Site penalized by google

PR updates now, can be temporarily. Its common that PR on my sites drop from 5-6 to 1 for few days and then go back. You have a ban if it lasts for longer time.

Why not ask google?

From an SEO board:

A penalty can be invoked by Google for violations of its search engine Terms of Service http://www.google.com/terms_of_service.html. As a service and a guide to webmasters in the proper development of websites, Google provides a Google Information For Webmasters page http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html. The guidelines set out by Google provide web developers with many explicit rules that are meant to be followed.

Within Google's webmaster guidelines are some very specific don'ts.

The overall theme of Google's webmaster guidelines is to not attempt to trick the search engines. With that in mind, they provide a list of strong suggestions.

One major reason for being assessed a Google penalty is engaging in schemes to increase your site's position in the search engine results and for raising your PageRank. The avoidance of what Google calls "link spammers" and "bad neighborhoods".

Link Farms

The main culprits of this problem are the so-called "link farms". A link farm exists solely to increase PageRank by requiring the exchange of links between themselves and otherwise entirely unrelated websites. Should one of them, unknown to you, link to your site, Google won't penalize you for that. They believe you have no real control who links to your site.

On the other hand, Google feels you have complete control as to where you point your own links. Should you link your site to a link farm, clearly with the goal of increasing your PageRank and link popularity, Google will most likely respond negatively to your action. Google uses the "does it help your visitors, and if search engines didn't exist, would you still do it" test. That seems a reasonable test to ask yourself for any activity you use for your own website.

Hidden Text

Google specifically tells you not to use "hidden text" or "hidden links". It also disapproves of "cloaking" and "sneaky redirects". Hidden text is usually in the form of keywords, written very small, usually in the same color as the web page, or both. The idea is to have the text read by the search engine spider, but not by the site visitor. Hidden links are sent out to other sites, but not seen by the visitor. They are often used as a trick in link exchanges, to prevent visitors leaving the site, once there. Sneaky redirects send a web surfer to a different web site entirely from the one intended. These are often used in affiliate programs.

Other Don'ts from Google

Google disapproves of unauthorized computerized and automated programs for page and site submissions and for checking search rankings. The guidelines specifically mention the avoidance of the popular web tool Web Position Gold (TM). Because these programs utilize a large amount of computing time and space, they are a violation of the terms of service. For that reason, automated queries are banned.

Heavy use of keywords, that clearly do not belong in the context of the web page, are strongly discouraged as well. They are clearly an attempt to rank well for search terms that have nothing to do with the website, except to steer traffic to the site from irrelevant search results. For example, filling web pages with the most popular search terms, when none of them have anything to do with your site content, would fall under that category.

Duplicate content, whether pages or entire websites is specifically against the prescribed guidelines. Identical pages are used to add more pages of content and perhaps to have more results appear for searches. The Google algorithm attempts to avoid indexing identical pages and duplicate sites by indexing only one.

The so-called "doorway" pages, that are packed with every imaginable keyword to attract the search query, and then steer that traffic via a "sneaky redirect" to another site are expressly forbidden. Often used by affiliate programs, to avoid providing additional useful content, these techniques often lead to penalties from Google.

There are many more techniques that search engine spammers employ, that Google is attempting to stop in their tracks. While the methods are not specifically named, Google reserves the right to change its algorithm to combat them as they arise. The goal of the search engine is to provide the best and most relevant results possible. The inclusion of spam type websites prevents good webmasters from getting their honest sites as high in the results as they deserve.

no biggy, this morning some of my pr's went to 0 (zero) while most of them are allready back at 4/5

I bought a domain name (pretty decent one, kinda wondered why it was not already registered) and after I built a little free site on it with the hopes of getting some SE traffic, I found out it was banned from Google.

I emailed Google to let them know the domain was banned due to the practices of the previous owner, but it still is showing page rank 0.

Just a lesson for anyone buying domains, check it in archive.org first to make sure it wasn't used for SE spam, or the domain will be useless to you.

Seems like they are recalculating everything today. Let's wait for a while to see where we all stop...

Best Regards,

Thiago Dickman

The same here!

are you sure you are banned? it doesn't look like you've got any backlinks.

If you used to have PR, then you are definitely banned. When I searched Google for the exact URL, it did not come up at all. My experience with this is that you will probably not get it back. I had one banned YEARS ago when I first got in this biz. I have never been able to get it back in Google, so it is pretty useless now.

yep its banned..

but it wouldnt suprise me to see it back up in a week or two

It used to have PR 4 or 5 around august 2003, but after that - I haven't got a PR again never. The funny thing is that I emailed google, asking what was wrong - and I got a personal reply back where they told me that they had checked my site and assured med that it was not penalized. This was 4 months ago, but nothing has changed.

call them, their email support sucks

Yeah, was thinking about doing that tomorrow - found a phone number here.

Any others tried calling them? Any luck?

If you do end up calling them please post here what you find out. Would be interested in knowing what they tell you.