily, but also mentioned that "each have their own unique group of backlinks." Note that last point: I think it's the secret here.

[Abigail]

I linked "in" from one site to another - I did not link back in the same manner, but I had over 100 links on each page of the site "a" going to "b" pages - I got slapped on the wrist once, my site disappeared - but I was confused because my webhost was also offline for 48 hrs at the same time. Anyway I took all the links off and it came back, but I just wasn't sure so like a big ignorant dummy I experimented and tried it again, and then it went out and awaaaaaaaaaay - I didn't think it would ever come back.

Today I can see 117 pages by title only, no description except the index page - but I also that on 3 of the 10 data bases its dropped to 30 pages - oh, oh ......what does it mean, what does it mean?

[buckworks]

Abigail, if you said this I missed it: which site went away? A or B? The one with the links or the one being linked to?

It would be helpful to know that.

[Abigail]

the one that was linking out - I don't think a site can be penalized for other sites linking in to it. But I could be wrong on that - as you can see I have been wrong before!

[dirkz]

mcavill, are you saying that after installing the 301 there were 3 weeks in between the drop of the original pages and the beginning of new pages popping up?

That is, there were 3 weeks of no index at all for you pages?

I am experiencing the same problem and wonder whether I got penalized or just dropped due to 301s.

[KeywordStats]

Abigail,

Have you switched hosts or has your host done anything to disallow certain USER_AGENT's? The times that I have seen only a URL with no description is when Google did not receive an "OK" response from the webserver yet the site was still in Google's repository so Google gave it the "benefit of the doubt".

I'm probably going to get a "say what?" for this.. but try retrieving the HTML from your site using a HTTP Client and spoof Google's USER_AGENT:

Googlebot/2.1 (+http://www.googlebot.com/bot.html)

A HTTP Client is a programming tool that will allow you to navigate to your site "as if" you are Google.

Derek