Google Penalty?

[jjolivette]

I am the webmaster for a site that was ranking very well on google for almost all of their keywords. About a month ago, I noticed that it was no longer ranking for any of them. It also does not show up for it's own name anymore (used to be #1)
It does however rank very well on msn & yahoo still.
I checked site:www.website.com and it still has 451 pages listed. It also shows up for www.website.com as the #1 listing.
I have not recieved any messages thru webmaster tools to indicate a penalty and there were no crawl errors.
I looked thru site for anything I could think of that may have violated google webmaster guidelines and found some hidden text behind the logo (using css). I cleaned that up and submitted a reinclusion request.
Does this sound like the site has received a penalty? How long does it take for google to reinclude the site?
Any information you can give me about this would be very helpful. I have been searching for information about what could be going on and can't find anything useful.

[JohnW]

How deeply have you searched, i.e. are you no longer in the top 1000?

How old is the site?

[jjolivette]

It is not in the top 500 for it's name, have not searched deeper than top 100 for keywords though. If I type 'company name' 'keyword or keyword phrase', it seems to show up in the top 1 - 30 or so, but not the same pages that used to.
The domain was registered in 1996 and the current site was built in 2005.

[JohnW]

Well, we don't frequently allow site reviews here, but it's been a while ....

Do you want to post the address without the http://www ?

[jjolivette]

Sure! that would be great!
the site is nilex .com

[JohnW]

In a quick look over the site I didn’t see anything bad enough to be a problem.

I did notice several other domains that were exact duplicates – looks like they were very recently taken down. Yahoo still has 3 of them cached, like this one:

http://216.109.125.130/search/cache?...icp=1&.intl=us

It would be important to know a little about your other domains recent history and also, have you redirected any site to the one with the problem?

[jjolivette]

That's very interesting, as I am unaware of any other domains...
Does this mean someone copied the site or that other domains are being redirected to it in some way?
I took over this site a year ago and was not told of any other domains or redirects. I will see if I can find out though...
Thanks!

[jimbeetle]

Just check the registration data for a few of the more common TLDs.

It's really a pain when you go into a job and then find there are landmines scattered all around you. Now that these other pages are no longer active it should make your job a bit easier.

[JohnW]

>and then find there are landmines scattered all around you

Exactly right. The everyday job of a pro SEO is often where clients are clueless or liars or both and you somehow have make sense of of these minefields and deliver results.

[jjolivette]

Originally Posted by jimbeetle

Just check the registration data for a few of the more common TLDs.

Forgive my ignorance, but what are TLDs?

As for the domains, what were the other 2 that yahoo had cached? You are both so right, I am just checking into this now and finding out that this could be the other branch of this office that has one of the domains registered (probably has no idea that they are causing this many problems either)

[jimbeetle]

TLD = Top Level Domain, such as .com, .org, .net, .us, .info.

[JohnW]

Here's a couple of them.

http://216.109.125.130/search/cache?...icp=1&.intl=us

http://216.109.125.130/search/cache?...icp=1&.intl=us

[jjolivette]

No one is admitting that those domains had content or redirects, though they are registered to the other branch...
Since the domains are no longer active, should I just send in a reinclusion request (again), beg for forgiveness from Google and hope that the problem is solved? Or is there more that could be causing this?
I have to write a report about what is going on with the site so if you can provide me with any more information, I would be extremely grateful.
Thank you so much for the information you have already provided for me.

[JohnW]

I would say get some screen shots of these cached sites before they go away. I will look into it a bit more over the weekend. But I would bet this is part of the problem.

[JohnW]

I do suspect the duplicate sites are/was the problem. It may fix itself now that these sites are down but a reinclusion request wouldn't hurt. I would for sure 301 all of the other domains to the one you are using.

[jimbeetle]

No one is admitting that those domains had content...

A picture is worth a 1,000 words. Take screenshots before they slip off Yahoo's cache. And print out the reg data, at least one or two had names attached.

[jjolivette]

Thanks guys.
I just went to take some screenshots & realized the .org is no longer showing up in the yahoo cache, but is now being redirected to .com again. They've set it up the wrong way again haven't they?

[jimbeetle]

Just make sure it's a 301 redirect and everything should be okay.

One other you might consider is doing a complete site health check just so you aren't caught by any other surprises.

[jjolivette]

If it were using a 301, the url would change to .com right? It stays .org no matter what page you visit. How do you determine they type of redirect they are using?

[jjolivette]

the .org site returns a status of 200 ok. I guess that means they did not use a 301 then...