Can one get out of Google's penalty box?

Permanent?

[wrgvt]

I put up a new site in April of this year. I wrote all the code for the site first, raw HTML, and then went in search of a domain name. My first 10 choices were taken, and then I stumbled across what I thought was a good name. I tried it out, with several others that were available, on several friends and all they all preferred one name. It was available, I bought it up, and went online. Now after 5 weeks and already being indexed in Yahoo, I was wondering why I wasn't indexed in Google.

I didn't do enough research before buying this domain. After I went online, I discovered that the previous owner of the site used it for lots of spam and was placed on many banned lists because of it. So I e-mailed Google and asked if perhaps a penalty from the previous owner of the site was being carried over. I got this reply:

<Paraphrase: Standard Google response about site being blocked from the index, referring the addressee to their guidelines page.>

I'm sure there's nothing of this nature in the new site. I'm afraid that Google isn't even looking at my new code, but is just looking at some penalty box where my URL is listed. Is there a way of the penalty box? The scary word in their e-mail reply is "permanent."

Is it possible that Google can be persuaded to unblock my site? Or is permanent really permanent and my only option is to get a new domain?

[edited by: Marcia at 11:25 pm (utc) on May 28, 2004]
[edit reason] No email quotes per TOS. [/edit]

[robotsdobetter]

People have a lot of trouble getting penalties off, so check your site one more time and make sure their is no spam on it, if no spam than email them and that don't work after a little time you may need a new domain.

[Gory]

I would say get a new domain. You are wasting your time trying to unblock a site, time better spent on optimizing a new site.

[cabbie]

>>>I would say get a new domain. You are wasting your time trying to unblock a site, time better spent on optimizing a new site.

Ditto

[minnapple]

One of my client's sites seems to fall in an out of favor. I would not call it a penalty, but some times it ranks high for targeted keywords and other times it is mia.
The site is well established with many [ hundreds ] of aged organic links from real authority sites that are respected in google.
The site has a solid PageRank.
No shady deals on this site, it is on the up and up.
Still google bounces it in and out.

You figure.

M i n n a p p l e

[wrgvt]

Google finally responded to my e-mail and said their engineering team would take a look at my site and if everything was fine, they'd add me to the index. They asked me to be patient, and I'll probably do just that.

[caveman]

Yeah, why not! IF you like the domain name a lot (that counts for something) and can afford the time, then give it a chance. G is pretty good about following up, once they commit to doing so. After another month, however, if no improvement, I'd take cabbie's advice.