View Full Version : How do you know that your site has been 'banned' by a search engine?
MichelZ
04-12-2006, 03:24 AM
What can I do to find out if my site has been banned/penalized or not by a search engine?
Thanks a lot!
Marcia
04-12-2006, 04:27 AM
When banned:
At Google, the site will be out of the index altogether, like they don't even know about it. At Yahoo there will be only the index page indexed (possibly with and without the www) You can see by typing in site:domain.com (without the www part).
For penalties, it's harder. Mainly, it's a drop in rankings but that's hard to distinguish because at times ranking drops can happen because of algo change.
At Yahoo it seems people believe that when you do a site: search and it's not the index page that shows up first there's some kind of a penalty. That is very, very believable, because when that happens the rankings for the site tank.
ewc21
04-12-2006, 04:41 AM
Yes, especially when your site used to be indexed.
Newly launched sites that are not yet reached by spiders aren't technically banned.
MichelZ
04-12-2006, 07:17 AM
When banned:
At Google, the site will be out of the index altogether, like they don't even know about it. At Yahoo there will be only the index page indexed (possibly with and without the www) You can see by typing in site:domain.com (without the www part).
For penalties, it's harder. Mainly, it's a drop in rankings but that's hard to distinguish because at times ranking drops can happen because of algo change.
At Yahoo it seems people believe that when you do a site: search and it's not the index page that shows up first there's some kind of a penalty. That is very, very believable, because when that happens the rankings for the site tank.
Interesting explanation Marcia, thanks!
What about MSN Search? How do you see there if a site has been banned?