where/how to check if your website has been blacklisted by Google?

Anyone out there?

[rellierallie]

Hello there,

I am trying to find out how I can see if my website is blacklisted with Google, anyone any idea?

[More Traffic Please]

I know that a site that has been banned by Google may still show a PageRank on the toolbar. But, are pages on that site capable of transferring PR to their outbound links? Or does Google prevent a banned site from transferring PR?

[seomike2003]

webified

Not even close.

Let's put it like this. I optimize for Inktomi first not G I submit to Inktomi I adheare to thier guidelines to the "T". I rank well in Inktomi.

Now G comes in univited doesn't like my site. yet crawls it, indexes it ,slaps a ban on it.

That's like sending me to hell for not obey the 7 pillars of Islam when I signed up to be a christian. Capisce?

Now if you "submit" to G then it's on.

[Abigail]

A little bit of advise, from one who's been there and recently - send the email to Google, post on this board, you should get a response, my site was out MIA for 5 days, and still packing PR's of 5 and better - step back look at your pages, make some changes and the spider will be by, give it something good to dine on - like content, content, content - every little bit helps get you back in.

[kaled]

Now G comes in univited doesn't like my site. yet crawls it, indexes it ,slaps a ban on it.

That's like sending me to hell for not obey the 7 pillars of Islam when I signed up to be a christian. Capisce?

A more accurate metaphor for your bizarre logic would be
"That's like throwing me out of the (christian) church because I attend a synagogue". However, not only is your metaphor wrong but so is your logic.

Google doesn't care whether you are doing well in Ink and doesn't care whether you are deliberately optimising for Ink. Google looks at your site and the links to it and ranks it accordingly which is exactly what Ink does.

If you want free traffic from Yahoo/Ink then you have to play by their rules and the same goes for Google. Granted, the rule book should be available for inspection and you should have right to appeal but that is a can of worms I don't plan to open at this time.

Kaled.

[Abigail]

I did receive a response to an email sent to Google - but it appeared to be a canned message and not in tune to the fact that I have been reincluded in the index. Sure hope it was canned otherwise I will be waking up to a blank screen again tomorrow.

[BallochBD]

Abigail here are 10 facts about my situation ...

1. I have changed and/or updated every page of the 80 odd on my site during the last three weeks.
2. I am a self-employed consultant in an engineering discipline and the site is all information.
3. It has received plaudits from people throughout my industry.
4. It has been indexed since 2001, other websites link to it and reproduce the content
5. I have tried contacting Google as yet unsuccessfully
6. I have also emailed GoogleGuy according to his instructions in another related thread.
7. I have retained my PR5 and I am still in DMOZ.
8. I have installed a 301 redirect in case of duplicate content penalties.
9. My pages are all still in the index but without titles or cache.
10. The GoogleBot no longer visits my site (banned?)

Obviously this situation has caused me a lot of grief. SEO is not my business, I am an engineer, I have clients who need my help and I have to make a living. I cannot go on spending the amount of time on this problem that it has demanded but it has put me in catch 22 situation. Where does it all end?

GoogleGuy if you read this can you please help me by sending the Bot back to my site asap?

[kaled]

1. I have changed and/or updated every page of the 80 odd on my site during the last three weeks.

As I understand it, when pages are indexed without title or cache it is because Googlebot couldn't read them. I suggest you

1) Check your robots.txt file
2) Validate a few key pages
3) Check your host is not excluding Googlebot (and other spiders).

Kaled.

[BallochBD]

Kaled, I have already checked all of these things.

[cabbie]

I have seen BallochBD's site and indeed it is a worthy site for any search engine.
I can only think that google is having a problem with the "canonicalizing" of the site and BallochBD you should email GG as he has offered in this thread [webmasterworld.com...] msg#211 to look at all such situations.

[BallochBD]

Hi Cabbie, thank you for the kind words about my site. I have contacted Google seven times about this during the last three weeks but to no avail so far. I also contacted them on Thursday using GoogleGuy's instructions WRT canonicalization (spelling ok?).

Anyway, I have contacted him again as instructed in tonights forum and hopefully something will happen. It's not just the problems with lack of visitors that is hurting me it's the time I am spending trying to get it sorted out. Its 21:15 here on Saturday evening and I am still sitting at my PC when I could be getting gently p*ssed! Sad or what?

Please GoogleGuy can you help me? I need a beer!

[phxmichael]

Our site hasn't been hit by Googlebot in weeks. Does this mean we are banned? We are showing-up in some SERPS.

[flamehead]

My website had quite a few pages that ranked #1 for specific keywords and many others that ranked in the top 10 for other keywords. Suddenly about a week ago those pages either dropped below #100 or disapeared entirely. It looks to me like more of them are dropping as the week progresses. Can anyone tell me what the heck is going on? My page rank is still there at the same level as before.
The only thing I have done recently is link all 5 of my sites together. I made a nav bar and added it to all the pages of all 5 sites to kind of network them together. Depending on what link you click on This nav bar could take you to any of the five sites. The five sites share the same shopping cart so I wanted my vistors to be able to easily navigate between the sites to make purchases from any and all of them.
Each site also has it's own internal nav bar on each page separate from the first one mentioned. Did I do something wrong? Please anyone help me. My small business is quickly going down the tubes. My vistors have went from over 1000 a day to around 100. Along with sales :(

[luckychucky]

My home page has a PR5, lots of relevant backlinks, has bopped between #1 and #3 for a number of highly competitive KW phrases a long while now. Suddenly I'm still on top of the SERPS but the only version of my home page showing up anywhere on Google is a really ancient cached one--I'm talking, like, two months old...the latest version of my home page has vanished, and it had been there only a few days ago. My paranoid mind says Google banned my home page for over-optimization, and this ancient cache is a lingering ghost soon to disappear too. It apparently happened only to my home page and not the rest of the site; the other pages show up fine, in nice, freshly-cached versions. How does the latest awesome home page exist on Google and then suddenly get replaced by an ancient one long since gone? Somebody please calm me down!

[kazonik]

flamehead>
Seems like Google has completed an internal PR updated in the last week or so.
One possibility is that the PR of your pages has actually dropped. That would help explain the loss of performance in your rankings.
So far as I can tell, the new internal PR is not yet visible on the Google toolbar.

A good metaphor to describe the toolbar PR time lag.....
"you are seeing the light from a star that burnt out a long time ago".

peace,
Kaz

[SyntheticUpper]

Word on the streets is that GG is very helpful with this urlcanonicalization issue - if that's the problem - good luck.

[BallochBD]

As a matter if interest, where did you get the word on the streets?

I have contacted GoogleGuy on this but nothing has been done yet. GoogleGuy can you give us any clue as to when this will be fixed?

[flamehead]

Well, if what I am reading on here is true and looking at the search results for my site apearently it is.... Google is doomed. It's popularity is destined to fall. My site is a perfect example. I have a t-shirt site with a pr of 4 it was 5. The site has over 700 pages, one for each t-shirt design I sell. Many of the slogans are unique meaning they are not offered by ANY other website. Until Tuesday of last week a seach on google for (unique slogan)T-shirts would result in that coresponding page showing up as number 1. Now that same search results in a bunch of gobbly goop showing up and my page (The only one out of billions that is relevant)not even showing up at all! Goodbye Google! Apearently your reign as search engine king is about over. I never was #1 for (the most popular phrase)T-shirts, but the sites that were deserved to be there. Now a search for (the most popular phrase)T-shirts brings a ridiculous set of spamming sites to the top!

[luckychucky]

Howdy flamehead. As a fellow new-ish user who shares your sentiments on a gut level, I also have enough time neurotically obsessing on Google to a really unhealthy extreme (because my product sales are totally dependent on my rankings) I'd only counsel you to wait more, and watch, as unbearable as I really do know that is.

Google made me disappear for awhile, then came back after having digested me, and placed me at number one for a whole slew of potent keywords. And now Google's fscking with me again...just gotta hold on, try not to freak out or jump to conclucsions. Sometimes Google needs to gather its data and ripen awhile before settling.

[BallochBD]

<Well, if what I am reading on here is true and looking at the search results for my site apearently it is.... Google is doomed. It's popularity is destined to fall. My site is a perfect example. I have a t-shirt site with a pr of 4 it was 5.>

This is not exactly a considered opinion. You cannot say that Google is doomed because you have a problem with your wee T-shirt site. I did a search for t-shirts and the results were pretty much what I would have expected. I don't mean to slag your business off but selling t-shirts is that kind of business, is it not?

I am speaking as a self-employed consultant who has been severely damaged through being dropped by Google. My site is non-commercial and full of information. It should be up there at the top but its absence does not really make the results any less meaningful to the punters. The people searching for my keyword do not know that my site is missing and they will no doubt be quite happy with the results they are seeing.

I am not trying to defend Google. Why should I? They have inexplicably just about put me out of business during the last three months. I am not happy with the fact that my site is not being indexed but because I or for that matter you are not being found does not mean that they are "doomed." Whether you like this or not it is a fact!

[SyntheticUpper]

I have some major concerns with Google, and I'm not afraid to state them :), but I have no concerns with GoogleGuy. He's the best ambassador they could possibly have.

[SunnyDaze]

Advice - keep shirts on! Just seeing ups and downs of a G refresh - this could go on for a few days - but it is NOT the end of the world.

Our SERP's have dropped several places and all sorts of weird sites are above us today - but I honestly think this is not the end of the world for anyone.

G will rebalance - be confident - be happy. G listings are free after all!

8>)Sunny

[luckychucky]

Can anyone help me figure out why all the SERPs around me have very recent cache dates (ie: yesterday) but mine shows no cache date, and suddenly lists a dead old page title/description from way over a month ago?

If I click on the archaic description, it does link to the latest version of my home page. I'm still ranking #1, still show PR5, and the other pages on my site, which are optimized for other KWs, show up in their SERPs freshly spidered and in their most recent versions. But across every Google datacenter and in G's directory, everywhere my home page shows up the description/title is like a time-capsule from the past....it's spooky. 2 days ago it showed the latest fresh everything, so it's gone backwards... Has Google banned my home page for OOP and now this cached memory lingers, soon to vanish too?

[BallochBD]

SunnyDaze I don't know so much about a refresh. Unless I am missing something a refresh should not remove a site's titles, cache and descriptions and hence ALL of its Google traffic. Likewise it should not stop the GoogleBot from spidering certain sites?

[SunnyDaze]

Likewise it should not stop the GoogleBot from spidering certain sites?

Agree - however this really sounds like a server based error rather than a G error... a wrong line in a robots.txt file would do it for example...

BallochBD we run literally thousands of pages across over 50 domains for our client base. We keep it very vanilla - no spam - solid on site optimisation etc... without a hitch. So as I have followed the thread you are saying the same at your end. In your situation I would start pulling the server apart - there must be a simple explanation as G doesn't seem to single out clean white sights at all.

Sticky me your URL and I'll have a sniff around and see what I can see externally if you like?

8>)Sunny

[BallochBD]

Sunny, I have other sites sitting on the same server. They have had no problem so far so I would have thought that would rule out server problems. Also, I have been with the same provider for more than two years with no problems in the past.

Thanks for the offer, I will sticky you as requested.

[flamehead]

I wasn't just being arogant when I said that google was doomed for my problems. The reason I state that is because my sales per unique visitor ratio was fantastic. Which means my site WAS relevant to the seaches. When people clicked on my site from a google search they bought from me. That is more proof of relevance than ANY algorythm. So if google is saying my site is not relevant simply because they don't like the way I designed it, THEY ARE DOOMED. Maybe my web design skills are inferior but people love my t-shirts, and when they get to my site they don't click away because it's a crappy website.(i don't think it is) They instead buy shirts. Now by far the most popular t-shirt search that applies to my business is funny t-shirts. I have never ranked well for that term and the sites who did were actually funnier shirts than mine hence they deserved to be there. But now when you do a search for funny t-shirts several of the top matches are some "mom and pop" looking sites with some poorly designed t-shirts. I can assure you from my t-shirt business experience, these sites are not what people are looking for. The old top sites were. Google is so popular for the same reason I started using it. Because the search results were what I was looking for. By no longer giving as relevant results they leave a huge hole for someone else (Yahoo?) to come in and capture/recapture the Market.

[webqueen]

I am going to appeal.

Since saturday 14th, my site has GRAYED PR for an unknown reason. I didn't change anything on my site for months, I have only exchanged some links but I have removed all the links with grayed PR last week.

Can anyone help me how to appeal?

[tigger]

Hi

Well can I jump in as everyone is talking penalised sites & vanishing PR.

My site 2 months ago had a PR4 and I was expecting a PR5 after the next crawl but instead the PR has gone from the index page and is now showing a white bar, although when I check the links it shows 33 links pointing to the site most between PR5/6 so in theory should be a PR5.

The site is showing in G's cached pages and all the internals pages are PR4's, so I'm at a loss, anyone got any ideas? nothing other than new content has been added and the index page hasn't been touched

[kaled]

My whole site was white-barred for months last year when PR 3-5 would have applied. However, my SERPS were fine. The moral of this story, don't believe toolbar PR unless the SERPS confirm it.

Kaled.

[tigger]

although the site is still pulling in traffic it's all going to internal pages rather than the index page, which does imply it's picked up some type of penalty but for the life of me I can't work out why