inherited a site - how do I check for blacklisting..

[Andrew008]

inherited a site - how do I check for blacklisting..

I redesigned a site recently (schooloftheworld.org). While cleaning up the server, I found all sorts of bad pages and relics of seo gone wrong. Its all gone now.. but I am wondering if there is any way to check if the engines have a grudge against the site.

It seems that yahoo has reindexed the site while google has a disgraceful listing of older results that havent resolved for over a month.

I am in the process of using gSiteCrawler to make me a sitemap.. and I am going to submit it of course...

[computergenius]

Take all the bad pages, set up 301 directs on them, and point them to good new pages. Or an easier way, would be to delete them all, and send all requests for unfound pages back to your home page. The first method spreads the word about internal pages, the second is simpler.

You seem to imply that the entire site could be blacklisted. That isn't normally the case, usually just some pages get listed poorly because of something done incorrectly.

[incrediblehelp]

Well there is no one tool to see if a domain is banned or demoted by Yahoo, MSN or Google. The best way to check the history of a domain is to use the WayBack Machine:

http://www.archive.org/web/web.php

See if they have some bad content up there in the past.

Also try typing the domain directly into each engine of interest to see if it shows up as a result. If so it is indexed.

Of course a domain can be blacklisted for many other spam reasons, like email spamming.

Lastly if you feel those old pages were "bad" or could be a reason for possibly being demoted, just delete them and make sure you have a 404 error handler for the old visits and start from scratch. I usually go with the 301 redirect method mentioned above if the old content is trusted and relevant to the new website.