My site has been blocked from Google's index

[garysims]

Hi,

My site http://www.lowpricehosting.net has been blocked from Google's index and the "Google Team" have told me so!!!

Let me explain... I noticed that my site wasn't in Google at all and it should have been as other sites of mine with high PR numbers contain links to it.

A search on Google for:

site:www.lowpricehosting.net - no results
link:www.lowpricehosting.net - no results
[www.lowpricehosting.net] - 46 results

So Google know I am there. So I sent them an email and this is what they say:

Hi Gary,

Thank you for your reply. Your page has been blocked from our index because it does not meet the quality standards necessary to assign accurate PageRank. We cannot comment on the individual reasons your page was removed. However, certain actions such as cloaking, writing text in such a way that it can be seen by search engines but not by users, or setting up pages/links with the sole purpose of fooling search engines may result in permanent removal from our index. Please read our Webmaster Guidelines at http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html for more information.

Regards,
The Google Team

Now my site doesn't contain any cloaking or hidden text. In fact the site is only 5 pages!!!

Two possibilites I can think of:

1) I have a link exchange running at http://www.lowpricehosting.net/partners which is linked from the main page.
2) I have a link to a resource directory provided by http://www.linkexchangeexperts.com/

HELP!!! Could someone please give me there sage advice.

IS the link exchange experts at fault? Is it my link exchange?

Also can I get back into Google?

Thanks

Gary

[garysims]

Hi,

As a precaution I have removed myself from the "automatic" resource directory (I guess read link exchange) http://www.linkexchangeexperts.com/ and I have emailed the "Google Team" back and I will see what happens now!

Thanks,

Gary

[glengara]

I notice esyndicat.com has also been pinged, may be wise to drop their "directory" as well....

[garysims]

glengara,

Thanks for replying... What do you mean when you say "I notice esyndicat.com has also been pinged"

Pinged? Are they banned? Is it wrong to have a manual reciprocal link directory.

Thanks

Gary

[garysims]

glengara,

I see now... www.esyndicat.com aren't in Google's index either!!!

It is only a reciprocal link script... I wonder if it has something to do with the PageRanking icon they show on each page. To get that they fire off a request to Google using features=Rank in the query.

I guess that violates the guideline "Don't use unauthorized computer programs to submit pages, check rankings"

Ho hum, it was quite a good script to :-(

Gary

[glengara]

I didn't check why they might have been pinged, but I also noticed you have empty categories that have AdSense on them, another dangerous factor, IMO.

[garysims]

Hi,

I asked the guys at esyndicat.com about their site and script and this is what they said:

First of all some reasons why we are not in Google index.. eSyndiCat.com is completely new site and it is online less than a month. It is possible you know about so-called 'Google sandbox'. Google does not index new sites at once. I have many examples of this. We are not indexed in Yahoo also, and this is also because we are a new site. There can be found tons of information proving that.

We also have examples of directories with Google PageRank display and they are ranked well in Google, their pages have a good page rank. And you can find lots online yourself. If you want I can send you link with examples.

We suppose our script can not be the reason of your disappear in Google index. Anyway, we plan to send an email to Google team and ask about using our script. We will inform you about the results. Let's keep in touch and find out this problem.

[glengara]

"Sandbox" affects ranking rather than indexing AFAIK, as for directories showing AdSense, a lot were pinged a while ago, a feature common to most was empty category pages showing AdSense.

Moral of the story, if you're going to have a recip directory, remove all "footprints" to third party sites...

[garysims]

I told Google that I removed the automatic link exchange and they said:

Hi Gary,

Thank you for your reply. We encourage you to review our Webmaster
Guidelines at www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html. If you make
changes to your site, please let us know.

Regards,
The Google Team

Why do I get they feeling that they will never tell me anything other than "please review the guidelines"

Gary

[ADAM Web Design]

A semi-off-topic observation, but still one that I think may reflect somewhat on your problem.

I noticed, as others have, that you had AdSense on your site.

And while I find the screen capture I posted pretty funny (especially the first ad), I think it also goes a long way toward detailing what kind of a company Google has become:



although I gotta admit, I like the idea of being able to shop for a wife to swap online. But I gotta know, are there dealerships for this sort of thing? If I get tired of my significant other, do I get to trade her in on a newer model? How does this work?

Okay...seriously...your problem isn't likely that you have the eSyndicat link script. It's that you have a link script. Engines are getting more and more wise to this tactic, as many people have inappropriate and useless links "organized" into a myriad of often unrelated categories.

in your case, you even link to another "cheap hosting" company! Why would you link to your own competition? (And for those of you who say it will boost your ranking, the effect will be minimal if at all since there are two jokers not smart enough to effectively market themselves trying to piggyback off of a competitor. In other words, it does bupkes.)

Gary: drop the link script. It isn't helping you. Just kill it entirely.

And while you're at it, the same logic applies to the links page that's titled "Links". Drop that too, since you've got nothing of use there.

Look at it this way...if it's not of use to your customers, it shouldn't be linked on your site.

[garysims]

Hi,

I appreciate your comment and I am getting so desperate now that I might very well drop all those links.

But two things:

1) Google open write that links are the key to boosting PR. Are they schizophrenic. On the one hand they say you need links and on the other they tell me I am breaking their guidelines for having links. Errrmmm... Hello?

2) Why me? There are many thousands of sites with link exchanges reciprocal and automatic and they haven't been banned. What did I do to annoy Google.

I agree with your comments about what type of company Google has become. We all cheered when Google started, "What a great search engine" we all said. But now they have too much power, now they can break or make a web site. That is too powerful.

Gary

[glengara]

eSyndicat may well be the actual problem, IIRC the last entry in the Wayback machine shows it as a P orn site, which may also explain those ads.

Doesn't inspire much confidence in the company that presently owns the domain though....

[garysims]

glengara,

I had a check in the way back machine (a great tool by the way I didn't know about it) and you are right about the eSyndicat site. So I have dropped their script and for the moment I won't be doing any other reciprocal linking. I feel sorry for them as the script is really good. I also them an email about the previous owners of their site.

If I don't get into Google now then Google is broken.

Thanks,

Gary

[glengara]

Gary, don't know if it's my broadband acting up, but your pages take an age to download....

[garysims]

Here is my latest reply from Google... A ray of sunshine maybe...

Hi Gary,

Thank you for your reply. We appreciate your efforts to comply with Google's quality standards. We have sent your request on to our engineering team who will review your site to determine if it is eligible for re-inclusion. If the website is reinstated, it will appear in Google's search results sometime in the next few months. We appreciate your patience during this process.

Regards,
The Google Team

[random2004]

Yahoo to the rescue!

Well, Google will usually boot out anything that artificially contributes to enhancing page rank. It's also a way to keep things tidy within the index and prevent cheating.

[greeneagle]

GOOGLE:

"...If the website is reinstated, it will appear in Google's search results sometime in the next few months..."

That's a pretty good warning on one hand! Several months, would kill a lot of "bootstrapping" companies!

Ken

[random2004]

hat's a pretty good warning on one hand! Several months, would kill a lot of "bootstrapping" companies!

That's why you can't put all your eggs into one basket. 100% dependence on one program can make it or break it. How many millions of sites NEVER get to be on the first 10-20 SERPS? Or, show up in the SERPS for a few hours or a few days and then vanish?
I often thought that there was something wrong with this whole search engine thing. Think about it, millions of sites, a few thousand keywords and only a handful of sites make it to the top. That's why Adwords and PPC make so much sense, otherwise, the vast majority of websites/business would make no money off the Internet for lack of exposure.

[esyndicat]

Hi all,

Please advise, how can we change the situation?? We really bought domain name in August and did not look in Wayback Machine.. That's our great mistake.

Now it is too late to regret about it, we are not in index and we should solve this problem.

Do you think our PageRank feature can be a reason of dropping from index? Generally it is the same algorithm Mozilla Firefox uses for its `searchstatus` extension. I do have examples of its work and it did not affect negatively to google index.

IMHO, if we are banned (but I still believe we are not indexed because we are a new site) the major problem can be a link to us from script pages. Generally, eSyndiCat is just a link exchange software so itself it can not be harmful. We have too many similar scripts now.

Please advise anything in case we really banned by Google and if there are any possible ways to unban the sites?

Thanks in advance,
Simon Gooffin,
eSyndiCat CEO

[glengara]

Easiest solution may well be a new domain, particularly as the site is recent and you've little to lose.
I'd also make sure there are no "pointers" from Esyndicat to the new domain.