Google Banned My Website

[Yung Drew dot com]

Hey guys,

This is Yung Drew from Yung Drew dot com. I came to the WebProWorld forums for help with my website not getting indexed by google. It was indexed and came up #1 for the keywords "yung drew." It still comes up #1 as "yung drew" on Yahoo and other search engines.

I don't know what happened with Google. It seems as though they banned my site, but pages are still indexed. I don't know what happened... If I used too many keywords.

My site is just over 1 month old and I am considering buying a new domain name and starting over to ensure Google traffic. Who knows how long it will take them to re-index my website back where it was. My website traffic also has dropped from a consistent 250 visitors per day to around 32 visitors per day.

I've filed a re-inclusion request and hope that google gets on it. I have read horror stories about them taking a long time / forever to re-include sites. I'm thinking about dumping the domain name and finding a new one even though a lot of work (will have gone to waste) (I'm about ready to scream).

I'd appreciate any advice,

Sincerely,

Yung Drew

[Dubbya]

You've left out some pretty important onpage elements that would be of great benefit in improving your site rankings.

For example, you've left out your meta description tag. How do you hope to rank in Google unless you provide the keyphrases and keywords you hope to rank for?

Your page title is pretty much useless in terms of search phrases. If your prospective users search for sites containing information relevant to the search phrase "Yung Drew", yours would be a highly relevant result. Is that the most likely phrase they'd use? How about "Top 10 rap songs", would that be a better estimation of what the bulk of your targeted users would be searching for? You need to work on that.

Same could be said of your <h1> heading. "Yung Drew" is probably not the most effective search phrase you could have used. Again, try to use a different phrase that your page title.

You're correct in your assumption that you've included too many meta keywords. You should try to restrict them to between four and eight targeted words or phrases. Keep in mind that the fewer words you use, the more relevant and specifically targeted they become. Only use words that appear in the page. So much the better if they're used in headings or hyperlinks.

Just a thought here but you might also want to re-evaluate your catch phrases. "A daily dose of dope" is likely to generate traffic only from people who are looking for information relating to illicit drugs. Is that your targeted audience?

Checking the number of IBL's (inbound links) that Google lists for your site, reveals that you have 367 links but that they've all been filtered out for one reason or the other.

I'd suggest that you review the Google Quality guidelines to ensure that you're not doing anything that they would'nt like, then resubmit your site for reinclusion.

.02

[kgun]

Originally Posted by Yung Drew dot com

Google Banned My Website

Hm.


Google:

site:yungdrew.com/

2070 hits here

[Yung Drew dot com]

Hey Dubbya, thanks for the analysis. I'll change some things up and hopefully be able to fix things. I think that my website was banned for one reason or another.

I'm considering just throwing this one away and buying a new domain name and getting off to a 'correct start.'

I think it'll take awhile for Google to re-include my site.

I appreciate your help,

Yung Drew

Originally Posted by Dubbya

You've left out some pretty important onpage elements that would be of great benefit in improving your site rankings.

For example, you've left out your meta description tag. How do you hope to rank in Google unless you provide the keyphrases and keywords you hope to rank for?

Your page title is pretty much useless in terms of search phrases. If your prospective users search for sites containing information relevant to the search phrase "Yung Drew", yours would be a highly relevant result. Is that the most likely phrase they'd use? How about "Top 10 rap songs", would that be a better estimation of what the bulk of your targeted users would be searching for? You need to work on that.

Same could be said of your <h1> heading. "Yung Drew" is probably not the most effective search phrase you could have used. Again, try to use a different phrase that your page title.

You're correct in your assumption that you've included too many meta keywords. You should try to restrict them to between four and eight targeted words or phrases. Keep in mind that the fewer words you use, the more relevant and specifically targeted they become. Only use words that appear in the page. So much the better if they're used in headings or hyperlinks.

Just a thought here but you might also want to re-evaluate your catch phrases. "A daily dose of dope" is likely to generate traffic only from people who are looking for information relating to illicit drugs. Is that your targeted audience?

Checking the number of IBL's (inbound links) that Google lists for your site, reveals that you have 367 links but that they've all been filtered out for one reason or the other.

I'd suggest that you review the Google Quality guidelines to ensure that you're not doing anything that they would'nt like, then resubmit your site for reinclusion.

.02

[Yung Drew dot com]

I have so many posts that it would honestly take too long to re-do the entire meta-tagging of all of my posts.

All that I hope to rank for are the keywords "yung drew." And I moved from #1 way down the list. I have been restricting my meta-tagging.

It's almost a nightmare... lol

All I want is my site to be in the google #1 for yung drew.

Do you think my best bet is buying a new domain name and getting off to a better start?

Any help is appreciated.

Thanks,

Yung Drew

Originally Posted by Dubbya

You've left out some pretty important onpage elements that would be of great benefit in improving your site rankings.

For example, you've left out your meta description tag. How do you hope to rank in Google unless you provide the keyphrases and keywords you hope to rank for?

Your page title is pretty much useless in terms of search phrases. If your prospective users search for sites containing information relevant to the search phrase "Yung Drew", yours would be a highly relevant result. Is that the most likely phrase they'd use? How about "Top 10 rap songs", would that be a better estimation of what the bulk of your targeted users would be searching for? You need to work on that.

Same could be said of your <h1> heading. "Yung Drew" is probably not the most effective search phrase you could have used. Again, try to use a different phrase that your page title.

You're correct in your assumption that you've included too many meta keywords. You should try to restrict them to between four and eight targeted words or phrases. Keep in mind that the fewer words you use, the more relevant and specifically targeted they become. Only use words that appear in the page. So much the better if they're used in headings or hyperlinks.

Just a thought here but you might also want to re-evaluate your catch phrases. "A daily dose of dope" is likely to generate traffic only from people who are looking for information relating to illicit drugs. Is that your targeted audience?

Checking the number of IBL's (inbound links) that Google lists for your site, reveals that you have 367 links but that they've all been filtered out for one reason or the other.

I'd suggest that you review the Google Quality guidelines to ensure that you're not doing anything that they would'nt like, then resubmit your site for reinclusion.

.02

[Dubbya]

Although things look a little bleak right now, you've already got a domain name, your site is in place and you've got some content. Your site is one month old, so the fact that it's invisible isn't necessarily due to any huge mistakes.

It's quite common to see new sites struggle in the rankings for some time, sometimes a few months, before Google trusts them and starts returning their pages in SERPs. It's called the "Google Sandbox" effect. Usually, for a few days or weeks, the site will enjoy a state of grace where it gets uber-high rankings for targeted keywords and phrases. Then the filters are applied and the site fades into obscurity.

There's little you can do at this point but wait while you build links, write new content and patiently work on improving your SEO.

If you're sure the SE's are canning your site, I think you'd find it much more beneficial to figure out why all your links are filtered out and why your site is being penalized before you go off and make the same mistakes all over again. It'd be counterproductive to try an establish a new domain and again have to wait several weeks to several months before Google establishes the site's credibility and deems it worthy of listing in their SERPs.

Check your Google Analytics information to see what's going on, or email them and ask them why your site isn't showing up anywhere. If you don't have an Analytics account, you'd do well to set one up, build a sitemap.xml file and submit it.

Regarding the time it'll take to "redo" your meta tags, you need not make all the changes immediately. You can do some key pages initially, then tweak a few more every couple of days. It'll give the spiders something to index, give you some time to figure out what's wrong and to determine how to fix it. Additionally, the changes would be picked up with each indexing and that can be hugely beneficial toward improving the site's reputation and credibility as well.

Realistically, you're probably better off to fix what you've already got in place. If you're worried about all the poorly indexed pages, you can use your Google Webmasters interface to purposefully have your site de-indexed, wait a week or two while you fix it up then resubmit it. You'll probably jump right up to the top of the SERPs within no time. Even if it is only temporarily, you're still likely to gain overall.

Ultimately, whatever else you decide to do, I'd wait another week or two before you decide to get too worried about it.

That's my .02

[Yung Drew dot com]

Hey Dubbya,

I really appreciate your helpful analysis. I have the XML-Google Sitemap plugin for wordpress and have been using it on my site (as well as my others) and have never had a problem with it.

I've heard of "the sandbox effect before." The only problem I'm having is that it's not #1 for the keywords: yung drew. I've never had a site in the past that has even dropped temporarily in its Google rankings and have never heard of a drop in the keywords besides "John Chow." I didn't participate in any link schemes or tactics to purposely boost my rankings.

I've checked my analytics info. which is where I noticed the traffic drop-off... I was getting 200 + visitors consistently for 2 + weeks each day. Next thing I notice, my site traffic from Google (organic) drops to less than 30... I'm definitely going to redo my meta tags... I don't know though, what is an optimal # to use per post? I usually use less than 10 and have cut back to around 3-5 lately.

I am still building links to the homepage and using StumbleUpon to get around 300 + visitors on certain days. My Alexa ranking is climbing...

I have narrowed down the banning / non-indexing to the following reasons:

1) A Google worker thought it was spam (and thus banned / restricted the site)
2) I used too many meta-tags (maybe keywords) - but I usually used less than 10 and am now using 3-5 tags with ZERO keywords
3) Google is having problems reading my sitemap...
4) Not enough links to the homepage
5) A change in Google algorithms
6) A combination of "all of the above"

I've never had problems like these before and I use the same plugin on other sites, which is why I'm deeply confused (and I run the same plugin). Today, I checked my webmaster account and found the following notices present.


Line Status
5 Parsing error
We were unable to read your Sitemap. It may contain an entry we are unable to recognize. Please validate your Sitemap before resubmitting.

- All the URLs in your Sitemap have the same priority.
All the URLs in your Sitemap are set to the same priority (not the default priority). Priority indicates the importance of a particular URL relative to other URLs on your site, and doesn't impact your site's performance in search results. If all URLs have the same priority, Google can't tell which are more important.

It also said that the Googlebot last crawled my website on Jul 7, 2008. It was crawling my website several times daily and I think the rate slowed...

I'm going to try to e-mail a Google rep or something to at least get an idea of why I am being banned / restricted.

I appreciate all of your help!

Sincerely,

Yung Drew

Originally Posted by Dubbya

Although things look a little bleak right now, you've already got a domain name, your site is in place and you've got some content. Your site is one month old, so the fact that it's invisible isn't necessarily due to any huge mistakes.

It's quite common to see new sites struggle in the rankings for some time, sometimes a few months, before Google trusts them and starts returning their pages in SERPs. It's called the "Google Sandbox" effect. Usually, for a few days or weeks, the site will enjoy a state of grace where it gets uber-high rankings for targeted keywords and phrases. Then the filters are applied and the site fades into obscurity.

There's little you can do at this point but wait while you build links, write new content and patiently work on improving your SEO.

If you're sure the SE's are canning your site, I think you'd find it much more beneficial to figure out why all your links are filtered out and why your site is being penalized before you go off and make the same mistakes all over again. It'd be counterproductive to try an establish a new domain and again have to wait several weeks to several months before Google establishes the site's credibility and deems it worthy of listing in their SERPs.

Check your Google Analytics information to see what's going on, or email them and ask them why your site isn't showing up anywhere. If you don't have an Analytics account, you'd do well to set one up, build a sitemap.xml file and submit it.

Regarding the time it'll take to "redo" your meta tags, you need not make all the changes immediately. You can do some key pages initially, then tweak a few more every couple of days. It'll give the spiders something to index, give you some time to figure out what's wrong and to determine how to fix it. Additionally, the changes would be picked up with each indexing and that can be hugely beneficial toward improving the site's reputation and credibility as well.

Realistically, you're probably better off to fix what you've already got in place. If you're worried about all the poorly indexed pages, you can use your Google Webmasters interface to purposefully have your site de-indexed, wait a week or two while you fix it up then resubmit it. You'll probably jump right up to the top of the SERPs within no time. Even if it is only temporarily, you're still likely to gain overall.

Ultimately, whatever else you decide to do, I'd wait another week or two before you decide to get too worried about it.

That's my .02

[lkine]

My site was banned before. But I don't know the reason. I deleted my site from google,and resubmit it

[Yung Drew dot com]

And that worked?

[Dubbya]

It CAN work, but you need to fix the problem that caused it to be deindexed in the first place.

Simply removing your site then resubmitting it won't fix anything. Unless you fix the problem, you'll be right back at where you started.

When my site was still just a few weeks old, I upgraded my cart which changed all the URL's. Because I had hundreds of 404's, I thought the easiest way to fix it would be to remove the entire site then resubmit it. In the end, I had to wait a month and a half to finally get back into the SERPs.

The first course of action is to determine why your site isn't showing up. If it's just because it's so new and it's been sandboxed, all you can do is wait and use the time to make SEO improvements.

The first thing you should probably do would be to check your Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools to see if there are any problems and fix them.

For example, there appears to be a major issue with your sitemap file.

XML Parsing Error: no element found
Location: http://www.yungdrew.com/sitemap.xml
Line Number 6, Column 1:

In addition, you don't have a proper robots.txt file in place.

The sitemap could be the root of your problem, so that's a good place to start.

Use GsiteCrawler to generate your xml sitemap.
Google Sitemap Generator for Windows :: GSiteCrawler

[Yung Drew dot com]

Great news Dubbya. I am confident that I can quickly get my website re-indexed. You've motivated me to edit and re-do the keywords of each post. After that, I'm going to figure out the sitemap problem.

I don't know what could've gone wrong with the sitemap XML because I've never had that problem before. It was working fine and I didn't edit or change anything... Then all of a sudden, "Bye Bye Google search..."

That's why I'm confused. I don't know where to start fixing the sitemap problem or if I would be better off just creating a new one... My plugin: Google Sitemap XML (for wordpress) is supposed to create a sitemap for me! It has worked for my other blogs fine, but why the errors with "yung drew dot com"?

Should I use GsiteCrawler and THEN deactivate the XML plugin on my Wordpress dashboard? And what happens if I already have a sitemap submitted: do I need to delete it or can I just submit a new one that will overwrite the old one?

I highly doubt that my site got sandboxed. I think it is either a penalty or something wrong with my sitemap...

Oh yeah, how do I get a 'proper' "robots.txt" file in place. I never had to do this with any other websites... Why this one?!?!

Thanks for your recommendations.

I'll hopefully have this fixed by tomorrow, then remove my site from Google, and finally re-submit my site to Google. If it's reindexed properly within 1 month, I'll be extremely happy

Thanks again Dubbya

Sincerely,

Yung Drew

Originally Posted by Dubbya

It CAN work, but you need to fix the problem that caused it to be deindexed in the first place.

Simply removing your site then resubmitting it won't fix anything. Unless you fix the problem, you'll be right back at where you started.

When my site was still just a few weeks old, I upgraded my cart which changed all the URL's. Because I had hundreds of 404's, I thought the easiest way to fix it would be to remove the entire site then resubmit it. In the end, I had to wait a month and a half to finally get back into the SERPs.

The first course of action is to determine why your site isn't showing up. If it's just because it's so new and it's been sandboxed, all you can do is wait and use the time to make SEO improvements.

The first thing you should probably do would be to check your Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools to see if there are any problems and fix them.

For example, there appears to be a major issue with your sitemap file.


In addition, you don't have a proper robots.txt file in place.

The sitemap could be the root of your problem, so that's a good place to start.

Use GsiteCrawler to generate your xml sitemap.
Google Sitemap Generator for Windows :: GSiteCrawler

[Dubbya]

The robots.txt file tells spiders which files and folders to include or exclude from indexing.

It's a great way to keep images and/or content from appearing in the SERPs. One reason you might want to do this would be to save a ton of bandwidth.

In addition, the new standard allows webmasters to place a link to their sitemap.xml file, ensuring that any spider that visits the site can find the sitemap easily. Because it's the first file the spiders actually look for, there's no need to place a link to the sitemap elsewhere in the site, since listing it in the robots.txt file will accomplish this for you.

More on robots.txt files:
The Web Robots Pages

I'd fix the sitemap first, resubmit it and wait for the site to get indexed. If you're unable to remove links using Google Webmaster Tools, then you might want to get your site removed. Again, this is a last resort.

If you think it will work best for you, use the WordPress tool to generate a new sitemap. Unfortunately, I don't use it, so I'm not the person to ask for help with it. If the problem continues, try asking for specific help in a Wordpress focused forum or simply search for "Wordpress sitemap error no element found"

There can be some serious consequences with having your site removed from the index. Removing the site then resubmitting it would likely send up a flag that the site may have changed hands. Change too much content all at once and you're much more likely to end up waiting for weeks before Google decides the site is credible and not run by a spammer.

This process can be a nightmare. Not knowing any better, my site ended up being invisible for a month and a 1/2. That's a very long time for an ecommerce site to be without traffic.

Fix the sitemap, resubmit it to Google, Yahoo! and MSN and wait a week or two.

[Yung Drew dot com]

Dubbya, thanks for all of your help.

I perhaps was over-thinking the entire thing. I must've changed one or two settings within my "Google XML sitemap" wordpress plugin. Now, what I changed should NOT have caused a 'parsing error' (or any error for that matter) within the sitemap.

I fixed the sitemap. I've edited every single post's tags and keywords.

Another issue that may have caused the drop that I noticed was "excessive pinging." Though it may not have been a factor, I did update and re-edit my posts frequently - thus pinging Google each time I edited a post.

What happened was my plugin to "stop extra pinging" was in fact activated, but I needed to confirm a link for its full functioning.... Now it is running correctly as well. Everything seems fine to me. I'm just waiting for an update in my Google Webmaster Tools / Account section.

I don't know what step to take from here. Should I just delete it from Google or let it work itself out? I have requested re-consideration, but I've heard that process can be hell... Google usually doesn't respond, etc. I may find a way to contact an Adsense / Analytics rep and see what I can do.

Interesting experience with your e-commerce site. Thanks for sharing all of your knowledge. I really appreciate the help. I'm incredibly happy (to even know the root of the problems).

I just don't know what to do know... WAIT? Or delete from Google? Or hope that they re-include my website?

Ahhhhhhhh.... <<< Just letting out some steam... (I am confident things will turn out great).

Thanks again

Sincerely,

Yung Drew

BTW>>> Who is 'that guy' in your profile picture?

Originally Posted by Dubbya

The robots.txt file tells spiders which files and folders to include or exclude from indexing.

It's a great way to keep images and/or content from appearing in the SERPs. One reason you might want to do this would be to save a ton of bandwidth.

In addition, the new standard allows webmasters to place a link to their sitemap.xml file, ensuring that any spider that visits the site can find the sitemap easily. Because it's the first file the spiders actually look for, there's no need to place a link to the sitemap elsewhere in the site, since listing it in the robots.txt file will accomplish this for you.

More on robots.txt files:
The Web Robots Pages

I'd fix the sitemap first, resubmit it and wait for the site to get indexed. If you're unable to remove links using Google Webmaster Tools, then you might want to get your site removed. Again, this is a last resort.

If you think it will work best for you, use the WordPress tool to generate a new sitemap. Unfortunately, I don't use it, so I'm not the person to ask for help with it. If the problem continues, try asking for specific help in a Wordpress focused forum or simply search for "Wordpress sitemap error no element found"

There can be some serious consequences with having your site removed from the index. Removing the site then resubmitting it would likely send up a flag that the site may have changed hands. Change too much content all at once and you're much more likely to end up waiting for weeks before Google decides the site is credible and not run by a spammer.

This process can be a nightmare. Not knowing any better, my site ended up being invisible for a month and a 1/2. That's a very long time for an ecommerce site to be without traffic.

Fix the sitemap, resubmit it to Google, Yahoo! and MSN and wait a week or two.

[Yung Drew dot com]

I would also like to add the fact that today: I found out that I have 457 URL's from my website and that only 307 are indexed!!!

Penalty?

I definitely think so!

Originally Posted by Dubbya

The robots.txt file tells spiders which files and folders to include or exclude from indexing.

It's a great way to keep images and/or content from appearing in the SERPs. One reason you might want to do this would be to save a ton of bandwidth.

In addition, the new standard allows webmasters to place a link to their sitemap.xml file, ensuring that any spider that visits the site can find the sitemap easily. Because it's the first file the spiders actually look for, there's no need to place a link to the sitemap elsewhere in the site, since listing it in the robots.txt file will accomplish this for you.

More on robots.txt files:
The Web Robots Pages

I'd fix the sitemap first, resubmit it and wait for the site to get indexed. If you're unable to remove links using Google Webmaster Tools, then you might want to get your site removed. Again, this is a last resort.

If you think it will work best for you, use the WordPress tool to generate a new sitemap. Unfortunately, I don't use it, so I'm not the person to ask for help with it. If the problem continues, try asking for specific help in a Wordpress focused forum or simply search for "Wordpress sitemap error no element found"

There can be some serious consequences with having your site removed from the index. Removing the site then resubmitting it would likely send up a flag that the site may have changed hands. Change too much content all at once and you're much more likely to end up waiting for weeks before Google decides the site is credible and not run by a spammer.

This process can be a nightmare. Not knowing any better, my site ended up being invisible for a month and a 1/2. That's a very long time for an ecommerce site to be without traffic.

Fix the sitemap, resubmit it to Google, Yahoo! and MSN and wait a week or two.