Gone from index! Banned by Google??

[gehrlekrona]

One of my sites suddenly disappeared from the index after just getting out of the sandbox and had a ranking of 3/10 and I have been trying to get in contact with google to clear things up. I have submitted a reinclusion request but that, of course doesn't help. All I get back is a standard email and there was something in there that caught my eye. Here's the email:

'Certain actions such as buying or selling links to increase a site's
PageRank value or cloaking - writing text in such a way that it can be
seen by search engines but not by users - can result in penalization.
Please review our quality guidelines at
http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html for more information. If
you identify problems with your website and make the changes necessary to
comply with these guidelines, please do not hesitate to contact us.'

Now this is really interesting!! Now Google is telling us we can't buy links or sell links on our sites? If Google uses the links in their algo, then they should remove the links from the equation and not tell us what we can or can't do!! If I want to buy links on a site to get some traffic from that site, WTH is that Googles business?????
I have said it before in posts and I'll say it again. Why don't Google get into the web templates business and sell us ready made websites that conform to Googles guide lines??? That way they can just index the sites they sell and don't have to worry about any algo or people spamming or anything... maybe they can sell keywords for the sites and the highest bidder gets first place. Maybe you can bid for a week or a month or something like that.....

About the banned site and the reinclusion request? Any other company on the internet you can call but Google hides behind their China Wall with no way of talking to a person

[mick g]

So what is that email trying to tell you then ?
rather than blaming google look at what you have been doing to your sites, that's where the problem lies and not with google

I am not being critical here just an observation, but is the site that has been removed the site as per your comments on this thread http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/...ead.php?t=9810 is the same as the site in your profile and most of the sites listed on this same site so its no wonder google removed it, they are breaking googles guidelines with the amount of characters you have in the title description and the keyword tags

Title Element
you have 872 words with a total of 5,817 characters excluding spaces when the maximum should be approx 40 - 50 characters long including spaces in-between the words

Meta Description tag
your description is the same words as above when it should be around 150 - 200 characters max including spaces

Meta keyword tag
your keywords are exactly the same as above when you should not repeat the same keyword or have that amount and never use keywords that you don't have within the page content

as per google's webmaster guidelines page
Make sure that your TITLE and ALT tags are descriptive and accurate.
Think about the words users would type to find your pages, and make sure that your site actually includes those words within it.

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also a friendly heads up on one site you say you have optimised has 5 adsense ad block on one page when you are only allowed 3 as per the TOS...just saying

[gehrlekrona]

No it's none of those sites.
It's a site that's been there for over a year and nothing has been changed at all except the css file so it's either something with the things you describe above or something else that google has changed.
I am most "whining" because there is now wat to get in contact with Google to get some reall answers so you can fix whatever is broke.
In Googles guidelines they say that a web site should have a way to get in contact with the site owner but I guss it is ok to have an auto-responder and send a standard email back to people.
I usually take phrases that people might use to find my site and then I build a lot of pages using the same tags. That's probably totally wrong but that's just what I have been doing for years... Not a SEO, just doing my best like most of us

[Marcia]

Not a SEO, just doing my best like most of us

Well, I'd think that people could easily assume that you are an SEO, since in your profile site you are offering SEO services, and in fact have a list of client sites

http://www.keywordsbiz.com/

This site even has written on the bottom that it's optimized by your profile site:

http://www.pawsitesonline.com/

I usually take phrases that people might use to find my site and then I build a lot of pages using the same tags

Yes, we can see that visibly when scrolling down on your pet site, and also the site you were asking about being banned back in January

http://www.starpixels.com/

That site does it in all the <head> section tags, as mick_g has pointed out earlier in this thread.

Yes, the starpixels site is banned, as well as the other domain name that's pointing to it with the same "content".

If I want to buy links on a site to get some traffic from that site, WTH is that Googles business?????

It isn't, nor is it if you want to sell pixels on a "star" site. You certainly are free to do whatever you choose to do, just as Google is free to decide what to include in their index.

Your site is yours to do with as you choose.
Google's site is theirs to do with as they choose.

Fair and square, even Steven! Sounds like an even playing field to me. Everyone does what they want to and everyone is happy, doing their own thing!

[mick g]

when it comes down to asking google questions about sites being removed from the index we are all in the same boat with the canned response, but they do state in their auto responder email acknowledging your email that you might not get a personal reply. I don't think you would ever get to speak to one of the google staff over issues relating to the removal of a site unless of course you happen to be at a SES meeting and get into a conversation with one of the google engineers

I build a lot of pages using the same tags. That's probably totally wrong but that's just what I have been doing for years

Most of us have probably done the same at some time or another (but never to the extent you have gone to) but keyword stuffing worked 4 - 5 years ago and possibly back then it was never thought of to become a problem in later years, things are a lot different in 2006 and you need to make every page on your site individual with its own title description and keyword meta tags and doing this would certainly help to eliminate any possible problems which may arise in the future, or in your case right now

[mcanerin]

I'd like to address this comment:

If I want to buy links on a site to get some traffic from that site, WTH is that Googles business?????

It's absolutely not Googles business if you are getting traffic from those links.

It IS Googles business if you are trying to get Google rankings from those links.

As long as your goal was to get traffic from those links, why would you care what Google or anyone else thought? They certainly would not care.

Unless you were actually trying to get the traffic from Google via those links. At which point it IS Googles issue, and they do care.

Finally, why would Google PAY someone to answer questions about your FREE rankings? That would be a very bad business decision. Now, if you were paying them for something (like Adwords), then you would have easy access to a paid rep, which is a good business decision.

Answering 1 free question for each web page in Googles index (taking 5 minutes per question) would take 2,500 years and cost 13 billion dollars. God forbid someone asks a question twice during that 2500 years, or anyone ever adds any more web pages during that period...

In short, you can't phone 'cause you are not a paying customer and it's not practical otherwise.

Ian

[gehrlekrona]

that is it googles business if we BUY links from another site? Would they KNOW we BOUGHT the link? Maybe if we have a link from a site that SELLS links they would know because the link is assiciated with a link selling web site, but if I buy a link from a company web site and I sell a link on my web site to another site, WOULD Google KNOW and if so, HOW would they know?
If all this linking is such a problem, why not remove it from the algo they have for PR? Why not just randomize the search results, see what people click on and for every click we could get a point. The they would know what is popular or not, the more points the better PR..... just kidding
As for the sites I have (thanks for all your input!!!!), I am trying to keep up and redo them as fast as possible and a SEO... nahh..... too much work. One thing about changing tags is that it takes forever for Google to change in the listings. I have some sites that's been in the index forever and it still has them same tags it had when it was started even though I have changed it several times over the years! If I change tags it takes about a week and then MSN have it all changed!
StarPixels never got into Googles index and it might (probably most likely) be because of the tags or something totally different.... I THINK it was because I registered a localized domain at the same time and before I changed all the text the site(s) got indexed and Google thought it was a duplicate content which it was at that time because it didn't get localized quick enough....
Oh well... I'll get over it