SE horrror stories

Anybody have any good ones to share?

[TWhalen]

I have a client who does not truly believe that a site can be banned for using "underhanded" positioning techniqes, and thusly is asking me to employ some of those techniques.(which I am steadfastly refusing to do!)
Does anyone have any actual instances of penalization/banning they can share with me to use as ammuniton to back my claims that his site will ultimately be hurt by doing this? Is there a site that lists such stories?
Thanks in advance!

[IanTurner]

Just read the Google update threads over the past few months. They ought to provide you with enough ammunition :)

[ritualcoffee]

a consultant working prior to myself coming on board - was using doorway pages (the bad kind -no content) - got the site banned from AV and it took me four months to get AV to index us again. So - we lost probably 2% of total referrals for no good reason.

[JonB]

yes, read google forum. plenty of horror there!

or make pages for client, get the money and when he is "gone to 2 milliont position on his keyword" tell him "told ya this would happen'! But NO, you didn't listen, NO, you ALWAYS have to be the smarta$$!".
Hm, does this remind you of your wife, anyone? ;)My father always listens to this when he ***** things. Just collecting info and preparing myself for later(or much later) :)

Jon

[ciml]

This wasn't a penalty (half the people who scream "penalty" don't have one anyway) and as far as I know no one caused this on purpose but in a thread called 'SE horror stories' this needs a mention.

A Web site gets a link, but unfortunately the link has a line feed in it.

Googlebot follows the link and indexes the whole site as www%0A.domain.com Googlebot then sees that the content is identical to that on www.domain.com, so it doesn't list www.domain.com.

The end result is that Google's cache doesn't work for the site and, depending on your browser software, proxy server and ISP you may or may not have been able to follow Google's listing for the site.

The bug in the crawling software was fixed (Google are far more responsive than webmasters give them credit) and Googlebot seems to be better at finding the right URL to pick when it comes across duplicates.

Moral of the story: Do not ever have IP based hosting where the whole site is available by any domain pointing at that address (including www.yourcompanysucks.com!) and especially don't do it with wildcard DNS that returns your IP for any subdomain of your domain (legal or not). I've posted workarounds in another thread [webmasterworld.com].

Another one...if you have a semi-permanent connection and your IP changes from time to time, then you may be tempted to sign up with a DNS service to host a domain. You can just change the DNS records when your IP changes.

One chap, with a very family-friendly site, had his IP change about the time that Google indexed him. As a result, Google gets the pages of a rather family-unfriendly site and lists them under his domain. Moral: Use a fixed IP.

I've been sent a few banned URLs but I can't mention them here. The common reasons seem to be doorways and involvement in link farms

Calum

[miles]

The customer is ALWAYS right, even if they dont know what they are talking about. Do what they want, but send them another contract agreement saying that you are not responsable for the search engine optimizations that would get them banned. I hate it when the customer micro manages what you do because they have looked at what spammers do and say how can I go wrong.

You know how to do your job they know how to do theirs. I would leave it at that. Inform your customer on terms they can understand, tie it into their business and bad things that might give them a bad name. That is the only thing I could suggest you do to make it clear to the customer.

[ciml]

Miles, I see your point but if you want to grow a business long term then do you want to be associated with things that make you look bad?

A reputation takes a long time to build up, but can be knocked down very quickly.

The best solution I can see for someone who's offered a bad job, but is desperate for the work, is to make sure that there's no brand cross-over. i.e. do not trade under your normal (hopefully good) name.

Calum

[4eyes]

Ciml

This is easy.

See some of the threads on 'shopping' the competition.

[webmasterworld.com...] for example.

Most members are averse to 'dobbing sites in'. I leave the choice to my customers.

I work for my customers, if their business is being damaged because another site is using questionable techniques to get ranking, then 'shopping' the competition is a business tactic of which they should be aware.

Does it work - yes. Does it work 100% of the time - no, but enough to be considered a significant risk.

I advise my customers of the facts and give them the choice. They can use the same techniques (and take the same risks) or they can 'shop' the opposition. The majority say 'shop them'

[miles]

Ciml
I agree with you. I have been dealing with the kind of customer that micromanages everything I do because they read some obscure spammers ideas of how to get listings. It was more or less of a rant than anything else. Having delt with the good long term customers is always a blessing and I love dealing with them.